CSPAN - Washington Journal Washington Journal
Aired: 2026-04-25
Duration: 01:57:59


=== State by State Redistricting (10:39) ===

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[00:00:39]  After a week that saw a major redistricting referendum pass in Virginia, it's a good day to be joined by David Becker.
[00:00:44]  He's the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
[00:00:47]  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.
[00:01:10]  Is this helpful?
[00:01:12]  I mean, overall, these redistricting wars are definitely not helpful.
[00:01:15]  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.
[00:01:25]  They're supposed to represent the members of their district.
[00:01:27]  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 there in a totally different district than they were in before.
[00:01:38]  This is incredibly unusual.
[00:01:40]  I can't stress this enough.
[00:01:42]  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.
[00:01:54]  In just this year, there have been six.
[00:01:57]  And there could be more.
[00:01:58]  And there could be more.
[00:01:59]  Florida is now considering it.
[00:02:00]  We're going to see what happens with the litigation that's going on in Virginia.
[00:02:05]  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.
[00:02:13]  As you said, we work with these people all over the country, both parties all over the country.
[00:02:17]  And what people need to understand also is that when a redistricting happens, it's not over when the map is drawn.
[00:02:22]  That's just the beginning.
[00:02:23]  That gets you to the starting line.
[00:02:24]  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.
[00:02:34]  That takes time and energy.
[00:02:36]  That is a lot of effort.
[00:02:37]  And you can plan for that if it's once every 10 years.
[00:02:39]  If it's once every two years, it becomes overwhelming.
[00:02:41]  Which brings up the question.
[00:02:42]  So the Virginia State Supreme Court takes this up on Monday.
[00:02:46]  We're actually going to be airing those arguments.
[00:02:47]  I believe it begins at 9 a.m. on Monday, and we're airing them on C-SPAN too.
[00:02:52]  However long it takes them to reach that decision.
[00:02:55]  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?
[00:03:04]  How far into the midterm elections can we go with these redistricting battles before it becomes a real problem?
[00:03:09]  I mean, that's going to be open to interpretation.
[00:03:14]  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.
[00:03:27]  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.
[00:03:36]  And oftentimes we'll see different courts and different states reach different conclusions about that.
[00:03:41]  I don't think we're past the point of no return, but there's different states are in different positions right now.
[00:03:48]  Florida, for instance, is if the maps get approved, let me say in Virginia, at least the maps are done.
[00:03:55]  We know what the maps are.
[00:03:56]  That work can get started immediately.
[00:03:58]  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.
[00:04:06]  There's going to be litigation over that.
[00:04:08]  It could be a while until we get to the starting line of doing all of that work.
[00:04:11]  They have a primary in August.
[00:04:12]  They have a general election in November.
[00:04:14]  It's going to be state by state.
[00:04:15]  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.
[00:04:27]  The Texas legislature agreed to do that.
[00:04:29]  They drew some districts that they think will benefit the Republican Party.
[00:04:33]  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.
[00:04:45]  They did that.
[00:04:46]  That referendum passed overwhelmingly, 64 to 36 percent.
[00:04:50]  And then we've seen other states around the edges do the same thing with Virginia just being the latest.
[00:04:55]  So stepping back from the larger issue of redistricting, whether it's good for democracy or not, this voluntary mid-century redistricting.
[00:05:04]  Did you have any concerns with the Virginia election itself, how it was run?
[00:05:09]  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.
[00:05:20]  And it was a very close election in Virginia.
[00:05:24]  But in terms of how that was run, from what you've seen and what you've learned, did you have any concerns?
[00:05:29]  Absolutely not.
[00:05:30]  It was an incredibly well-run election.
[00:05:31]  And actually, a 3% margin is not a very close election in terms of how election administrators work.
[00:05:36]  And if you talk to election litigators, which I used to be, a 3% margin is a landslide in that world.
[00:05:43]  There's no question.
[00:05:43]  Why was it a well-run election?
[00:05:45]  What makes you with the...
[00:05:46]  Oh, the education of the voters was very well done.
[00:05:48]  Paper ballots throughout the state of Virginia.
[00:05:51]  Those paper ballots are audited to make sure that the counts were right.
[00:05:54]  If you think back, we knew the winner of that election, even though it was only a 3% margin, as you said.
[00:05:59]  We knew the winner of the election that night.
[00:06:01]  The election officials were doing a very good job of diligently reporting results.
[00:06:05]  Everything was completely transparent.
[00:06:07]  Everything was bipartisan run and bipartisan observed.
[00:06:11]  It was extraordinarily well rung.
[00:06:14]  We're not going to see any successful challenges to this election in any way.
[00:06:17]  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.
[00:06:26]  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.
[00:06:36]  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.
[00:06:45]  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.
[00:06:53]  And it purports to do the following.
[00:06:56]  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.
[00:07:06]  Yeah.
[00:07:07]  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.
[00:07:27]  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.
[00:07:46]  This is, I think it goes without saying the President of the United States does not have the power to do this.
[00:07:52]  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.
[00:08:02]  It gives Congress also some authority.
[00:08:04]  It gives no authority to the president.
[00:08:06]  President tried to sign an executive order last year that he signed in March of 2025.
[00:08:12]  It was blocked almost entirely by three federal courts.
[00:08:16]  This executive order has been challenged in five different cases already within days of it being signed.
[00:08:21]  I expect it to be blocked in its entirety.
[00:08:22]  Have we gotten too loose, though, with mail-in voting?
[00:08:26]  Is there concerns about having ballots not in a voting area with election officials there?
[00:08:34]  Have we just become too loose with this process?
[00:08:37]  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.
[00:08:44]  And there are some states that are only all mail-in voters.
[00:08:46]  Primarily mail voting.
[00:08:47]  I know that there's every state allows for some form of in-person voting if you want, to some degree less than others, but that's generally true.
[00:08:55]  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.
[00:09:02]  But what we have with mail voting is we've actually evolved into a process that is highly secure right now.
[00:09:10]  When someone gets a mail ballot, when a mail ballot is sent to them, their identity and eligibility is checked.
[00:09:16]  When a mail ballot is voted and returned, that eligibility is checked again.
[00:09:21]  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.
[00:09:34]  And that's pretty consistent with what the states have found.
[00:09:37]  I mean, there's occasional incidents of voter fraud, very, very rare in the United States.
[00:09:43]  The states are exceptionally well equipped to find them.
[00:09:45]  Mail voting is a safe and secure option, but it's also not the only option.
[00:09:50]  It's not a preferred option.
[00:09:51]  I personally vote early in person.
[00:09:53]  I love voting early in person.
[00:09:55]  I recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it.
[00:09:56]  47 states allow early in-person voting.
[00:10:00]  Of course, every state allows election day in-person voting.
[00:10:02]  C-SPAN viewers know David Becker.
[00:10:04]  It's the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
[00:10:07]  Taking your questions after a week of a very high-profile referendum, more potential redistricting fights in the offing in the weeks to come.
[00:10:17]  11 primaries set to take place in May.
[00:10:20]  A lot to talk about on the elections front.
[00:10:22]  Here's how you can call in.
[00:10:23]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[00:10:26]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[00:10:28]  Independents 202-748-8002.
[00:10:31]  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 Results and Ballot Counting (15:39) ===

