impeachment trial for homeland security secretary alejandra mayorkas is set to begin next week. on wednesday, house impet managers will formally deliver the two artif impeachment to the senate, which charge the secretary of willful and stic fusel to comply with the law and breach of trust for his handling of the u.s. southern border. a full trial will proceed on t senateloor, but it is possible senators may vote to dismiss the charges immediately, or reference a matter -- the matter to a special commi watch as the proce unfolds, live on c-span two, c-span now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including midco. ♪

>> midco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to thomas c -- two democracy. announcer: welcome back to washington journal. we are joined by stephen flynn, the founding director of the global resilience institute and a political science professor at northeastern university. professor at northeastern university. welcome to the program. guest: thank you so much for having me. host: let's start with the global resilience institute, what is the mission, why did it start and what is your role? guest: back in 2007 i wrote a book about rebuilding a resilient nation and the focus was really on our decaying infrastructure and also recklessness we have as a nation. not keeping up the critical

foundations that underpin our way of life. i have the opportunity to come to northeastern university focused on how we make infrastructure. host: let's talk about the bridge collapsed last week in baltimore. could this have been avoided, and what would better resilience of that bridge look like? guest: well, obviously there is an investigation underway that the ntsb is leading with a whole bunch of other folks to look at what would be the real story here. what is clear here is that the ship colliding with the support column or the pylon that supports the stand, that was a single point of failure. the bridge was doomed basically by the collision that knocked

that column down. so stepping back then, we would have first evaluated what is really valuable to us? what is really important? and a bridge that straddles one of the most important points of the country would certainly come to the floor. then we would ask the question is it vulnerable to well, yes. if we look at this span across the channel, that would be potentially a point of failure. in either reasonable measures we could've put in place? in 1980 we had a similar ship hit a column in tampa bay and tragically, it led to six cars

and a small truck plunging 150 feet into the day and the waterways below and 35 people drowned. when they rebuilt that bridge, they did put the safeguard in place of surrounding the column with essentially a mini island and also something we call dolphins. they are like the bumpers on a pinball machine. you can't prevent every ship from hitting something but if you can give it to veer away, you can potentially prevent catastrophic failure. the bottom line is we should've taken the lessons learned from the experience 44 years ago and looked around and other infrastructure, identifying what else were critical and vulnerable. host: i don't know if we can

bring up a few pictures of the barriers you were talking about yet, we have some there. you can't see it, but with something like that really have helped in this particular case, given the mass, the size of this ship, the speed that it was going hitting that pier. with these barriers heavily stop this to the point that it would not have collapse? guest: we will have to find out in the investigation. the key to putting a mimi island around the column is that the ship would potentially hit that and veer off, it would not be able to have direct contact with the support column. that is what the ship would collide into. when a ship hit an object, the bow rides up on andy kim veer

away if you shape it right. it's not every bridge that needs this, it the really critical ones that are standing in important waterways and would disrupt. these are the ones we should be stepping back and saying this is something we need to invest in. host: i mentioned the size of the ships, they keep getting bigger. apparently the bridges haven't really kept up with the reality of these ships that are going around it. guest: that's absolutely the case. when i began my career as a coast guard officer, the ship that i commanded in the lower chesapeake bay, the largest container ships coming into the waterway in the mid-1980's carried about 3000 containers

vs. the 10,000 being carried. and that is a little less than half the size of the biggest container ships carrying over 24,000 containers. so ships have gotten bigger and bigger. and the infrastructure surrounding many of the bridges are decades old. many of our bridges are rated as structurally deficient. most of those are 68 years old or more at 12% of the 600,000 bridges in the nation are over 80 years old. engineers built those for a 30 year lifespan. that doesn't mean you can't extend the life but you have to invest in the maintenance and the upgrades to make sure that they are performing in a way that makes us all safe and provides for the canonic benefits of the infrastructure that was put in place in the first place. host: and we are taking your

