everyone is now a wire reporter. everyone is now in the breaking news. it news. god i hate that term. the breaking news business. and we are doing it at this lightning speed that everyone has access to. that concerns me. .. i think about what we used to do in the early part of my career in covering a lot of institutions are really don't

touch people's lives and there's been a lot of lamenting over the last 15 years about the buildings and the agencies and the stuff that isn't getting covered. if you look back, a lot of it was perfectly dreadful. it was. i put my name on some of those perfectly dreadful stories. i think it's good to have gotten rid of that because that turned of audiences. it wasn't a good use of our time and energy but there are a fair number of very inventive news organizations including the one picture that are trying to come up with a different way to provide information people need to have. that's hard than going to building and writing down with minced and in florida the microphones had to say. get those too much of her coverage for a long time. when we get to it it's a public year. it's much more important to give a talk about what an

administration, mayor, governor, president is doing in terms of governing. what are the policies? and this administration, all of them get worse than the one before so we have a lot to look forward to. >> you had a low opinion of the policy covers you just talked about. >> i was talking about -- gave at the national level, i would not covering policies the way we used to? >> i do think it gets short shrift. this particular administration makes it harder to enjoy the fun of something going on in the agency just to go through public information officer. you can go directly to the scientist who knows what directly, try and get something from health and human services administration. you get routed right back to the white house office. >> the white house has minders. the day i went -- when a powerball, i'm a request an interview, interview the mind or.

so with north korea not an option? [laughter] but it is amazing, and they will stop the question is not the answers, unless you of course may be are slightly confrontational, maybe. you have to work for it. >> this administration goes after people, people in government are scared to talk to reporters or anybody just wants to ask them a question. they can get prosecuted. their careers are punished. doesn't that bother anybody? >> are subject to an investigation. >> don't you want to know what the people who salaries uk are doing? talk about the weather or health care. >> the first time in my life had a source contracting down in my office and tell me they left their cell phone in their car so that we could have a conversation without worrying about being tracked.

i'm not a national security reporter. this story happened to be about the relationship between the cia and the white house. even by your standards, name redacted, absolutely not paranoid. the level of control freakishness is off the chart. >> there's a guy in our office who ask you to put on a soccer team next to someone who works for the government and he was dead and talking to the father and the father said i'm sorry, i have to walk away if we talk anymore, i have to report it to my boss. i am not making that a. this is a scary thing. >> we could talk about another example, i mentioned twitter, how the white house uses twitt twitter. >> we are going to open it up to questions momentarily. but go ahead. >> after this i'm giving homework. go look up when the white house hates your tweet. it's a piece i wrote detailing how to look at what as an early warning mechanism to see what we are talking about, to watch a

different reporters who were influential on different topics shape the perception of a store and private and how they share it with the change and how it is replaced traditional newspaper clippings. it's a real-time early warning system for them. >> i think that goes both ways. >> it is more because twitter is becoming a national assignment editor in a lot of ways. it is what every reporter is plugged into to figure out what the narratives are. voters are not paying any attention to the but the echo chamber is spent a wonderful way to get an answer to question he can't seem to get an answer to integrating. what the heck is a president doing about that? i can't believe the. you get a phone call or e-mail. >> i was goin going to ask you t to be done to improve things but it doesn't look like of an answer for that. [laughter] why don't we open it up to questions? the our microphones, and welcome

any and all questions. put these guys on the spot, not me, but put them on the spot. >> management comes from the top usually, but how much of this is being driven by say president obama or just by how the infrastructure of the white house is changing? could you consider what a hillary clinton administration might be like and her relations with the media, and not even go with donald trump blush want to address that as well? >> let me talk a generation. it does go over the top. every time there's a new administration to our bunch of very young people who come in with the administration, and most of them are full of the ideas that hav had just been eld to the biggest office in the world and there's a lot of hubris. a lot of the policy gets set at

a time when people are feeling, you know, george stephanopoulos now for abc the gets a lot of attention for growing donald trump on something, when he when the press office, he started closing the door to the press office and told reporters they couldn't come into the press office. there's an attitudinal thing that crosses party lines and it's absolutely common and every single white house. everything trickles down from there. the line gets set that somewhere slightly better than whatever we do is none of your damn business, becomes the line, and we will tell you what you need to know. that become something that's implemented into the agency's and it doesn't matter what the party is a. whoever gets elected in january, and not rendered in january, is the -- is going to be tighter