[00:10:39]  So this will be our 10th anniversary year.
[00:10:42]  We started in the summer of 2016, before the 2016 election.
[00:10:46]  I'd been working at the Pew Charitable Trusts, leading their elections team for some time.
[00:10:50]  And before that, I was a Department of Justice voting section attorney.
[00:10:54]  Worked for three different attorneys general, two Republicans and one Democrat.
[00:10:59]  And in the summer of 2016, Pew was moving into a different space.
[00:11:06]  I thought the work needed to be continued.
[00:11:08]  And of course, there was a hotly contested presidential race that we were going into.
[00:11:14]  And election officials were feeling some of the strain.
[00:11:17]  And so I wanted to continue to support them.
[00:11:18]  So we started the Institute.
[00:11:20]  But we have really evolved our work over time as abuse, threats, and harassment of election officials has increased over the last 10 years.
[00:11:29]  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.
[00:11:42]  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.
[00:11:53]  And unfortunately, we're seeing that more than ever.
[00:11:56]  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.
[00:12:01]  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.
[00:12:10]  Wrote that book with Major Garrett a couple years ago at this point.
[00:12:14]  Is there another book in the works?
[00:12:16]  No, I think we're going to, I have been thinking about it, though.
[00:12:19]  And so many things are shifting right now and we want to be able to talk relevantly about it.
[00:12:25]  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.
[00:12:35]  And to some degree, that is bleeding into how we feel about our elections.
[00:12:40]  And I think we've forgotten about the fact that every election we have is a celebration of our democracy.
[00:12:45]  This year is our 250th anniversary.
[00:12:48]  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.
[00:13:14]  I'd never forget that.
[00:13:15]  It's one of the reasons I like going to vote in person personally.
[00:13:18]  I like seeing my community and being out there.
[00:13:21]  And thanking those election workers as well.
[00:13:22]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:13:23]  There are people who volunteered.
[00:13:24]  My own teenage son has done that several times.
[00:13:28]  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.
[00:13:38]  It's as easy and convenient to actually cast a ballot as it ever has been.
[00:13:42]  As I mentioned, 47 states offer early voting more than ever.
[00:13:45]  About two-thirds of all the states offer mail voting without an excuse if that's how you choose to vote.
[00:13:50]  It's really easy to participate.
[00:13:52]  There's not going to be any danger.
[00:13:53]  It's going to be safe.
[00:13:54]  It's going to be secure.
[00:13:55]  We should embrace that.
[00:13:56]  We should recruit others, our friends, to go and vote with us, even if they don't agree with us politically.
[00:14:01]  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.
[00:14:09]  Each state designs their own elections and what works for them.
[00:14:13]  But if you are somehow the election czar for a day, you could make one or two national rules about how elections are run, is there a recommendation that you would give?
[00:14:24]  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.
[00:14:34]  I mean, Georgia is run by Republicans.
[00:14:36]  Michigan is run by Democrats currently.
[00:14:38]  Both states are very closely divided.
[00:14:40]  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.
[00:14:52]  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.
[00:15:06]  They offer easy mail voting for those who want to do mail voting.
[00:15:09]  They offer widespread and easy early voting for those who choose to vote early.
[00:15:15]  They have paper ballots, as almost every place in the United States does, with the exception of Louisiana.
[00:15:20]  They do really robust audits of those paper ballots to make sure that the voting technology worked properly.
[00:15:25]  Those are all best practices.
[00:15:27]  We've seen them repeatedly.
[00:15:28]  They're being used in red states.
[00:15:30]  They're being used in blue states.
[00:15:32]  There might be ways to standardize that, just creating a floor.
[00:15:36]  But I'd 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.
[00:15:44]  Neither passed.
[00:15:45]  The Democrats tried to pass some in 2021 and 22.
[00:15:49]  The Republicans have recently tried to pass things like the Save Act, the Save America Act.
[00:15:53]  Neither has passed.
[00:15:54]  And I think that's because they haven't been bipartisan.
[00:15:56]  Really, the opposition party has been unified in opposition to those bills.
[00:16:00]  And they haven't taken in the input from election officials, which is really, really important.
[00:16:05]  I think election policy is best made in the states.
[00:16:07]  We've seen this time and time again.
[00:16:09]  Do all of the states do it the same?
[00:16:10]  They do not.
[00:16:11]  But voters in Florida are different than voters in Washington State.
[00:16:16]  And the people who know those voters best are the elected officials in those two states and nationwide.
[00:16:21]  High praise once again from Michigan and Georgia from David Becker.
[00:16:24]  Taking your phone calls on states around the country.
[00:16:27]  This is Homer in Massachusetts, Republican from Florence.
[00:16:32]  You're up first in this side.
[00:16:34]  Go ahead.
[00:16:34]  Hi, John.
[00:16:35]  I wanted to mention that gerrymandering came from Governor Eldridge Gehry in 1812 in Massachusetts.
[00:16:41]  That's when gerrymandering started.
[00:16:43]  So I guess we'll get that out of the way.
[00:16:45]  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.
[00:16:58]  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.
[00:17:08]  So that's why they had to redo districting to try to make it right.
[00:17:12]  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.
[00:17:22]  So the Democrats started this.
[00:17:23]  Don't stop saying it started just a few months ago with President Trump in Texas.
[00:17:28]  That's ridiculous.
[00:17:29]  Homer, thanks for the call from Massachusetts on non-citizens and voting and his concerns on that front.
[00:17:35]  Yeah, so first of all, with regard to the census and apportionment of districts, it is federal law.
[00:17:42]  It's the Constitution that requires non-citizens to be included.
[00:17:46]  That probably in the count.
[00:17:49]  And in the count, the one-person, one-vote calculations with regard to each district.
[00:17:56]  That probably benefits some blue states like California and some red states like Texas.
[00:18:00]  To be perfectly honest, it happens both ways.
[00:18:03]  There's no particular evidence it benefits one party or the other.
[00:18:06]  With regard to non-citizens registering and voting, we actually have a really good sense of how often that happens.
[00:18:10]  And the answer is it's really rare.
[00:18:12]  And that's not me saying that.
[00:18:13]  That is the Trump administration saying that.
[00:18:15]  The Trump administration reviewed about 50 million voter records from all over the United States and looking for non-citizens on the list.
[00:18:25]  And they found that 99.98% of them were documented citizens according to federal data.
[00:18:31]  It turns out the remaining 0.02% are also significantly, perhaps as much as a half or two-thirds, citizens, but the HS didn't have the data as they've sent this data out to the states.
[00:18:42]  So we know that non-citizen registration and voting is very, very rare, which is good.
[00:18:47]  It shouldn't happen.
[00:18:48]  When it does happen, it's usually by accident.
[00:18:50]  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.
[00:19:00]  We should do a better job of that.
[00:19:02]  Of course, non-citizens shouldn't be voting in federal elections.
[00:19:05]  That's been the law for decades and decades and decades.
[00:19:08]  And we can use tools that already are in existence in the states.
[00:19:13]  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.
[00:19:23]  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.
[00:19:39]  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.
[00:19:54]  We can always do more to improve it, and we should.
[00:19:56]  But the Trump administration's own data confirms this is not a major problem in the United States.
[00:20:01]  To the Pine Tree State, this is Chris Democrat.
[00:20:04]  Good morning to Maine.
[00:20:07]  Hey, good morning.
[00:20:08]  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.
[00:20:29]  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.
[00:20:37]  And when you listen to Fox News, which I do all the time, this disinformation is just spread 24 hours a day.
[00:20:43]  I mean, it's like all day long.
[00:20:45]  There's nothing even remotely comparable on the other side.
[00:20:49]  And southern states are shutting down voting polling places.
[00:20:52]  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.
[00:20:59]  How do you counter the disinformation and the massive campaign by Republican states to make it much harder to vote?
[00:21:06]  David Becker.
[00:21:07]  Yeah, I mean, I think, so there's no question disinformation is a real problem in the United States.
[00:21:12]  And we've seen conspiracy theories embraced.
[00:21:15]  Probably it's true more so on the right lately than on the left, although it does exist on the left.
[00:21:20]  There have been conspiracy theories spread about Kamala Harris actually winning the 2024 election.
[00:21:26]  She did not.
[00:21:28]  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.
[00:21:41]  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.
[00:21:59]  I hadn't heard of the Chinese bamboo ballots, but we don't have to do that.
[00:22:04]  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.
[00:22:25]  And then four years later, when those same Democrats held every lever of power in the federal government, they forgot to do it again.
[00:22:31]  These are not credible theories.
[00:22:33]  Our elections are more secure now than they've ever been, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans lose.
[00:22:38]  But that disinformation is toxic and we see it constantly being spread.
[00:22:43]  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.
[00:22:51]  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.
[00:22:59]  He did not.
[00:23:00]  And if you voted for Vice President Harris in 2024, it's also really important to push back against that idea.
[00:23:07]  The disinformation has to end because we know who wins elections in the United States.
[00:23:11]  There are different times when we know the results of elections in different states.
[00:23:15]  And as the caller brought up, when ballots can be counting plays a big role in that.
[00:23:21]  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 winter.
[00:23:33]  This adds to this trust issue, right?
[00:23:35]  We have short memories about this.
[00:23:36]  And actually, when ballots start being counted is not the primary factor in when we think we know who won the race.
[00:23:43]  We don't actually know who won a race until a vote is certified, which is usually weeks after an election.
[00:23:48]  On election night, we have this desire to know right away as soon as the poll is closed.
[00:23:53]  That is a normal human desire.
[00:23:55]  I have it as well.
[00:23:56]  But election officials and volunteer poll workers are working really hard to get that out.
[00:24:00]  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.
[00:24:11]  So we talk about Florida and how we know who won right away.
[00:24:15]  Well, in 2018, they had two statewide races, governor and senate, that were decided by about a quarter of a percentage point.
[00:24:21]  We did not know who won those races on election night.
[00:24:23]  In California, every presidential election year, we might be waiting for those House races that are really close for a few weeks.
[00:24:31]  But we know the result of the presidential race at 8:01 p.m. Pacific time because the margin is so large.
[00:24:37]  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.
[00:24:50]  All states still have ballots left to count in the days after the election.
[00:24:53]  There's still military and overseas ballots coming in, et cetera.
[00:24:56]  So those are unofficial results.
[00:24:59]  It's really not that variable between the states.
[00:25:01]  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.
[00:25:12]  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.
[00:25:20]  The example I used in 2024 is imagine a fishbowl with about a thousand red and blue jelly beans in it.
[00:25:28]  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.
[00:25:39]  But if it's 501 to 499, I'm counting every last jelly bean in that bowl.
[00:25:44]  That's going to take me longer to do.
[00:25:46]  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.
[00:25:57]  They are verifying every male ballot.
[00:25:59]  They are processing every precinct ballot.
[00:26:02]  They are double-checking and reconciling and auditing the machines to make sure that the counts are right.
[00:26:07]  And if the margin's really narrow, that's going to take some time until we know exactly who won.
[00:26:14]  To James in Waterport, New York, Republican.
[00:26:18]  Thanks for waiting.