calls for stephen flynn. if you would like to call and ask a question about infrastructure, critical infrastructure and what resiliency they would need, you can do so. our lines this time are regional. eastern or central time zones, call us on (202) 748-8000. mountain or pacific, (202) 748-8002. we also have a line for texting, (202) 748-8003. and you can post on social media either on facebook or on x. he mentioned the ports themselves. i wonder what kind of vulnerabilities the ports have to whatever could happen to them and what resiliency needs to be considered when talking about actual ports. guest: when we step back and we try to prioritize what infrastructure should be really be investing in, the key is to look at every bridge as being

equal. a particular infrastructure interacts with other infrastructure. the first was used for service transportation. cars and vehicles and trucks that move across the francis scott key bridge. they have to find another way around. but the bridge collapsed into a shipping channel, now disrupting the maritime transportation system. it is a lengthy process to clear the bridge and the debris that has now congested that channel. this is the fourth largest port on the east coast and it is the number one port for automobile imports and exports. and it turns out that yes, we can move some things around. there's a lot of concentrated infrastructure to handle those cars.

they have to be examined by customs and this whole facility to handle that, but you can't just pop up with another ship and drop it somewhere else. these are actually specialized ships that can't go in every single port. when you are seeing is you are mapping out the dependencies, the interdependencies of other infrastructure in other systems, and that helps you to assess this is the really important one. there are a lot of bridges that the department of transportation has to take care of and they will say we have to spread it out and protect all the bridges, but some bridges are more important than others because they are connecting to other infrastructure the same can be true for other sectors. you lose power, it is a terrible thing but loss of power translates into loss of water. water is a basic element of life. we basically need to focus on both the asset and the risk, but

also map out what else is it connected to? should it fail, what would be the consequences? those consequences are basically really bad. that is, it would be really disruptive, it would cost a lot of lives. the economic cost is huge and it would take a long time to repair. and you would say that needs to be a priority, we have to really look into safeguarding that. that is not something we are going with our infrastructure. we have just a bunch of it spread out across the nation and we are not doing a systematic assessment of importance and how to safeguard it. ports are absolutely essential to the economy. 90% of world trade is at sea. americans finally had a realization of just how important it is for our way of life and the global economy when we had the covid incident and all the ships that were backed

up outside the port of los angeles and long beach, the disruptions were being relied on. ports are vulnerable primarily through the disruption of the water that allow the ships to come in and out. then there is a shoreside infrastructure that needs to be looked at. that is something that we really need to put a high priority around in safeguarding. host: regarding supply chain disruptions because of this foreclosure, is it going to be as bad as covid-era supply chain delays, or will the impact -- i mean, how bad of an impact will the typical consumer in the united states feel? guest: it's going to be significant. certainly not to the degree of what we saw in the covid pandemic, especially the port of los angeles and long beach.

the port of baltimore brought in a little over one million containers last year. the port of los angeles and long beach together brought in over 17 million, so it is a much larger impact. 50% of the energy west of the rocky mountains comes into the port of l.a. and long beach were immediately offshore to that. really important before we see cascading consequences not just for the nation, but for the world. in the case of the port of baltimore, it is significant regional and global impact in some sectors. this is an important port in addition to automobiles which is just coming back on its feet after covid so they are going to see disruption, but also for farm equipment. it is the closest port on the eastern seaboard the midwest. coal is actually exported out of that port. we have major distribution centers for things like home

depot and fedex and other things that we rely on for many of our goods. that also can be disrupted because of the loss of the francis scott key bridge. and finally, it is in the middle of the eastern seaboard. to work around this we have to going north and south but when we have to going north and south and south to north, we are running into some problems of being in the middle disrupted. it should not be viewed as a local problem and it shouldn't be also viewed as a big airliner crash that we focus on for a little bit and move on. the disruption and the pain that the local folks are going to feel in the baltimore area is going to be very real and very long-standing for quite some time, and for the rest of us, we are impacted as well because of this disruption to our supply chains. host: we will take calls shortly but i wanted to ask you about a

timeline. how big of an effort is this going to be to get reopened? this is probably >> one of the most serious salvage operations the u.s. has had in decades. the bridges estimated at 3000 4000 tons of material are now in that channel, and we have to assess it because when you start taking it, it is like a jigsaw puzzle. every time you pull the piece out, something else can fall in its place. so you have to do that in very murky waters, and the weather is something that you have to take into account, a ratty's -- rather stormy couple of days on the east coast, so that slows things down. the basic mechanics are if you have to survey what you've got, go in and cut up some of the pieces, start pulling it away and get the ship out of the way.