about this than this administration which was tighter than the bush administration which was tighter than the clinton administration. >> what about hillary clinton? what is your sense about that? >> every private. what about you? >> she hasn't given the "washington post" an interview in the last 18 months. not one. on the other hand, we get donald trump on the phone all the time. [laughter] spent and he says he hates us. we are discussing, lowlifes, but is happy to speak with us. >> stop calling. >> he must like hanging out with people like that. he couldn't resist us. >> i can talk about hillary clinton, the context of the last campaign and what i saw. in 2008 the press office on that campaign made a decision early on to be very controlling of the interactions. that did not work so well for her. i was are traveling press

secretary after new hampshire through the end. we started putting her with the press a little bit more. we started bringing her to the back of the plane, rainy down to the hotel bar for all the reporters were hanging out at the end of that. sometimes it was on the record, sometimes it was all. sometimes it was just to connect on a human level. it was a dramatic to me. it was too late in the cycle of the campaign, but dramatic to me how much they covered shifted. not that she started getting puff pieces on it we were starving every piece with less hostility between both sides. this is a problem i think in the social media era generally, both at the principal reporter level, at the staff level, is we're losing that human interaction too much and the relationships that are so important. i watched the two of you greet each other. utilities were two people who spent a lot of time together

during the course of the bush administration, and that relationship is important. too often we're losing that relationship because they are reporters i've dealt with when i was at the dnc who i might never have met. i know who they are from the twitter, but we are moving to an area where relationship, that's one thing i would urge my friends who are with the secretary now, and issue successful moving forward, is she's very good when she developed a relationship with someone. they don't need to hide her from the press because she can hold her own i think very well. she's very likable when you get to know her. let the press get to know her a little bit better, again, not change the scrutiny but just changed the starting point for upping the discussion just a little bit.

>> so the answer is more? [laughter] >> more alcohol, more socializing but that's true in every aspect of life. [laughter] >> that was not the answer i expected but it was a good when actually. we have another question. >> how do you balance competition versus manipulation? when donald trump can call into a morning show and, by default, say whatever he wants? at what point does a news organization say, we are not going to do that? that are analogs in all of your various segments. donald trump is the elephant in the press room right now. what do you do about unfiltered competition? >> that's a great question. >> one thing i wish people would do when he does make those

calls, even if they have them on, is actually know their subjects and ask follow-up questions. so we makes claims such as opposed the iraq war right from the beginning, and it turns out that's not true, he didn't come he supported it, that somebody can call them on that and they can actually quote the actual facts and point ou that out to m and have him contained without spirit you put your finger on it. covering the donald trump isn't handing him a microphone. you are not covering him. we are supposed to leave our, supposed to put things in context. to the extent that we've done a bad job of covering him, it's a people defined coverage as we are going to show an empty podium in the hopes he arrive soon for an hour. we had an interesting new cycle recently in which people covert donald trump without them. it was the stuff that the veterans donations with the post and the ap do into that stuff and they didn't need him.

they didn't need it and finally the trump campaign's approach of not answering any questions burned him. and not having a relationship with breast burned him. it clearly drove him nuts. he handled it very capably but with that crazy press conference where he called the press terrible. to me it was this is coverage. did, in fact, raise this money? did they didn't? i don't need him to call me on the phone. i don't need it. is already made these claims. we're going to assess the know. i think you're seeing more of that now. there was a scene yesterday where he said he opposed the iraq war and it was like trump says he didn't support the iraq war. you're right. donald trump says he never said japan should get nukes. parentheses he did. i've never seen that on a camera before but i welcome it.

>> people ask me on the point in calling in, nobody calls into "meet the press." is the media complicit in putting them on? should the clinton campaign that ran after he dials in? two days ago she dialed in to cnn. did a phone interview. i think is changing the topical rules of the game quite a bit and the media is complicit. look, there's an inherent tension edu-con often speak it is far better than i could but within the media side of this equation, between responsible journalism and good business practice. sometimes the art incompatible. >> we did this whole story about him using, acting as his own press spokesman, pretend to be his own press spokesman. we were taught but something else and the reporter find out a bit of a long interview said did

you ever employ a spokesman by the name of john miller? and the line went dead. so we called back and said, we must have gotten disconnected. i don't know how that happen. he is not available right now. this is a problem when you're doing a telephone interview. we need to make sure the candidates are in positions where people can ask questions and with a candidate is forced to answer the question. over here. >> my question is sort of similar. we are seeing around the clock coverage by the cables come anytime on the campaign. i wonder if a lot of times, looking at the empty podium waiting for trump to appear, or if panelists we get one side versus the other side even talking points of the day. so i'm wondering if a whole lot better coverage if you can call