=== Jury Duty Fraud Concerns (14:52) ===

[00:26:19]  You're on with David Becker.
[00:26:21]  Okay, thank you.
[00:26:22]  Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal was published about 40 years ago when he was about 40 years old.
[00:26:31]  I have read about 100 pages so far for the first time.
[00:26:35]  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.
[00:26:46]  There are no surprises or contradictions that I have found yet.
[00:26:51]  We, the voter, had every resource to know who Donald Trump is and was for 40 years.
[00:26:59]  I find what I have read so far is completely describes our president.
[00:27:06]  In his first term, he was surrounded by advisors that I questioned to myself frequently about some of their characters, abilities, and motives.
[00:27:16]  I concluded that Donald Trump did not have the full power to decide on these people because of his inexperienced with the political Republican machine.
[00:27:26]  So, James, bring me to today and your question or comment about voting systems for David Becker.
[00:27:34]  I am bringing you today.
[00:27:37]  You're stopping me.
[00:27:38]  I'll be done in a second.
[00:27:40]  But I was truly impressed with his first four years.
[00:27:43]  I was not truly impressed with his four years.
[00:27:46]  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.
[00:28:05]  I also predicted that it would be better that Trump lost the election for the first time, for the first, for this term, and that Biden then tried again.
[00:28:16]  So, James, bring me to the question.
[00:28:18]  We're running short on time.
[00:28:19]  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.
[00:28:37]  I can predict, I can't predict how Congress, composed of lawyers and our court judges, will decide.
[00:28:45]  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.
[00:29:07]  Thanks.
[00:29:08]  It's James in New York.
[00:29:09]  Anything you want to follow up on?
[00:29:10]  No, I mean, it is absolutely true.
[00:29:12]  Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
[00:29:13]  I mean, we audited that and confirmed it and verified it.
[00:29:18]  Again, our elections have been under more scrutiny than ever.
[00:29:22]  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.
[00:29:36]  The last three presidential elections were, you know, in our history, relatively close, but also clear.
[00:29:44]  Donald Trump won the 2016 election by the rules that we had.
[00:29:47]  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.
[00:29:54]  Joe Biden did win the 2020 election.
[00:29:58]  Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
[00:30:00]  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.
[00:30:16]  And what we have seen in the past is midterm elections traditionally don't get very high turnout.
[00:30:20]  The highest turnout we've ever seen in modern American history in a midterm election is 50 percent.
[00:30:25]  That was in 2018 when President Trump was in office during his first term.
[00:30:30]  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.
[00:30:38]  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.
[00:30:47]  One-third of the United States Senate up in November, 435 House seats.
[00:30:52]  It's been 435 House seats since 1919 when one House member, I looked this up, represented 210,000 people.
[00:31:00]  Today, one House member represents 760,000 people.
[00:31:05]  Do you think it's time to expand the House of Representatives?
[00:31:07]  I mean, that's a really good question.
[00:31:09]  First of all, we should note that the 435 number is not magic.
[00:31:12]  It's not in the Constitution.
[00:31:13]  That's set by statute by Congress.
[00:31:15]  It can be changed by Congress.
[00:31:16]  It doesn't work and has been, as you mentioned, about 100 years ago.
[00:31:20]  You know, the congressional districts are extremely large.
[00:31:25]  Some the entire state.
[00:31:26]  Yeah.
[00:31:27]  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.
[00:31:48]  The ability to gerrymander and create kind of partisan on balance is increased.
[00:31:59]  So it's possible that increasing the number of members of Congress would be a good idea.
[00:32:03]  I haven't heard it really proposed as a serious offer in Congress.
[00:32:07]  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.
[00:32:19]  That's absolutely true.
[00:32:20]  Democrats engage in partisan gerrymandering, as do Republicans.
[00:32:24]  This round of redistricting, this is different.
[00:32:28]  We are at a point where six mid-decade redistrictings to this point have been done, and that's never been done before.
[00:32:34]  That was started by the president pressuring Texas.
[00:32:37]  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.
[00:32:49]  Texas, which voted 43% for Vice President Harris, is now going to have far fewer than 43% Democratic districts in the House.
[00:32:57]  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?
[00:33:09]  The Supreme Court has said they are not going to get in the middle of partisan gerrymandering.
[00:33:13]  But the parties in Congress could do something.
[00:33:17]  Again, I'm not optimistic about that.
[00:33:18]  I don't want to be a polyan about it, but it'd be...
[00:33:20]  Hope springs the turnout.
[00:33:21]  Yeah, I mean, what's clear now is both parties are not benefiting from this.
[00:33:26]  I mean, I guarantee you, in a perfect world, Florida does not want to have a special session to consider redistricting right now.
[00:33:33]  So maybe there's an opportunity for a discussion.
[00:33:35]  Let me go to Florida.
[00:33:35]  Steve in Hallendale, Florida, Independent.
[00:33:39]  Steve, good morning.
[00:33:41]  Yes, I've just had a question for Mr. Becker.
[00:33:44]  How would you feel about making Election Day a national holiday so that everyone would have an opportunity to vote?
[00:33:53]  First of all, that's a really good question, Steve.
[00:33:55]  I'm of mixed feelings about this.
[00:33:58]  Yeah, I mean, it has been a popular thing to bring up.
[00:34:01]  I've heard members of both parties bring it up.
[00:34:04]  I think there's the idea that it would increase turnout.
[00:34:06]  I haven't seen any evidence that it would actually increase turnout.
[00:34:10]  There are some benefits.
[00:34:11]  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.
[00:34:18]  But on the other hand, think of other things that happen on national holidays.
[00:34:21]  Well, first, schools are closed.
[00:34:22]  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?
[00:34:31]  Public transportation often runs on reduced schedules on holidays.
[00:34:35]  That might mean people who need public transportation have a harder time.
[00:34:39]  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.
[00:34:46]  So I think this is a very, very mixed bag.
[00:34:48]  I think we've largely solved this problem.
[00:34:50]  Doesn't Louisiana do their elections on Saturdays?
[00:34:53]  Not their federal elections.
[00:34:54]  Not the federal election.
[00:34:54]  Yeah, but the state elections.
[00:34:56]  Does it work?
[00:34:57]  I mean, it doesn't lead to higher turnout by any means.
[00:35:01]  Louisiana is still generally near the bottom of turnout or in the middle.
[00:35:06]  But I think we've already solved this problem.
[00:35:09]  And we've solved this problem by making sure that election day isn't the only time you have to vote.
[00:35:14]  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.
[00:35:21]  The problem with that is we've literally never done that.
[00:35:24]  We've never had a single day of voting in the United States going back to 1789.
[00:35:28]  It just hasn't happened.
[00:35:29]  It's a myth.
[00:35:30]  We've always offered other opportunities for voting either through mail.
[00:35:33]  Early voting is a more recent, something that's happened more in the last century or so.
[00:35:37]  But there have been opportunities to cast a ballot outside of Election Day, and that's working.
[00:35:43]  I mean, we're seeing that work really well.
[00:35:45]  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.
[00:35:51]  There'll often be long lines on the first day of early voting in these early voting states.
[00:35:55]  And you'll hear some people say, oh, see, this is voter suppression.
[00:35:58]  There's long lines at the polling place.
[00:36:00]  And I'll be honest, I always think this is wonderful and inspiring.
[00:36:03]  All of these voters have showed up to stand with their community, wait in line.
[00:36:06]  They're often in a really good mood.
[00:36:08]  And the reason for that is because they could come back tomorrow.
[00:36:11]  They could go to another early voting site if they wanted to and vote there.
[00:36:14]  They've chosen to do that because they're excited about participating.
[00:36:18]  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.
[00:36:27]  We've largely already achieved that.
[00:36:29]  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.
[00:36:42]  Head out to California.
[00:36:43]  Steve's waiting in La Miranda, California.
[00:36:46]  Good morning.
[00:36:47]  You're on with David Becker.
[00:36:49]  Good morning.
[00:36:50]  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.
[00:37:09]  Called David Becker, a hardcore leftist who couldn't stand conservatives.
[00:37:14]  Maybe you could elaborate on that.
[00:37:16]  And thank you very much.
[00:37:19]  David Becker, on your back.
[00:37:20]  I most certainly, thanks for googling me.
[00:37:24]  So there was a single individual who made a complaint against me.
[00:37:28]  He was a political appointee.
[00:37:29]  That complaint was dismissed almost immediately.
[00:37:32]  That individual was also sanctioned by the Office of the Inspector General of the DOJ for having engaged in partisan hiring.
[00:37:42]  So I'm completely comfortable with my record.
[00:37:45]  I've worked with Republicans and Democrats all over the country.
[00:37:49]  I've got Republicans on my board.
[00:37:53]  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 and their redistricting plan.
[00:38:05]  I was given the highest honor that a career attorney could get for that by the Bush administration.
[00:38:12]  So my record is pretty strong, and I feel comfortable with that.
[00:38:16]  I'll stand on that.
[00:38:17]  To Olivia, Upper Marlborough, Maryland, good morning.
[00:38:20]  You are next.
[00:38:22]  Hi, good morning, John.
[00:38:24]  It's always a blessing to see you.
[00:38:28]  So more importantly, Mr. Becker, I want to speak to the research component.
[00:38:34]  I have a recent experience.
[00:38:37]  So I received a trial, a summons and trial.
[00:38:44]  What is this?
[00:38:45]  It's a trial jury summons.
[00:38:48]  I reported to the circuit court for Prince George's County on March 16, 2026.
[00:39:00]  That morning, over 400 people reported.
[00:39:05]  The problem is on the back of the summons is what it's called the Part B jury qualification form.
[00:39:15]  More specifically, Olivia, does this have to do with elections or jury service?
[00:39:20]  Negative, negative.
[00:39:21]  So Mr. Becker talked about the real ID.
[00:39:28]  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.
[00:39:45]  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.
[00:40:00]  Olivia, let me give David Becker a chance because we're short on time.
[00:40:03]  Is there anything you can follow up there?
[00:40:05]  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.
[00:40:15]  And there are individuals who said, I can't serve on jury duty because I'm not a citizen.
[00:40:19]  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.
[00:40:33]  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.
[00:40:42]  And they actually are citizens and they can legally vote.
[00:40:45]  What I would say is if you're a citizen, you should vote.
[00:40:48]  You should also serve on a jury.
[00:40:50]  I've actually done it.
[00:40:52]  And it's a great honor to be in a country like ours where we both get to vote and serve on juries.
[00:40:58]  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.