it is coming down incrementally. we can get the channel open probably if enough heavy equipment arrives. it is a 60 plus day probably scenario. the bridge being rebuilt tends to be a multiyear effort. it's not that we can't build bridges quicker. when we put up virtually all of our bridges we used to do it in a couple of years. it is a question of whether we are committed to doing it and i would argue that every american should be behind the city of baltimore to get this right. airports are all interconnected, we are all interconnected. we've got to get out of the tribal mindset that says this is not affecting me. we are one country, the infrastructure is critical to all of us. when a piece as significant as this comes down we need to invest in getting it back out and put our hands together and work on that. host: we got question for you from mike in rkfd, illinois who as es the ship have insurance? o exactly owns it, and why was

biden so quick on saying the taxpayers are going to pay for everything? is this a chinese ship? guest: the chip is actually a singaporeian vessel which actually has a good reputation in the maritime industry. it was charted by merce, the largest operator in the world and of course is operating in a u.s. port. a lot of complex jurisdictional issues. yes, there will be insurance and they will be some payments made relative to this, but as anybody knows who has gone to court, it takes a long time. so i commend the president for stepping up and saying we are going to get this fixed. we will sort out who is going to pay later. that is what we do and what we need to do right now. hopefully people will be held to account once the investigation is done. but what we can't afford to do is wait for it to get sorted out

and use those resources to rebuild. we have to be working right now in getting that channel clear because there are a number of vessels that are stuck behind it. no vessels can get in it. we are talking at least 15,000 dockworkers directly involved and another estimated 150,000 other jobs that are tied indirectly to the port. and again, the things moving in and out of this affect all of us. what the president was really conveying is let's just get it done. that is the kind of leadership that we need to do when we have these kinds of challenges. host: let's talk to callers now. bill is in new jersey, good morning. caller: good morning, professor flynn. can you hear me? host: yes, we can. caller: ok. professor flynn, the comments that you made regarding the importance of rebuilding that

bridge and getting it going, i think that was right on point. i think that is a crucial point. but my question to you is in the new york area, we have numerous bridges connecting manhattan with new jersey, connecticut and so on. can you comment on the brooklyn bridge, the george washington bridge, which are two older bridges in the area, and then you have the bridge that was just recently redone. can you comment on the engineering and the structural

status of those three bridges as it relates to safety? thank you. guest: absolutely. the single bridge with more vehicle than anywhere in the world is the george washington bridge. there are eight planes on the top deck and below deck six waves. it moves an estimated -- vehicles every day. that is about 10 times as many vehicles as move across the francis scott key bridge. as you mention, other key bridges, so you've got all of the maritime traffic that comes into the new york metro area and that is the largest port on the east coast. it actually doesn't move as many

vehicles, but it is stranding the medical channel that is one of the largest container ports in the east coast and that is important elizabeth just outside of new york, new jersey. the port authority of new york, new jersey is responsible for most of these bridges and they have done a very good job maintaining and upgrading them even though they are old. the brooklyn bridge obviously is a historic bridge. similarly is well-maintained. support columns of the bridge and the span of the george washington bridge are on land or very close to land, so they are very much out of the way where a ship could hit them. we should be thinking that safeguards for shore side as well. the brooklyn bridge was really over-engineered.