it coverage, but our cables dumbing down the coverage in this election campaign? we are seeing more than we've ever seen before but is it going to be things going into the general election some sort of shift where we are going to get more series of journalism from the cables? >> also, your impression of the coverage so far. curious to hear about that. >> that's carolyn, a fantastic political reporter in her own right asking searching questions in one. [laughter] >> look, cable news operations are successful because audiences watched them so they are serving in the. i think the mistake might be for us to assume that all media is a light at all coverage must be

electric back to the point earlier, there has to be a mania for people to choose from. a lot of the work the post and the ap and the time spent others, yahoo! are doing to put serious nature before readers and viewers an interesting way does that mean that the cat the other stuff that appeals to different kinds of readers. i can watch many hours of it because it is repetitive but that seems to be a system that works for them. >> the cable networks constitutionally incapable of changing their ways? >> that's the question about viewers. spirit why would they change if it is the -- if it is working? >> why would they change? a few of us up here think they should. spinning this a is what i was talking about with the inherent

tension between the desire to do smart journalism as a public service and getting the ratings. right? >> let me go to this question. >> i would like answered a question and ask the question. you asked whether the public cares, and yes, i do. i think about the people on your team. i find thoughtful and analytical to the store. i remember reading a day after the eric garner case, and it resonated not only because reflected my do but accept the context. my question is, we've talked about the relationship between the presidency and the press as a dialectic and i think that's an important and necessary dialectic. i worry it is moving towards antagonism.

moving forward does that hurt your feelings or how do you see that evolving speak with what you mean by -- >> just the way in which mainstream media is now the punchline. that you are inherently biased because you are the press. i find that troublesome. >> i would love to find the person who convinced the public that were biased means -- >> i didn't like the story. >> it's a word that gets thrown around without much attention. it's hard because a couple years ago i did a series on big donors being nominated for ambassadorship for which they were unqualified. my reporting ended up killing one of the nominations. one pivotal moment in this series i did, the story got a lot of comments. yahoo! generates a lot of traffic, but even by our standards way more than i thought i would see.

i thought i would trot optimism over three. don't ever read the comments. no one has ever been to the comment section to say that was a perfectly adequate b+ story. [laughter] the number one comment, the one that most people have liked have moved up the chain, the number one most approved, was this is crap, it's not real reporting. >> we have one last question and we will have to be quick about it. >> just a comment. a lot of politicians and reporters take the speech course in college. i hear a lot of that in a variety, president obama. continue to consider what they're about to say i'm not fill in the gaps. it's almost like a football player giving an interview. [laughter] spent i think we just got a big

-- from the audience. >> i knew i should have cut it off. [laughter] >> i apologize. in any event, we are done. thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] >> good night. thank you very much. [applause] >> this fourth of july weekend booktv has three days of nonfiction books and authors.

>> in the beginning they did a lot of trajectories. so they calculated the potential of different rocket propellants ended the trajectories for many of the early missiles. they work on the corporal and the sergeant, and then things changed when the space race happened and when nasa was formed. then these women's roles begin changing. the internet becoming the labs first computer programmers and they've just these incredibly long careers at nasa, 40, 50 years. one of them still works at nasa today. >> and on sunday in depth is live who will take your calls, text and enough questions from noon to 3 p.m. eastern discussing his latest book tribe, on homecoming and belonging. is also the author of war, a death in belmont, fire, and the

perfect storm. >> for the complete weekend schedule go to booktv.org. >> i am pleased the senate as a body has come to this conclusi conclusion. television and the senate will undoubtedly provide citizens with greater access and exposure to the actions of this body. this access will help all americans to be better informed

of the problems and issues which face this nation on a day by day basis. >> during the election i the occasion of meeting a woman who had supported me in my campaign, and she decided to come to shake my hand and take a photograph. a wonderful woman. she wasn't asking for anything, and i was very grateful that you took the time to come by. it was an unexceptional moment except for the fact that she was born in 1894. her name was marguerite lewis, an african-american woman who had been born in louisiana. board in the shadow of slavery, born at a time when lynchings were, place, born at a time when african-americans and women could not vote. >> took our country from the time of its founding until the mid 1980s to build up a national debt of $880 billion