=== Building Diplomatic Relationships (07:26) ===

[00:41:12]  I'm so glad, yeah, you brought that back to that.
[00:41:14]  This is, if you have any doubts, the people, it's understandable.
[00:41:18]  I work on elections every day.
[00:41:19]  I think about it every day.
[00:41:21]  Election officials think about it every day, but most Americans think about it right around election time.
[00:41:25]  And they don't think about everything that goes into making that election work.
[00:41:28]  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.
[00:41:36]  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.
[00:41:43]  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.
[00:41:53]  There's a reason that you have to go through training beforehand.
[00:41:56]  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.
[00:42:04]  It's because they're checking and double checking and they're all doing it under transparent observation.
[00:42:10]  And those numbers are being checked and double checked and triple checked over and over and over and over again.
[00:42:16]  We know that our elections are secure and the best way to see that is by volunteering to be a poll worker.
[00:42:20]  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.
[00:42:28]  David Becker is the founder of that group and we always appreciate your time, especially on a Saturday.
[00:42:33]  All right.
[00:42:33]  Thank you, John.
[00:42:34]  Coming up after the break, we are going to talk about the AP U.S. History Exam.
[00:42:41]  We're going to be joined by history educators, Matthew Ellington and Jason Stacey.
[00:42:47]  Whether you're a AP high school student or just a lover of history, a good segment for you to tune into.
[00:42:55]  But before that, it's going to be our open forum.
[00:42:57]  Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's your time to call in.
[00:43:02]  Go ahead and start dialing in.
[00:43:04]  And as you're dialing in, I wanted to let you know about some of the many parties around Washington, D.C.
[00:43:09]  This White House Correspondents Dinner Week, C-SPAN co-hosted one of those parties with YouTube TV and the Meridian Center for Diplomatic Engagement.
[00:43:18]  That was on Thursday night.
[00:43:20]  I want to give you a look of what one of these parties looks like and kind of an insider's view.
[00:43:26]  C-SPAN's Cape Michael took viewers around that party.
[00:43:32]  We're at Meridian International House where we are recognizing diplomacy at 250.
[00:43:38]  This is a precursor to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner Weekend, which will be full of events like this around town.
[00:43:45]  This event is in partnership with Meridian, YouTube, and C-SPAN.
[00:43:49]  Well, I think...
[00:43:50]  What is this weekend all about?
[00:43:52]  I mean, this weekend is supposed to be about the First Amendment.
[00:43:55]  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.
[00:44:03]  And I think we're so blessed to have a free press.
[00:44:05]  There is a lot of excitement in Washington about this weekend, and this is a precursor to the weekend.
[00:44:11]  But what are you most...
[00:44:12]  Kickoff really.
[00:44:13]  What are you most excited about this weekend?
[00:44:15]  I love the opportunity to celebrate the press, the freedom of the press.
[00:44:20]  It's such an important part of the United States democracy.
[00:44:23]  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.
[00:44:34]  We are here discussing diplomacy at 250.
[00:44:38]  And these events are kind of, you know, on the lighter side for White House Correspondent Association Dinner Weekend.
[00:44:43]  What does diplomacy mean to you, and why do these kind of lighter events, why are they important to diplomacy?
[00:44:49]  Well, diplomacy is relating to people and a relationship between societies, between countries, and not all relationships are heavy or very serious.
[00:45:00]  There's also, you know, a lighter side to relationships.
[00:45:04]  And this is important.
[00:45:06]  And of course, it's very important.
[00:45:08]  The White House Press Corps.
[00:45:10]  I've lived in Washington on and off since I was eight years old.
[00:45:14]  And I always follow the press corpse of the White House.
[00:45:17]  So I want to congratulate all the professionals at the White House for the great job they do.
[00:45:23]  So we're here recognizing diplomacy at 250 years.
[00:45:27]  What is diplomacy to you and why does coming to an event like this matter to diplomacy?
[00:45:32]  Absolutely.
[00:45:33]  Diplomacy is super important because it connects cultures.
[00:45:36]  It promotes conversations where people can hopefully solve problems.
[00:45:41]  And attending an event like this is important to move policy forward?
[00:45:46]  Events like this create space and build relationships for diplomacy to occur.
[00:45:51]  So networking and connection, does that actually make policy happen?
[00:45:56]  Of course.
[00:45:57]  That's the fundamental principle of policymaking.
[00:46:02]  And diplomacy is about networking and connection.
[00:46:06]  Are you all planning to attend the dinner this year?
[00:46:09]  Absolutely.
[00:46:10]  And what are we expecting that we might hear from the president if he attends?
[00:46:15]  Well, I'd hope there's a positive message for America's next 250 years.
[00:46:19]  Well, I think he's going to be funny and a good sense of humor.
[00:46:23]  I think it's exciting that the president's going to be there.
[00:46:25]  This is historic.
[00:46:27]  I'm sure there are going to be some lots of news being made.
[00:46:30]  This is going to be fantastic, so we'll see where it goes.
[00:46:33]  Can you give us an insider's account of what the dinner is like and why these pre-parties are important?
[00:46:42]  You know, the pre-parties are really important for me because that's where you really see people.
[00:46:48]  You can talk to them and you have a free flow where you don't have that in the dinner.
[00:46:52]  You know what I mean?
[00:46:53]  It's more you're seated, you're there.
[00:46:56]  And I think the pre-parties are wonderful for me.
[00:46:59]  Because you get to meet people.
[00:47:00]  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.
[00:47:07]  You know, so it's a whole different bye.
[00:47:10]  But why are events like these important to Washington society?
[00:47:14]  I think there's a couple of reasons.
[00:47:16]  There's several reasons, actually.
[00:47:17]  I think partly is because when eyes are on Washington, there's always something maybe negative or always something stressful and things like that.
[00:47:25]  This is a chance where we can celebrate the good.
[00:47:28]  You know, we have eyes now on Washington and seeing how we can strive and do really well there.
[00:47:33]  Plus, Washington loves a good party.
[00:47:36]  What about any of the celebrities or notable names that come to Washington around this time of year?
[00:47:43]  It's interesting because for us, we think the people that cover the news are our celebrities.
[00:47:49]  The holidays are celebrities, but we have all the other celebrities come in.
[00:47:52]  Like last night, I took a selfie with Don Lemon, so that was kind of cool.
[00:47:57]  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.
[00:48:07]  Well, you're going to have a bunch of people here.
[00:48:09]  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.
[00:48:29]  Who would have thought that the road manager for Rundy MC and the BC Boys would be up here talking to you guys?
[00:48:36]  Anybody got a camera?

=== Broader Perspectives on Voting (02:49) ===

[00:48:38]  Can you think of voting?
[00:48:39]  I got to send it to my mother.
[00:48:41]  I just want to say thank you to everybody, and let's have a party and have a good time.
[00:48:49]  So here's to you.
[00:48:54]  Washington Journal continues.
[00:48:57]  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.
[00:49:11]  Washington Journal continues with Open Forum.
[00:49:14]  Any public policy issue, any public policy issue you want to talk about, now is the time to do so.
[00:49:19]  Phone lines are for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual.
[00:49:23]  We have about 20 minutes here to take your phone calls, and there are plenty on the line already.
[00:49:29]  So we'll go right to David out in San Francisco.
[00:49:31]  Democrat, David, good morning.
[00:49:34]  Go ahead.
[00:49:35]  Yeah, good morning.
[00:49:37]  Appreciate being having my call taken and listening to your last guest about elections.
[00:49:44]  I just want to comment about elections in general, give a broader perspective.
[00:49:51]  He talked about how we do it here in America.
[00:49:54]  I lived in Brazil and Bolivia in South America.
[00:49:59]  And elections, just share with the American audience that elections there are handled a bit differently.
[00:50:07]  Basically, the electorate is required by law to vote.
[00:50:12]  And if they don't vote, there are various kinds of sanctions that are applied, like losing their job.
[00:50:23]  So, you know, when we talk about our election system, Becker didn't even mention this, but who are 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.
[00:50:52]  But, and we could think more broadly about How to uh change it to um increase participation.
[00:51:01]  So that's just the thoughts I want to share this morning.
[00:51:04]  Thank you.
[00:51:04]  David, thanks for the call from California.
[00:51:06]  We'll stay in the Golden State.
[00:51:07]  This is Mike Valley Center Independence.
[00:51:11]  Go ahead.
[00:51:13]  Hey, thanks for taking my call.
[00:51:15]  Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the corruption in the Trump government and everything that the Trump seemed to touch fails.

=== Trump Government Corruption Allegations (02:54) ===

[00:51:27]  Their Bitcoin is the Trump Bitcoin is worth let's see $2.87 at the time.
[00:51:41]  At one time, it was worth $75.
[00:51:44]  The World Liberty Financial is now worth $0.08, their coin.
[00:51:51]  And Melania's coin is now worth less than 12 cents.
[00:51:58]  The Trump kids are selling drones to our military.
[00:52:02]  And now they're trying to sell drones to the countries in the Middle East.
[00:52:10]  And both of the kids are on the border prediction markets.
[00:52:16]  There's no way that people are going to win in the prediction markets because the Trump kids get insider information before anybody else.
[00:52:30]  The Trump cabinet is selling pardons.
[00:52:36]  The growing rate in the last administration, in his last administration, was $3 million for a pardon.
[00:52:44]  And Trump's trying to prosecute the innocent and he's pardoning the guilty.
[00:52:50]  That's what I got to say.
[00:52:51]  That's Mike in California.
[00:52:53]  What Donald Trump is doing in the past 24 hours is posting to his social media page, his true social page.
[00:53:02]  Here's a few of the things that have been on the president's mind about 15 hours ago.
[00:53:07]  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.
[00:53:21]  It was instead done with the help of the Secretary of the Interior and his entire department for $2 million in one week.
[00:53:29]  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.
[00:53:40]  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.
[00:53:51]  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.
[00:54:01]  And then one more from the President.
[00:54:03]  This also from about 15 hours ago, focusing on right-wing columnists and commentator Candace Owens saying her stock, which was never very high, has fallen a long way.
[00:54:14]  Her attack on the First Lady of France is despicable.
[00:54:17]  I believe in this case, without verification, she's an extremely low IQ person.