engineers basically were looking at it, they were really concerned about this lasting for the ages. the core issue with our bridges as we have so many of them, over 600,000 nationwide. we will be need to make sure that we are maintaining them. when we don't maintain it is a lot like if you don't fix your roof if you have a leaky roof. the cost gets exorbitant by not making those repairs, or if you don't tuneup your car. you're setting yourself up for very expensive outcomes. there are a generation of folks that have inherited our grandparents mansion and are refusing to do the upkeep. people are driving by going look at that nice house. the wiring doesn't work and the roof is leaking. it is a disgrace that at the wealthiest nation in the world, this infrastructure was built by our parents and our grandparents and great-grandparents in many cases, their treasure, and we

are not even taking the responsibility to maintain it to pass it onto to our children. never mind upgrade it. and we see that there are catastrophic consequences if we don't do the things we should be doing to safeguard what is critical. host: date is next in california. caller: it's camarillo, by the way. i live pretty close to the next major port north of long beach. anyhow, a couple of quick questions. one is as an interim precaution, has anybody considered many requiring tugboats while they passed through the bridges? not a long-term solution, but maybe an interim precaution. and the other question i had is

electronic vehicles, which weigh roughly twice as much as a gas powered vehicle. i would just like you to comment on that because that is going to cause wear and tear on these bridges. thank you. guest: taking your first question, actually, i'm sorry, i lost you, what was the first question? host: requiring tugboats in the port. guest: thank you. tugboats are clearly a measure that we often take when large vessels are in places where they could put shore side infrastructure at risk. when the dolly was pulling out of the port it was escorted by tugboats up to a point where it made its way into the channel. the question probably in the

baltimore case, the channel is going to take a lot to clear to the degree that they start opening it back out, it is going to be narrow. the notion of making sure you have tongue escorts to get through the infrastructure as well as in the infrastructure, that is certainly something that needs to be looked at. the other design way is creating sort of pumpers on a pinball machine. they basically, the vessel gets off course, essentially bounces into them so it won't hit that really important structure. electric vehicles, a resilient focus has is asking these kinds of questions and we invest in new technology, does it generate new risk? the ships keep getting bigger and bigger because the economics

were bigger ships are better. we get more to scale, it is a much more efficient way to put more and more containers to monitor ships. but the bigger the ship, the more it is potentially affected by currents and by wind when it is in the harbor. so the structure for technique, are we taking the right safeguards to protect that vessel? these are very important questions that should have been asked as ships evolve. same thing with electric vehicles. atkinson is this is absolutely the right direction to go from a sustainability standpoint, and there is little question i think that we are moving in the right direction and that is all very good, but one issue would be let's say half the vehicles in southern florida become electric and we have a category four storm hit miami, can you handle that? we can, we just have to think it

through. as we transition to new technologies, which we must for the sustainability of our planet as well as our economic way of life, we have to think about how that changes the nature of risk and if the consequences are really significant if we have failure, and we have to go right. let's think about some reasonable safeguards that will help mitigate those consequences. and should something it knocked down, plans to recover. these are key concepts that gets us out of waiting for things to break and scurrying to put it back together again. like trying to put humpty dumpty back together. what is really critical is how we sustain it, given that risk is a fact of our lives. host: the color after that ev's in the sense that they are heavier than their gas counterparts.

has that been looked at as far as additional wear and tear on bridges? guest: i have not looked at that, so that is a new issue that i would have to consider. certainly heavier vehicles will do more wear and tear which means we would have to do more maintenance on those roadways or on the deck of bridges. still very small relative to the demands put on. the value of ports is getting stuff off the roadways and using our inland waterways, our seaports, and most efficient, most sustainable way to move goods, but we've neglected our waterway infrastructure. we largely built our nation in the 18 then it 19th-century around water. that is why most are major cities are located where they are. if they are not on the coast they are next to major rivers like the mississippi.