=== Mail-in Voting and Tax Cuts (14:58) ===

[00:54:21]  And then a doctored Time magazine cover calling Candace Owen vile person of the year.
[00:54:29]  Some of President Trump's true social pages.
[00:54:32]  This is Wanda in California as well, Republican.
[00:54:35]  Good morning.
[00:54:37]  Yes, I would like to contradict David Becker when he says that people should get a job as a volunteer poll worker.
[00:54:49]  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.
[00:55:00]  They don't see what goes on in the counting room.
[00:55:04]  They don't do that part.
[00:55:06]  The bureaucrats do that and they have no idea.
[00:55:10]  We have no idea who the bureaucrats are.
[00:55:14]  I guarantee you they're all Democrats.
[00:55:17]  Wanda, have you ever volunteered?
[00:55:20]  I certainly have.
[00:55:22]  I know what they do.
[00:55:23]  All they do is take your name and hand you a ballot.
[00:55:27]  They don't know a damn thing.
[00:55:30]  Why did you want to volunteer and when did you volunteer?
[00:55:35]  I just wanted the experience.
[00:55:38]  That was a long time ago for me, but they do the same thing now.
[00:55:43]  That's Wanda in California to Idaho.
[00:55:46]  This is Russell in Jerome, Idaho, Democrat.
[00:55:49]  Good morning.
[00:55:51]  Hello.
[00:55:52]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:55:53]  I just wanted to make a question and a comment.
[00:55:57]  I was a victim of the wildfires.
[00:56:00]  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.
[00:56:13]  And FEMA was a big part of my recovery.
[00:56:18]  I know it was a big government expense, and now they're cutting that back.
[00:56:23]  But also the Red Cross and all the volunteers were so instrumental in helping me to become who I am now.
[00:56:34]  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.
[00:56:52]  And I'm just praying and I'm sending my donations to Florida.
[00:56:59]  And I know Idaho, the state of Idaho, is sending the volunteers out there.
[00:57:05]  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.
[00:57:23]  That's Russell in Idaho on the fires in northern Florida and Georgia.
[00:57:27]  Here's one of the latest headlines on it.
[00:57:29]  Wildfires destroying dozens of structures in Georgia, according to the governors.
[00:57:33]  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.
[00:57:44]  This is Robert in Virginia, Independent.
[00:57:47]  Go ahead.
[00:57:49]  Yes, good morning.
[00:57:50]  Good morning.
[00:57:51]  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.
[00:58:09]  Well, look, I'm not going to complain about that if they use Donald Trump and HPS for the first customers because they've killed so many kids.
[00:58:19]  We'll just not go there.
[00:58:20]  Robert, this is Jane in Augusta, Maine, Republican.
[00:58:24]  Good morning.
[00:58:26]  Hi, John.
[00:58:26]  This is Jane.
[00:58:27]  I'm a dietician.
[00:58:28]  I usually call every month.
[00:58:30]  Last month I missed last month.
[00:58:32]  Last month was National Nutrition Month.
[00:58:34]  But I just want to remind viewers, I like your resources and your coverage of Medicare, Medicaid, and work programs.
[00:58:43]  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.
[00:58:59]  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.
[00:59:12]  In Maine, we really need to look at more civics education so people understand government in a process.
[00:59:19]  For high school students, they have a social studies requirement for two years of social studies, but civics is not part of it.
[00:59:29]  So in Maine right now, we have a fraud issue regarding Maine Department of Human Services and Social Services Agency.
[00:59:38]  So I hope you continue the good work on all the coverage of these issues.
[00:59:43]  Thank you.
[00:59:43]  Jane, thanks for that.
[00:59:45]  We'll have our cram for the exam for the APUS government exam coming up in just a couple weeks.
[00:59:53]  Up next, actually, on the Washington Journal, we're going to be talking about the APUS history exam, our cram for the exam segment.
[01:00:01]  It is the eighth year in a row that we've been doing it for the APUS history exam.
[01:00:06]  I think it's been longer for the government exam, but glad to help high school students.
[01:00:10]  And it's always a segment to learn about history and government.
[01:00:13]  That's coming up in less than 10 minutes.
[01:00:16]  So stick around for that.
[01:00:17]  This is Carol in Maryland, Democrat.
[01:00:20]  Good morning.
[01:00:22]  Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
[01:00:24]  I want to talk about voting by mail and ballot.
[01:00:30]  I just moved to this state.
[01:00:34]  I lived in Pennsylvania before.
[01:00:37]  And my husband and I voted in person for years.
[01:00:42]  And then all of a sudden, we weren't really, he wasn't able to get there and stand in line.
[01:00:48]  So we started voting by ballot.
[01:00:53]  And so we, for the 24 election, we both signed our request to have a ballot.
[01:01:01]  And then a while later, you know, my neighbor called and she said, the ballots are in.
[01:01:08]  Go down to your mailbox and get them.
[01:01:10]  And I did.
[01:01:11]  But there was only one, and it was for me because my husband had passed away.
[01:01:19]  I think it was 10 days before.
[01:01:22]  And they knew about it.
[01:01:24]  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.
[01:01:41]  And I hope that it will continue.
[01:01:43]  There were people in rural areas that just didn't get to the voting place because it was so far away.
[01:01:51]  Voting by mail is good, and I hope it continues.
[01:01:55]  Thank you for listening.
[01:01:56]  Carol, thanks for the call.
[01:01:57]  Tim is in Wisconsin, Independent.
[01:02:00]  Good morning, Open Forum.
[01:02:01]  Go ahead.
[01:02:04]  Yes, sir.
[01:02:04]  I was just calling.
[01:02:05]  I just wanted to comment on that last caller.
[01:02:08]  Voting by mail is the biggest reason we had one of the biggest frauds in 2020.
[01:02:15]  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.
[01:02:33]  I think those people ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they probably won't be.
[01:02:38]  So thank you.
[01:02:39]  That's Tim in Wisconsin.
[01:02:41]  This is Paul in the land of Lincoln, Republican.
[01:02:44]  Good morning.
[01:02:46]  Good morning.
[01:02:47]  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.
[01:02:57]  It's ridiculous.
[01:02:58]  They come here and they take half the jobs that Americans could be doing.
[01:03:04]  And also, I'm happy with him helping Israel in this war and trying to get rid of the terrorists and doing a job.
[01:03:17]  Sometimes he's a little braggadocia about what he's doing, but in the overall picture, 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.
[01:03:40]  Hopefully, if they get the Medicare, I pay $7,000 a year now in Medicare premiums, which is another ridiculous thing.
[01:03:50]  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.
[01:03:59]  And I appreciate the Republicans in the House and the Senate, and I hope they can keep the majority.
[01:04:08]  And if the Democrats get in, everything is going to be destroyed again.
[01:04:12]  That's been good what's happening now.
[01:04:16]  And thank you for letting me make my comments.
[01:04:19]  That's Paul in Illinois to the Buckeye State.
[01:04:21]  Walter Cleveland, Democrat.
[01:04:24]  Go ahead.
[01:04:26]  Yes.
[01:04:26]  Hello.
[01:04:26]  Good morning, John.
[01:04:28]  Thanks for taking my call.
[01:04:30]  John, our president, Donald Trump, is drunk with power.
[01:04:38]  Have you ever seen the movie Cuo Vadis with Deborah Kerr, Robert Taylor, Peter Ustinoff as the crazy Emperor Nero?
[01:04:50]  Well, if Donald Trump doesn't remind you of Ustinoff, Nero, in that movie, then watch it again.
[01:05:01]  Just like him, and, you know, things did not come to a good end for Nero.
[01:05:07]  So it seems like, and I'm not saying that the administration hasn't done some good things.
[01:05:13]  The guy brought up closing the border just before me.
[01:05:16]  That was a good idea.
[01:05:19]  Getting Maduro was a good idea if it helps Venezuela, but it's almost like a means to an end.
[01:05:26]  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.
[01:05:36]  So Wickoff and Kushner in Islamabad, I hope something good comes out of it, but they're businessmen.
[01:05:46]  And the means to that end, again, is oil.
[01:05:50]  I don't really think it had anything to do with regime change in Iran and helping the people there.
[01:06:00]  It was the oil.
[01:06:02]  And so hopefully things will get better and they'll make some decisions in that administration.
[01:06:10]  Oh, one other thing.
[01:06:12]  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.
[01:06:27]  If you look up the definition, you probably know what a henchman is anyway.
[01:06:31]  But anyway, that's my nickname for him.
[01:06:35]  That's Walter in Ohio.
[01:06:37]  Elida is in Virginia, Independent.
[01:06:40]  Good morning.
[01:06:43]  Elida, you with us.
[01:06:48]  Then we will go to Annie in Fairfax, California, Republican.
[01:06:53]  Annie, go ahead.
[01:06:55]  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.
[01:07:07]  It sounds kind of kicky, but anyway, I wanted to bring up a really off topic that is suicide.
[01:07:18]  And I lost a sibling to that.
[01:07:21]  And I want to say, without sounding presumptuous, that, you know, the Donald had a brother who was an alcoholic.
[01:07:31]  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.
[01:07:44]  And anyway, that's my comment.
[01:07:47]  And I hope you ask me a question because I like it when you ask follow-up questions.
[01:07:50]  Annie, I just want to say I'm sorry for your loss.
[01:07:54]  Thank you, sir.
[01:07:55]  Sean, California, Democrat.
[01:07:58]  Go ahead.
[01:07:59]  Good morning, John.
[01:08:01]  I just wanted to call this morning and first ask if you could put up that debt clock.
[01:08:11]  I know during the last administration, we were showing that debt quite a bit, and I would like to see it now.
[01:08:20]  What do you want to know about the debt clock?
[01:08:22]  Which aspect of it, besides that top-line number of $39,162,362,000,000 and counting in the U.S. national debt?
[01:08:33]  What else do you want to know?
[01:08:34]  There's a lot of numbers there.
[01:08:36]  I would like to see that it had rose to that high because the last time I seen it was 37,000.
[01:08:41]  I worked two jobs.
[01:08:43]  37 trillion, I think you met.
[01:08:45]  Yeah, 37 trillion.
[01:08:47]  It'd be a long time ago if it was 37,000.
[01:08:50]  Yeah, like way back before I was born.
[01:08:54]  Yeah, so I'm not able to get that in the morning.
[01:08:56]  I mean, I'm only able to get it in the morning when I'm speaking with you.
[01:09:00]  Also, I am a fond person of mail-in vote.
[01:09:06]  I get my vote and ballot.
[01:09:08]  My ballot is probably back two weeks, two and a half weeks prior, and I check on it.
[01:09:13]  I worked too much.
[01:09:15]  I found that I missed voting one time because I had to choose between voting and going to work.