this is a system that is invaluable to our economy and yet we have been neglecting it as we are neglecting our power grids, as we are neglecting taking care of our water. american society of civil engineers does a report card every few years, most recent one in 2021, and the grades were not ones you would want your kids to bring home from school. we are talking about water, a basic element of our life getting a d+. the wastewater gets a d. bridges actually did reasonably well, they gotta c. this is a disgrace, we are the wealthiest country in the world. we got to get our act together and start investing in ways that make it work better. but also more resilient because we know whether it at the risk of terrorism or the risk of climate change or whatever it is the risk of accidents that

happened like we saw very tragically last week in baltimore. host: sorry to cut you off, there has been substantial investment in infrastructure from the bipartisan infrastructure law. do you feel that is not enough and that is not addressing the vulnerabilities adequately? guest: it has been a bit of a game changer in that after 30 plus years of neglect we have not done a major investment as a country and we finally got that legislation passed. but to be clear, it is a down payment on what we need to do. we've neglected it for so long. it's not like we need just a new deal with all public funding going to infrastructure. there is a lot of wealth in the private sector. we have to think different about our finance infrastructure. this is reversing the decline and getting us moving forward. but the challenge we have because we are 50 states and

territories is that we tend to look at it through the lens of local and state, and we don't step back and see it as a national and global system. so one of our challenges is how do we prioritize where we should be making these investments? we should be looking where things are really valuable and where they may be highly vulnerable. those are the things that we need to look toward. of course, every dollar we are spending on new infrastructure, we should think about risk in advance. is the sea level going to be rising? it will be. how much might that impact? more frequent hurricanes work drier seasons of wildfire risk. we want to be sure that when we invest in that, some of these considerations are being put in as a result of the infrastructure act. again, it is a down payment on what should be a similar priority for americans over the next 10 plus years.

host: greg is next in fayetteville, north carolina. caller: good morning. let me ask you, i've got a couple questions here, so let me ask you going back as a follow-up to what you were saying, are you saying that the state of maryland and baltimore does not bear some responsibility for what happened? and bringing up sort of a federalism issue here, shouldn't the local and state authorities which are closest to the situation, they should know what is going on with the bridges and our infrastructure. shouldn't they be the ones that help finance and make some of the changes, because putting all the responsibility on the american taxpayer for their already being $32 trillion in debt, i wouldn't get into it a philosophical argument here, but it seems like the state of maryland and baltimore should

bear some responsibility here. and also a second question is i read what happened, can you explain why the electricity going out on the ship kept it from being able to stop? thank you. guest: two really important questions. the federalism issue is at the heart of the challenge that we have of how we report our infrastructure. this issue of who should pay. there is little question that the way we organize the government is that at every level, we need to invest in what our critical foundation is for our way of life. whether it is our local community, a city, town, municipality, or at the state level or ultimately at the federal level when we are talking about interstate. the story of the francis scott key bridge is a mix of jurisdictions. absolutely maryland is going to

be paying the biggest price for the loss of their bridge and looking at this, we wish more had been done to alleviate this risk but that gets a little complicated because the coast guard is bondable for permitting the bridges but the channels are federal responsibility, not state. the u.s. army corps of engineers plays a critical role in those guidelines. and obviously the private sector has got a very big vested interest in this as well. that is just to say that it really is a complicated set of issues where ultimately we are all going to pay as american citizens if we continue to neglect our infrastructure. we have to invest at all levels, the local, state, and federal.

this is the bridge disrupting a major port regionally and nationally. just stepping up and getting it done. and getting through the issue of who pays is going to be sorted out. but going forward, we will incapacitate ourselves if we basically say it is only one or the other. we know some of the wealthiest parts of the country can afford investing in infrastructure. some of the other part to the country have inherited infrastructure, they are losing population. what do we do? these are hard questions and they require us to think about as citizens where responsibility lies given that we do have a federalist form of government. going back to the ship and the loss of power, it is an issue that this is really where the

ntsb really needs to do their homework. there are essentially two power systems, the power that provides propulsion which spins the propeller show the ship can maneuver and there is the power that supports all of the electrical operations of that ship. the electronics and the lights and so forth here. in this instance, the power failed in the entire ship and the time it took come up there wasn't enough time for it to be restarted in order to get that ship back on course. there will be questions about maybe the helmet was already turning and it was trying to get to the channel and then when the power went out, unfortunately the rudder pushed that ship on a disastrous course. these are really technical set of issues. the core issue is that a large ship coming in contact with a support column of a suspension bridge meant that bridge span

was doomed. so the ideal approach here is to figure out how to protect the most critical elements of that bridge. host: let's talk to brian next in albuquerque, new mexico. caller: pleasure to speak with you. i agree with everything you said about investing in our infrastructure, but i'd like to point out that one of our major parties, all they like to focus on is cutting taxes and deregulating business. this is where that leaves us. we have crumbling infrastructure and corporations that are very irresponsible. i'd like you to comment on the situation with boeing. boeing has bigger problems than plane crashes simply because of the way boeing has been managed. they have two brand-new airplanes crashed because of the way boeing built their airplanes. and it's going to take years in court to sort that out.