=== Retired Teacher's Voting Struggles (09:27) ===

[01:09:20]  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.
[01:09:31]  But thank you very much, John.
[01:09:32]  And I would like to see that clock from time to time.
[01:09:34]  And it's good to talk with you again.
[01:09:36]  That's Sean in California.
[01:09:38]  Susan is in Worcester, Mass, Republican.
[01:09:42]  Go ahead.
[01:09:42]  Yes, I'd just like to say about my president.
[01:09:45]  I think he's doing a great job.
[01:09:48]  He's one of the most powerful presidents we ever had.
[01:09:52]  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.
[01:10:09]  And it was going back in 2016.
[01:10:13]  They got all the documents about what Obama did.
[01:10:17]  You know, I want to see jail time for these people.
[01:10:20]  NACA wants to see Obama perk like I do.
[01:10:24]  All the crummy things that they've done.
[01:10:26]  And this is the biggest story right here when Trump said the overturn of the 2020 election.
[01:10:34]  And one other thing about Trump, you know, you people that call you so jealous, why don't you get off your standards?
[01:10:42]  Do something positive.
[01:10:43]  Go to work instead of waiting for your check from the Democrats.
[01:10:47]  That's all you do.
[01:10:48]  It's unbelievable.
[01:10:50]  And the news called you dumbasses, the black people that were in the audience.
[01:10:57]  What do you think of that?
[01:10:58]  Being called dumbasses.
[01:11:00]  Well, if you're who you are, they call this show.
[01:11:02]  All right.
[01:11:03]  That's Susan.
[01:11:04]  This is Anthony, Memphis, Tennessee, Independent.
[01:11:07]  Go ahead.
[01:11:09]  Yes.
[01:11:10]  Hi, John.
[01:11:10]  I just wanted to say, in this, I really want to speak.
[01:11:14]  That last call almost made me change everything I wanted to say.
[01:11:17]  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.
[01:11:26]  But I don't understand why no one's saying anything about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
[01:11:31]  They had the files first.
[01:11:32]  They could release them.
[01:11:34]  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?
[01:11:42]  And my second thing is, you know, there's a lot of complaints on the, about the Democrats, about Republicans.
[01:11:50]  They both seem to be basically being hypocrites.
[01:11:54]  They complain about certain things that the other party does.
[01:11:58]  And then when it happens on their side, then they don't have, they don't complain about it.
[01:12:03]  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.
[01:12:13]  And I would like to see an independent party led by Dick Cheney, pardon me, Mike Pence and Liz Cheney.
[01:12:21]  I think they would be the best representative to run this country because they are not extreme left or extreme right.
[01:12:28]  And they look for what is good for the country.
[01:12:32]  They both made sacrifices to improve the United States.
[01:12:36]  So I wish this message could get to Mike Pence and Liz Cheney and they would get together and form a strong independent party.
[01:12:44]  And that's who I would vote for.
[01:12:46]  Thank you.
[01:12:47]  That's Anthony in Tennessee.
[01:12:48]  This is Linda out of Fort Worth, Texas, as we continue with Open Forum.
[01:12:54]  Democratic line, go ahead, Linda.
[01:12:56]  Hi, I haven't called in ages.
[01:12:59]  I'm a retired teacher here in Texas.
[01:13:01]  I am curious about how Donald Trump manages to vote since he's a convicted felon.
[01:13:07]  He sends in his mail ballot.
[01:13:08]  Do they just set it aside in a little basket with his name on it and never count it?
[01:13:14]  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.
[01:13:22]  You don't have to be a poll worker, but you're going to have the training.
[01:13:26]  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.
[01:13:37]  And they just need to be educated and informed.
[01:13:40]  I've been a precinct chair.
[01:13:41]  I've helped run many elections, done block walking and all of that.
[01:13:44]  I'm 84, so I don't do that anymore, but I do as much as I can to help Democrats get elected.
[01:13:51]  Linda, there were several stories about Donald Trump after that conviction and his voting status.
[01:14:01]  And as a Florida resident, he wouldn't be banned from voting because of the state's disenfranchisement law.
[01:14:09]  He wasn't incarcerated after that conviction.
[01:14:14]  And therefore, he was allowed to vote.
[01:14:18]  This all was back in 2024.
[01:14:20]  This came out.
[01:14:21]  You don't remember the stories about this?
[01:14:23]  No, I don't.
[01:14:25]  And so I'm wondering if different states must have different laws about that.
[01:14:29]  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.
[01:14:42]  I wonder, though, you mentioned you're a teacher or you were a teacher.
[01:14:45]  What topic did you teach?
[01:14:48]  I was a special ed teacher.
[01:14:51]  And how long were you a special ed teacher for?
[01:14:54]  40 years.
[01:14:56]  And when did you stop being a special ed teacher?
[01:14:59]  2010.
[01:15:00]  I retired.
[01:15:02]  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?
[01:15:12]  Well, I really don't know too much about what's going on currently in recent years.
[01:15:18]  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.
[01:15:30]  And the teacher and I co-taught many different kinds of lessons.
[01:15:37]  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.
[01:15:49]  So we were doing something right.
[01:15:52]  Linda, thanks for the call from Fort Worth, Texas.
[01:15:54]  This is Barbara in Knoxville, Tennessee, Independent.
[01:15:58]  Good morning.
[01:15:59]  Good morning.
[01:16:00]  How are you this morning?
[01:16:01]  Doing well.
[01:16:02]  Good.
[01:16:03]  I was calling about voting.
[01:16:05]  The last time I can remember is Gore versus Bush, and they had a big deal about that.
[01:16:10]  But Gore just said, okay, he won.
[01:16:13]  Let's go on.
[01:16:16]  We don't have a rigged election.
[01:16:18]  We don't have cheating and voting.
[01:16:20]  If there is, it's very, very minute.
[01:16:22]  And all this big deal about vote, cheating, and cheating, we don't.
[01:16:26]  I mean, there's very few people that do.
[01:16:29]  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.
[01:16:35]  So that's all I've got to say about that.
[01:16:38]  That's Barbara in the Volunteer State to the Garden State.
[01:16:41]  This is Carrie in Morristown.
[01:16:43]  Democrat, go ahead.
[01:16:46]  Hi, good morning.
[01:16:47]  Thank you for taking my call today.
[01:16:49]  My conversation is going to be very brief.
[01:16:52]  First of all, I'm a Democrat.
[01:16:54]  Donald Trump is our president.
[01:16:55]  I didn't vote for him.
[01:16:56]  I didn't support him.
[01:16:57]  But he's our president.
[01:16:59]  When Iran comes after us, they're not coming after Republicans.
[01:17:02]  They're coming after all of us.
[01:17:03]  There comes a time when no vision has to be set.
[01:17:06]  Support the president, understand what it means, and move forward.
[01:17:10]  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.
[01:17:18]  It's about willing people to stick together, reach together, and make us, this country, much better.
[01:17:24]  So much division among countrymen, race, and so much prosperity.
[01:17:28]  And the news organizations need to bring us together.
[01:17:31]  Enough is enough.
[01:17:33]  And it is frightening.
[01:17:34]  It's earth-wracking.
[01:17:36]  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.
[01:17:45]  Kerry, do you think that the 250th birthday of this country is something that can bring us together?
[01:17:53]  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.
[01:18:00]  150th anniversary is a hallmark.
[01:18:02]  It's a principle of defining who we are, black people.
[01:18:06]  You're not a race.
[01:18:07]  You're not a color.
[01:18:09]  You're a human being.
[01:18:10]  You have more to offer this country than the first principle of fighting for something of dignity of race that you achieved from the civil rights era.
[01:18:18]  We have moved on.
[01:18:20]  What more do you have to offer to the country of the United States?
[01:18:24]  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 hey affirm and action for equal opportunity, taking the opportunity and moving forward while you're still singing Kumbaya.
[01:18:40]  Let's carry in New Jersey, our last caller in this open forum.
[01:18:44]  Stick around about 35 minutes left this morning.

=== Interpreting Historical Documents (10:35) ===

[01:18:47]  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.
[01:18:54]  If you're a high school student taking the exam or a lover of history, you won't want to miss it.
[01:18:59]  Stick around.
[01:18:59]  We'll be right back.
[01:19:05]  American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
[01:19:10]  Ahead of this year's White House Correspondence Dinner, watch a 10-hour marathon of presidential speeches from past dinners from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden.
[01:19:19]  Exploring the American story.
[01:19:21]  Watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide.
[01:19:26]  Or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history.
[01:19:36]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
[01:19:40]  Sunday with our guest, co-anchor of CNBC morning program Squawkbox, and the founder and editor-at-large of the online financial report Dealbook.
[01:19:50]  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.
[01:20:09]  He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein at the New Orleans Book Festival.
[01:20:16]  You are doing the show Squawkbox.
[01:20:19]  You're doing Deal Book, which you invented.
[01:20:22]  And you're doing a column for the New York Times.
[01:20:25]  And you've got three teenage children.
[01:20:28]  How do you have time to write a book?
[01:20:31]  Ah, they would like the answer to that question, too.
[01:20:36]  Slowly is maybe the answer.
[01:20:38]  It took me about eight years to write this book.
[01:20:43]  But you realize the Great Depression was over in less than eight years.
[01:20:50]  This is very true.
[01:20:51]  This is very, very true.
[01:20:53]  Watch America's Book Club with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
[01:20:56]  Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
[01:21:11]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:21:14]  Well, across the country, it's that time of year.
[01:21:16]  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 APUS History Exam.
[01:21:24]  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 APUS History Exam.
[01:21:38]  Jason Stacey, thanks for joining us.
[01:21:41]  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?
[01:21:49]  Why would a high school student want to take it?
[01:21:51]  Well, first of all, John, thanks for having me on and good to talk to you again today.
[01:21:55]  And hello, everybody.
[01:21:56]  And it's good to talk to you about the APUS History Exam, APUS History, the class, and U.S. history in general.
[01:22:04]  The APUS History Exam is the historian's perfect exam.
[01:22:10]  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.
[01:22:22]  This is not your traditional exam where all you have to do is recall facts.
[01:22:27]  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.
[01:22:45]  And that's what the APUS History Exam assesses.
[01:22:50]  Students have to not only take a multiple choice section, but that multiple choice section is not just fact recall.
[01:22:56]  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.
[01:23:18]  But that's just the test.
[01:23:21]  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.
[01:23:32]  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.
[01:23:49]  And May 8th is the date of the exam this year.
[01:23:52]  And we have a special line devoted for students.
[01:23:55]  If you want to call in and ask questions about how you're studying and what to study, Jason Stacy and his co-author, Matthew Ellington, very good at providing that advice.
[01:24:08]  They've done so in their textbook for this class.
[01:24:12]  Here's how you can call in 202748-8000 for students to call in.
[01:24:16]  Teachers, it's 202-748-8001.
[01:24:20]  And then a line for all others, 202748-8002, some time devoted to American history today.
[01:24:29]  Jason Stacey, on the format of this test, you talked a little bit about it.
[01:24:33]  I want to show it to viewers some 55 multiple choice questions for the students who will be taking it, three short answer questions.
[01:24:41]  They'll also have to respond to a document-based question, and then they'll have to provide one long essay.
[01:24:48]  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.
[01:24:58]  And one of those documents is the toppling of the statue of King George III in New York City, July 1776.
[01:25:07]  This might be something coming up in this semi-quincentennial year that students will be asked to interpret.
[01:25:14]  We're showing it to our viewers on screen.
[01:25:16]  What should a student taking this test take from this image?
[01:25:20]  What will the college board want them to know?
[01:25:23]  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.
[01:25:31]  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.
[01:25:43]  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.
[01:26:04]  What is the context of this primary source?
[01:26:08]  And what does it tell us about the time period and the context in which it was created?
[01:26:14]  And so this is really at the very beginning of the American Revolution.
[01:26:19]  The conflict has already started.
[01:26:22]  The Declaration of Independence has been issued.
[01:26:25]  And you can see here what looks like a spontaneous act to symbolically tear down the British monarchy in British North America.
[01:26:38]  But there are some other interesting attributes that a student might notice about this document.
[01:26:44]  You'll notice that the College Board offers what we call a source line for all of their documents.
[01:26:51]  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.
[01:27:05]  Now, this document is very interesting because it was actually created by a European.
[01:27:12]  It's an engraving that was mass-produced for distribution in Europe.
[01:27:17]  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.
[01:27:30]  And so what's very interesting here is we have a European image of what was happening in New York during the Revolution.
[01:27:40]  And there are some clues to give this away, and students may not necessarily catch all of these.
[01:27:44]  For example, the architecture is all European.
[01:27:47]  That's not how New York looked in 1776.
[01:27:50]  Also, you'll notice that there's a mixed ethnicity of the rebels pulling down the statue.
[01:27:57]  There's African Americans and there are European Americans pulling down the statue.
[01:28:01]  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.
[01:28:13]  And so we have a kind of European imagining of what this revolutionary act was.
[01:28:20]  They see it in very egalitarian terms.
[01:28:23]  We see a mixed ethnicity here.
[01:28:25]  They also have some of the buildings incorrect, and they're not really sure how many people were there or who was there.
[01:28:32]  And so it's an interesting document because it also tells us the context of the European interpretation of the American Revolution.
[01:28:41]  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.
[01:28:51]  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.
[01:29:01]  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.
[01:29:13]  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.

=== AP Exam Time Period Analysis (10:50) ===

[01:29:23]  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.
[01:29:40]  You mentioned the students out there.
[01:29:41]  We already have some students calling in.
[01:29:44]  Hopefully there are some of those students taking this test on May the 8th.
[01:29:47]  Let's start with Sage in Potts Town, Pennsylvania.
[01:29:50]  Sage, good morning.
[01:29:52]  Are you an AP U.S. student?
[01:29:54]  Yes, I am.
[01:29:55]  And I do Renaissance Academy Charter School in Phoenixville.
[01:29:58]  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.
[01:30:06]  And if you recommend the specific dates, could you please list some?
[01:30:10]  Oh, sure, Sage.
[01:30:12]  Well, first of all, it's a great question.
[01:30:15]  And students often ask us, how important are dates?
[01:30:19]  The important thing to remember about the dates are the dates are important only for the things that happened.
[01:30:25]  And so you don't have to memorize all the dates.
[01:30:28]  What you have to remember are the specific events that are illustrative or examples of larger trends.
[01:30:36]  And so you're not going to ask, you're not going to be asked to recall a specific date on the AP exam.
[01:30:42]  However, you'll notice that the AP curriculum is divided into time periods.
[01:30:48]  And those time periods, there's nine of them, have a date at the beginning and a date at the end.
[01:30:54]  And so you can check out the time periods.
[01:30:57]  If you don't have them from class, you can look them up on the internet.
[01:31:00]  The time periods for the APUS history class and exam are on the College Board website.
[01:31:06]  And we can show them to viewers as well as we scroll through the nine different time periods.
[01:31:12]  Go ahead.
[01:31:13]  Good.
[01:31:13]  So take a look at those time periods on the College Board website.
[01:31:17]  Thanks for putting those up there, John.
[01:31:19]  And ask yourself, what are some of the specific dates at the beginning and at the end that are of a particular significance?
[01:31:29]  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?
[01:31:42]  Well, of course, that is the first permanent British settlement in North America, and that's pretty significant for U.S. history.
[01:31:50]  And so that might be a date that you want to remember.
[01:31:53]  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.
[01:32:09]  And so there you've got some bookends for period one, or excuse me, period two, and the dates are what establish those bookends.
[01:32:17]  But most importantly, those dates are only mile markers for very important events that divide U.S. history.
[01:32:26]  So it's the significant events and the significant trends.
[01:32:30]  The dates are just a tool to help us navigate the whole of U.S. history.
[01:32:35]  I hope that helps, Sage.
[01:32:36]  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?
[01:32:45]  What's your favorite?
[01:32:48]  The Gilded Age.
[01:32:49]  I just think it's interesting politically, but also, you know, all the architecture that came from the era.
[01:32:56]  Yeah.
[01:32:57]  That's great.
[01:32:58]  That's great, Sage.
[01:32:59]  Lean into that interest.
[01:33:01]  Lean into that interest in that time period.
[01:33:03]  The Gilded Age is a complicated period politically, socially, economically.
[01:33:11]  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.
[01:33:23]  And then ask yourself, what are some other things that you recall that are connected to some of the architectural change?
[01:33:31]  For example, how much did changes in industry and the second industrial revolution during that time period influence architecture?
[01:33:40]  Because in history, all of these things are connected.
[01:33:43]  And that's going to help you on the DBQ.
[01:33:45]  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.
[01:34:01]  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.
[01:34:11]  Jason Stacey have got several students waiting to chat with you.
[01:34:13]  Let's keep rolling through them.
[01:34:14]  Annabeth is in Alpharetta, Georgia.
[01:34:17]  Annabeth, go ahead.
[01:34:20]  Hi.
[01:34:21]  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?
[01:34:33]  And Annabeth, what's an LEQ for those of us who aren't taking it this year?
[01:34:38]  Oh, sorry.
[01:34:39]  That would be the long essay question.
[01:34:42]  It's the essay question that does not come with writed documents to give you context and argumentation help.
[01:34:50]  Excellent.
[01:34:50]  Stay on the line, Annabeth.
[01:34:51]  Jason Stacey, go ahead.
[01:34:53]  Annabeth, great question.
[01:34:55]  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.
[01:35:04]  Now, the time periods are weighed differently.
[01:35:07]  And the majority of the exam will be on the time periods three through eight.
[01:35:13]  And so that's a lot of class, right?
[01:35:16]  That's taking you probably from October all the way till last month, March.
[01:35:23]  And so there is the very early stuff and the very late stuff, those are not heavily emphasized on the exam.
[01:35:32]  But it's not worth focusing on any specific time period at this point.
[01:35:39]  Try to give yourself a sense of the sweep of the time periods.
[01:35:45]  Think about some trends that you're seeing within the particular time periods, especially those big ones at the center of the course.
[01:35:53]  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.
[01:36:05]  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.
[01:36:17]  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.
[01:36:31]  And so I think you're going to be ready.
[01:36:32]  Annabeth, before you go, what's your favorite time period?
[01:36:36]  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.
[01:36:46]  I just really find it fascinating.
[01:36:48]  Period eight for us non-U.S. history viewers or students, I should say, period eight, 1945 to 1980.
[01:36:56]  Annabeth, thanks for the call.
[01:36:57]  Let me bring it up.
[01:36:58]  And if I could just jump in, John, very quickly, one last word to Annabeth.
[01:37:01]  You know, 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.
[01:37:12]  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.
[01:37:25]  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.
[01:37:37]  Annabeth, thanks for the call.
[01:37:38]  Jonathan is a teacher out of Palm Springs, California.
[01:37:42]  Jonathan, thanks for calling in this morning.
[01:37:44]  Do you teach AP U.S. history?
[01:37:47]  Never taught AP U.S. history, but high school history, yes.
[01:37:51]  What are your thoughts on this exam?
[01:37:54]  Sure.
[01:37:55]  My question is, what is the success rate for the students who are taking the test across the country?
[01:38:02]  What are the success rates?
[01:38:03]  And if you could break that down demographically, I've seen the test.
[01:38:10]  It's been a few years since I worked as a teacher, but I know that test is difficult.
[01:38:14]  It's pretty intense.
[01:38:16]  It's a chance.
[01:38:18]  We had a hard time getting our students to pass that test.
[01:38:22]  And if I recall, we've lowered the standard a few times.
[01:38:26]  So anyway, so that's my question.
[01:38:28]  What is the success rate of the students across the country?
[01:38:30]  And if you could break that down demographically.
[01:38:32]  Thank you very much.
[01:38:33]  Jonathan, thanks for the call from California.
[01:38:35]  Well, thanks, Jonathan.
[01:38:36]  We're getting just to the borderlands of my knowledge here.
[01:38:39]  And so I don't want to get beyond that.
[01:38:44]  But generally, the pass rate on the exam is around 50% or a little north of 50%, at least last time I checked.
[01:38:53]  I can't give you a breakdown because I do not know it of the demographics of it.
[01:38:57]  I'm sure that that information is out there, but I'm sorry I don't have it for you, Jonathan.
[01:39:02]  Is this a pass-fail type test?
[01:39:04]  No, it isn't.
[01:39:06]  And so it is an exam where the final score is broken down between one and five.
[01:39:16]  And the college board considers a passing score to be either three, four, or five, five being the highest.
[01:39:25]  But, you know, the goal for many students on the APOS history exam is to receive college credit.
[01:39:33]  And generally a three, four, or five will gain a student college credit for having taken the class in the exam.
[01:39:44]  But I want to stress it is up to individual colleges and universities what scores they take.
[01:39:51]  And so your mileage may vary.
[01:39:53]  Some schools will take a three, four, or five.
[01:39:55]  Some whole states require a certain score.
[01:39:58]  Some schools require a four or five before they'll grant college credit.
[01:40:02]  And I believe that there are some colleges and universities that are happy that you took the AP test.
[01:40:07]  They're happy to look at your scores, but they do not give college credit if you receive a three, four, or five.

=== Unfinished Reconstruction Process (03:55) ===

[01:40:13]  Jason Stacey, we showed that image example of a document-based question that a student may be asked about.
[01:40:21]  Let me give a text example that a student may be asked about on this year's AP U.S. history exam.
[01:40:28]  The source information here is the Centennial Canvas.
[01:40:34]  It's not the American crisis.
[01:40:36]  Let me get the right one on the screen for the viewers.
[01:40:39]  The Centennial Canvas from New York Daily Herald, July 3rd of 1876.
[01:40:45]  So we're talking 100 years past the American Revolution.
[01:40:49]  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.
[01:41:03]  There is comfort in the idea that after all these quarrels, these wars, these heartburnings, we can gather around the Liberty Tree of 1776.
[01:41:12]  There can be no Reconstruction that will not begin with an old-fashioned 4th of July friendliness.
[01:41:18]  What should students take when they're seeing that text, that document on the test?
[01:41:25]  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.
[01:41:41]  This is 1876.
[01:41:42]  It's 100 years after the birth of the country.
[01:41:45]  And we are at the end of a time period that historians call Reconstruction.
[01:41:51]  And Reconstruction is the attempt after 1865 to reconstruct the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War.
[01:42:00]  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.
[01:42:13]  And so what we see in this document is very interesting, is 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,
[01:42:38]  noting that there is still some divisions in the nation between, as it says, Lincoln and Lee, but they can all agree on Washington.
[01:42:48]  And then there's that mention of the Liberty Tree in 1776 itself.
[01:42:53]  And so here's an opportunity for students to apply the reasoning process that the college board calls continuity and change over time.
[01:43:03]  And so there is a clear continuity in this document with the legacy of the American Revolution.
[01:43:11]  And the change over time here is that there has been a very complicated history in those hundred years, in this case leading to the greatest rupture of the United States during the Civil War,
[01:43:27]  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.
[01:43:42]  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.
[01:44:06]  We're talking about the AP U.S. History Exam.
[01:44:08]  It's May the 8th.