but it is pretty obvious what is going on. the same thing going on with the railroads. they are not maintaining properly because nobody in the government and congress makes them do it. the republicans have gone on to just let the market play out, whatever happens, happens. the consumer will do something else. nobody wants to pay the bill. in my other comment, who inspects all these massive ships that go in and out of airports? i used to feel of hedge equipment and i know that big, heavy machinery only makes money when it is operating in moving and doing the job it was designed to do. so if they are sitting there in port getting maidens or being inspected, that cost of the corporations billions of dollars and they don't want that, they just want to run a machine until it breaks, unfortunately. i'd like your comments on that. guest: absolutely. there's little question that the issues of investing in

infrastructure are highly political, which is extraordinary because when we really look at the history of the country, this is something that was almost uniform support across the spectrum. all of the great infrastructure projects were basically made possible, access to the great lakes and the opening up of are in the waterway system and building of bridges, this was something that everybody recognized was to our collective advantage. and many times it was a federal level investment that was needed to get these projects in place. the interstate highway system is of course the result of an act and the eisenhower administration to step out and put together a nationwide service transportation system. so what i like about resilience, i can't find somebody who is against it.

the key point i think in trying to build a bridge, a political bridge that gets us basically on track is if we do the analysis that says this is really important, and if it fails, here is what the cost will be, are you ok with that? people say yes, i will live with that. but if we make at the proposition that ok, here is what the consequences would be, and let me talk to you about the options that would help reduce that risk, it costs ex, y zeek versus the cost of failure, is that a reasonable investment? everybody will come in and say we probably should do that because we really don't want to pay the price of failure. the debate may be on the margins about how much we should do or where we start first, but the key is one that says look, we can't be a global superpower, a dominant economy if our way of

life is ailing and we are not taking care of them. that is something we should all be able to agree on. it is all hands on deck. yes, the private sector has an important role to play. so they may be thinking that different financing, things like goals and other things that are not very popular but somebody has got to pay, having the user pay is one of the ideas that we've been kicking around for a long time and sustaining critical infrastructure. i think we can do this and i think the key is to shift away from throwing darts at each other and standing back and between doing the hard work of mapping out what our critical foundation is. we need water, lead wastewater, we need all these systems to work like telecommunications. and then just undertake the effort of his invulnerable and if it is, how do we safeguard it?

that is what i would move forward and it is one that we can afford to do and one that cannot afford to neglect. host: stephen, what do you think is the biggest risk to our critical infrastructure? is it cyberattack, is it terrorism, is it simply that everything is old and it is going to crumble on its own? guest: it really is all of the above to enlarge extent. the key with the resilience focus is you step back and you actually don't look at the asset and that is where you start, by looking at the hazard, whether it is endurance threat or whether it is a storm, but you start examining the key functions that we have to have. mobility to move vehicles. we talked about the george washington bridge, the 330,000 vehicles per day. critical to the economy of the northeast. most of the goods coming from new jersey, new york have to cross that bridge.