=== Document Reading Strategies (09:16) ===

[01:44:09]  We're trying to help students cram for the exam today and taking phone calls from students, teachers as well.
[01:44:16]  Also have a line for all others, but we're trying to prioritize the students who call in.
[01:44:21]  And another one for you, Jason Stacey, is Margaret out of Edwardsville, Illinois.
[01:44:26]  Margaret, good morning.
[01:44:29]  Good morning.
[01:44:32]  Margaret.
[01:44:33]  Good morning, Margaret.
[01:44:33]  What's your question?
[01:44:34]  Do you happen to know Jason Stacey from the Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville?
[01:44:40]  I actually do.
[01:44:41]  He is my father.
[01:44:43]  Margaret, what's your question for your dad?
[01:44:46]  Are you taking the exam this year?
[01:44:48]  No, but I took it last year.
[01:44:51]  And do you think you're well prepared as the daughter of one of the men who wrote the book on the exam?
[01:44:58]  I hope.
[01:45:00]  Can I ask what you got on the exam, Margaret?
[01:45:03]  No, Margaret, you do not have to.
[01:45:08]  So Margaret, what's your question for your dad today?
[01:45:11]  I wanted to ask, what are the most important things to consider when writing a DBQ?
[01:45:18]  Fantastic question from your daughter.
[01:45:20]  Yeah, it's a hard question from my daughter.
[01:45:23]  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.
[01:45:37]  And for many students, their first inspiration is to read the prompt.
[01:45:42]  That's the question.
[01:45:45]  Panic, and then go to the documents to save them.
[01:45:50]  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.
[01:46:06]  You know more than you think you do.
[01:46:09]  And in fact, there will be answers, potential answers, that will come to mind just when you read the question.
[01:46:18]  Maybe take a couple notes.
[01:46:20]  after you read the question, but sit with the question for a little while and trust yourself.
[01:46:26]  Then go to the documents.
[01:46:28]  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.
[01:46:37]  And you might find that the documents confirm what you thought might be a good answer.
[01:46:44]  You might find that the documents help you revise what you thought was a good answer.
[01:46:49]  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.
[01:46:58]  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.
[01:47:11]  And write those down next to the documents.
[01:47:13]  You're going to have some time to do this before you begin to write.
[01:47:16]  And so don't rush into the documents.
[01:47:20]  Think about how the answer, the question might be answered first.
[01:47:25]  Then go into the documents and have a kind of conversation with them regarding what you think an answer to the question is.
[01:47:32]  And let those facts that you know that the documents help you remember, let those facts come to your mind.
[01:47:40]  You know, Jason Stacey, you mentioned that brief moment of panic.
[01:47:42]  Is that like when you realize your daughter's calling into a live television show that you're appearing on?
[01:47:47]  Yeah, it's something like that, John.
[01:47:51]  You'll notice I did take a minute to let it sink in.
[01:47:53]  Do you have a sense of what your daughter's favorite period of U.S. history is?
[01:47:57]  Oh, I'm sure that it's her father's favorite time period, which is the generation before the Civil War.
[01:48:03]  And I believe Margaret is still with us.
[01:48:04]  Margaret, is that your favorite time period in U.S. history?
[01:48:08]  It is, and specifically the First Great Awakening.
[01:48:12]  Margaret, thanks so much for the call.
[01:48:15]  I really appreciate you calling in.
[01:48:17]  I do have a few other students and just about five minutes left.
[01:48:19]  Jason Stacey, let me get to them.
[01:48:21]  Zach in Sandy Hook, Connecticut is a student.
[01:48:25]  Zach, what is your question about the AP U.S. history exam?
[01:48:29]  Yeah, good morning.
[01:48:30]  I was just wondering if the best way to study would be to practice the MCQ questions on some online sources and maybe get some, get a couple wrong and kind of write the correct answers.
[01:48:43]  Or the best way is to be confident in the content, also by finding some on 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.
[01:49:00]  Thank you.
[01:49:01]  Yeah, Zach, I'm going to split the difference.
[01:49:03]  I'm going to tell you both.
[01:49:04]  I'm sorry.
[01:49:05]  And let me explain why.
[01:49:07]  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.
[01:49:16]  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.
[01:49:32]  The MCQs, the short answer questions, the document-based questions, those are helping you remember how to engage those questions in terms of structure.
[01:49:44]  But also, you can begin to take a very large overview of the content as well.
[01:49:50]  Maybe use those time periods as your guide.
[01:49:52]  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.
[01:50:02]  And those will all be pretty familiar to you.
[01:50:05]  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.
[01:50:14]  And in that regard, both of those kind of final practices will keep those mental muscles you've built up over the course of the year strong.
[01:50:22]  Just about three minutes left.
[01:50:23]  Let me try to get in Brian Fort Myers, Florida, on that line for teachers.
[01:50:28]  Brian, you are on with Jason Stacey.
[01:50:32]  Jason, I'm an AP grader.
[01:50:33]  I'm going to be in Kansas City this summer grading AP exams.
[01:50:36]  I've been doing it for 14 years.
[01:50:38]  Great.
[01:50:39]  Thanks for your work.
[01:50:41]  Well, you're welcome, but they pay well.
[01:50:43]  ETS, generally, what we're looking for, okay, when we're grading, we only get to spend a maximum of five minutes with each exam.
[01:50:51]  Okay, so it's not on the LEQs.
[01:50:54]  What the student wants to do is come up with an argument for the question first and then weave the documents into the argument.
[01:51:04]  In other words, use that this one is supporting my argument that says blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.
[01:51:09]  Okay.
[01:51:10]  Then, and treat it almost like an LEQ where you have no information at all and you have to do it all from memory.
[01:51:18]  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.
[01:51:41]  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.
[01:51:49]  Again, May 8th is when students across the country will be taking this AP US history exam.
[01:51:56]  Thank you, Brian.
[01:51:57]  That's all good information, and that's right.
[01:52:00]  You know, there is no one part of this exam that'll necessarily break, make or break one score.
[01:52:06]  There's a whole score that's ultimately given to the students.
[01:52:11]  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.
[01:52:24]  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.
[01:52:40]  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 almost half a million students who take those exams are given a very fair assessment in Kansas City this year.
[01:53:03]  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.
[01:53:14]  We always appreciate you joining us for this cram for the exam segment.
[01:53:17]  Let's do it again next year.
[01:53:19]  Let's do it again.
[01:53:20]  Thanks, John.
[01:53:21]  Good luck, everybody.
[01:53:23]  And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal.

=== White House Correspondents Dinner Preview (04:02) ===

[01:53:25]  We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
[01:53:29]  A reminder that tonight is the White House Correspondents Dinner.
[01:53:32]  C-SPAN's coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern.
[01:53:35]  You can join us on c-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now app.
[01:53:43]  President Trump has canceled a trip by envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Pakistan for further talks on the Iran conflict.
[01:53:51]  The president posted this.
[01:53:53]  I just canceled the trip of my representatives going to Islamabad, Pakistan to meet with the Iranians.
[01:53:59]  Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work.
[01:54:02]  Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their leadership.
[01:54:08]  Nobody knows who is in charge, including them.
[01:54:11]  Also, we have all the cards.
[01:54:12]  They have none.
[01:54:13]  If they want to talk, all they have to do is call.
[01:54:16]  President Donald J. Trump Join C-SPAN today at 7 p.m. Eastern for Washington's premier black tie event, the White House Correspondents Dinner.
[01:54:30]  Watch live coverage from the Washington Hilton featuring red carpet arrivals of top journalists, political leaders, and celebrities.
[01:54:36]  This year's featured entertainer is renowned mentalist Bose Perlman, and President Donald Trump is expected to make his first appearance as president.
[01:54:43]  The White House Correspondents Dinner, live today at 7 p.m. Eastern, on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
[01:54:58]  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.
[01:55:11]  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.
[01:55:31]  He joins our host, renowned author, and civic leader David Rubinstein at the New Orleans Book Festival.
[01:55:37]  You are doing the show Squawkbox.
[01:55:40]  You're doing Deal Book, which you invented.
[01:55:44]  And you're doing a column for the New York Times.
[01:55:46]  Yep.
[01:55:46]  And you've got three teenage children.
[01:55:50]  How do you have time to write a book?
[01:55:53]  Ah, they would like the answer to that question, too.
[01:55:57]  Slowly is maybe the answer.
[01:56:00]  It took me about eight years to write this book.
[01:56:04]  But you realize the Great Depression was over in less than eight years.
[01:56:12]  This is very true.
[01:56:13]  This is very, very true.
[01:56:15]  Watch America's Book Club with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
[01:56:18]  Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
[01:56:23]  Only on C-SPAN.
[01:56:33]  The U.S. House returns on Monday, and later in the week, members will consider the Senate-passed Republican budget resolution.
[01:56:40]  That measure sends instructions to committees to craft filibuster-proof legislation providing $70 billion to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three and a half years.
[01:56:49]  Both of these federal immigration agencies within DHS have been shut down since February 14th.
[01:56:55]  Members are also expected to vote on the 2026 Farm Bill, which authorizes nutrition and agriculture programs for five years.
[01:57:03]  On Tuesday, King Charles III will address a joint meeting of Congress, and both chambers will face a Thursday deadline to pass legislation extending FISA's warrantless surveillance authority.
[01:57:13]  Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, the Senate on C-SPAN 2, and all of our congressional coverage on our free video app C-SPAN Now and our website c-span.org.

=== Congressional Deadlines and Immigration (00:31) ===

[01:57:28]  Next, Politico's Dasha Burns interviewing media executive Jammy Haddad ahead of tonight's White House Correspondence Dinner.
[01:57:35]  The two discuss the dinner's origins, Ms. Haddad's role in organizing some of the related events, and what to expect at this year's gathering.
[01:57:45]  Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation.
[01:57:48]  I'm Dasha Burns, and on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington.
[01:57:54]  And this week, ahead of the White House correspondents dinner, I can't think of anyone who fits that.