but when you talk about it in those terms you realize ok, that is really important, how do we begin to safeguarded against age as an important hazard, potential terrorism risk? if somebody tries to sabotage the structure and also in terms of storm risk it may be susceptible to. you start by looking at what is really important. what we know with the cyber risk is that we've embraced the internet of things, essentially embedding the internet and all of our infrastructure. this real efficiency ticket from that. we use to send people out to look and inspect. now we can put a sensor on it. the problem is every time we make a connection we create dependency and we make multiple connection can create interdependencies. that means that we have a shop or disruption that cascades across those dependencies and those interdependencies. that will be one of the things

that we may have to look for and undoubtedly will be looking at, whether there is a cyber risk associated with the ship. there are cyber risks associated with maritime rule and we haven't been keeping up with it because that ship, as big as it was, was run by a crew of 21 people. 21 people for a ship as mammoth as that. how do you do that? relying on lots of automation and electronics and electronics have to be sick there. so we are embracing new technologies. the key with resilience again is recognizing systems are interdependent. everything is connected. when hurricane maria hit puerto rico, a hurricane hitting puerto rico is not new. so why wasn't so bad? it is because every foundational life system and critical system failed. power failed, water failed, the

port was closed, the service transportation closed. there was no energy. that is why it took up to a year to get started. you have those cascading failures. you have to kind of crank everything up again and then it really is hard. and our power grid faces similar vulnerabilities. we've come very close in many instances to it going dark and then restarting is a really long term prospect. so we have to get out of this. we are becoming more and more dependent on the power grid to electrify so many things with sustainability rather than keep it in great shape in order to be able to manage what we are asking it to do. so these are all key things. again, the focus here is not just embracing things because they make it efficient or embracing things because they make it more affordable. you think about the risk that may be going with any new innovation and then mapping out

whether the consequences are really significant if we have failure. post: we will take one more question. max, can you make it quick? >> yes, ma'am. i go on i 75 northern michigan and they put a bridge near the saginaw river in the 60's, and that the time that bridge was being built, construction workers were complaining that something is wrong with this. i go up north quite frequently every other week and i go where i call retirement time or there is not much traffic you go over this bridge and it is like going over a horizontal roller coaster that goes up and down. the north, south lanes, there's open space of about 10 foot. the last 15, 20 years they've developed some type of device that is on the back of a truck that goes vertically outside of the bridge, and it goes

horizontally down and then back vertically under the bridge and it goes about two or three miles per hour. and i know from reading about it and stuff that something is wrong. they are constantly inspecting this bridge. i'm 84 years old, i probably won't see it in my lifetime that i make a prediction that that is, from what i have read and going across and all the time, is really not safe and the people that built it said that. so i agree with you 100%. host: last comment? guest: well, basically we know that you have about 60,000 bridges, and there are millions every day over those bridges. that is not a good situation to be in. we have to upgrade eric dane on investing our critical infrastructure. a cautionary tale i hope every american takes with the tragedy

that we saw last week with the loss of the francis scott key bridge. neglecting her infrastructure, neglecting investing in the key safeguards to protect it and to assure it can provide its function for the height of recklessness. the consequences are enormous. we can't take it for granted, we must invest in greater resilience. post: stephen flynn, lucas live professor at northeastern university, you can find more of their work at global resilience. >> all ts week we are showing recent supreme court cases. eastern on c-span.ns at 9:30 tonight's oral argument is ited states versus rahim

watch the supreme court case night and other recent oral ars all this week at 9:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. you could find all of the supreme coverage on our website, c-span.org. ♪ >> do solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> each week authors and historians will tell these stories. we will see historic footage and the legacies of key congressional hearings. a committee led by senator harry truman in the 1940's examines

the national defense program and whether there was corruption, waste, inefficiency. the committee's work is said to have money, lies, and may have shortened world war ii. saturday at 7:00 p.m. easrn on c-span two. >> reuterss porting a judge in georgia has rejected former president donald trump's bid to have charges dropped against him , which he argues violates his speak -- free speech rights. the georgia superior court judge ruled that thinctment against the former president alleges that statementsy m and 14 othersere made in furtherance of criminal activity d e not protected by the u.s. constitution. the article says the judgeru as a signal he will continue moving the case was trial even as mr. trump and coefendants continue efforts

disqualify the prosecutor. a geora peals court is set to decide whether to take up that issue in the coming week. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, policy debated and decided in support of the american cable company. c-span, 35 years and counting, powered by cable. >> next, a discussion on banking regulations and the state of bank mergers with rohit chopra, this is about 40 minutes. [applause]