which was the size of the so-called stem this package when he came over. so we are talking about real borrow the money. >> thirty years of coverage of the u.s. senate on c-span2. >> now a panel of former government officials and journalists looks at the political polarization in america. we'll hear from former rnc chairman haley barbour, former clinton white house press secretary mike mccurry, and bret stephens from "the wall street journal." this is just over an hour. >> it's great to see all here this afternoon. thank you for joining us. thank you so much to the "dallas morning news" for hosting this remarkable event. it came up earlier today, question that diversity in the newsroom, on a panel and it's not always easy to embrace all

kinds of diversity in any given event but i want to celebrate this event for having done a remarkable job of embracing ideological diversity. it's terrific to be at an event cohosted, cosponsored by the george bush library, the george w. bush presidential center, the lbj foundation. it's a remarkable occasion. i want to put you out of your suspense. can democracy survive? yes. [laughr] okay? [applause] so the question i think we are all the talk about today is how, how bad is it actually? do we think it is an issue? if we do, what do we do about a? we all know a couple of basic facts. for example, there's a shift in how much members of each party you each other unfavorably. and 1994, 16% of democrats and the republicans favorably.

and 201438%. on the other side of the aisle and was 17% of republicans accused democrats of favorably in 1994. now is 43%. perhaps the more interesting data point is the one that suggests the issue are no longer ideological have become a matter of lifestyle and identity. the fact that in 1960, 4% of democrats and 5% of republicans would have disapproved of their child marrying somebody from the other party. okay? [laughter] so what are those numbers now? 33% of democrats would disapprove of the childbearing and republican. 49% of republicans would disapprove their childbearing at democrat. i pulled out some of the fun facts you study this for a living. is polarization we will? how to political scientists understand that? >> yes, i think it is true that polarization israel.

one way to look at the patterns of roll call voting in congress. one of the best measures of how partisan or bipartisan our national institutions have been overtime. the headline fact is the wealth of the partisanship in congress are at their lowest level since reconstruction. to put into perspective the party system based on the regional cleavages of a just result civil war had more bipartisanship than the current congress. polarization has not been a constant in history. through much of the 20th century it wasn't that way at all. they were large blocks of conservative democrats, liberal republicans, lots of compromise into landward pieces i in the 20th century. we'vwe have seen over the coursf the past 40 years, roughly from the late 1970s to the current,

a large deterioration in the love of bipartisan cooperation. i think it's had pretty series consequences for the governing of our society. >> what did you think happened? how do you explain those? >> that's one of the core academic mysteries at this point is what a very bipartisan relatively unknown polarized system began to take a different trajectory. there's been lots of arguments related to individual historical events such as the election of ronald reagan, the defeat of robert bork's nomination, the impeachment in 1998, the 2000 election. i don't think there's much behind the arguments. the worst specific events. there's been a lot of focus on the way in which we conduct our elections, whether it be partisan primaries or gerrymandered congressional

districts or uncontrolled campaign finance. there is very little evidence it has much else to do with gerrymandered congressional dishes or the way we conduct primaries. there's a lot less polarization in the 50s and 60s with a lot more gerrymandering and a lot more partisan note of selecting candidates. there's some evidence the campaign finance system has contributed to the system that was already polarized. it is probably making it worse at this point. i'm inclined to believe that our politics became more polarized because the united states has become a much more diverse society over the past 45 years. whether that be through changing patterns of immigration, the racial ethnic competition in society or whether the economic differences like economic inequality, wealth inequality. i think we become a much more

pluralistic divided society on many of the important political cleavages. that will be reflected in the way congress represents the type of society we live in today. >> you pointed to some of the historical touch points and said you were not sure any of its matted but we do often hear about reagan and tip o'neill as the key example of bipartisanship in the 1980s and in the robert bork nomination. i want to turn to governor barbour and mr. mccurry who both live to the highly contentious events of the 1990s amid ouster with you out of. you were chairman of the rnc 1983-1996 during the period of the government shutdown. some of the points lived experience, e.g. few a change in a members of the parties interacted with each other? >> the first am i going to washington in 1968, i'm from mississippi, some of you may all thought this was a south new jersey accent --

[laughter] i see the united states senator jim eastland wasn't old segregationist. my granddaddy was his daddy's lawyer. i would like to see. they told me to come back at 530 time that. i came back. he walked me in his office. he was having a drink with teddy kennedy. teddy kennedy and to conservative republican from nebraska and a democrat senator from georgia. he was the chairman, the democratic chairman of the judiciary committee. they knew each other. they were friends. they socialized. having a drink together was not than usual. it is incredibly unusual today. most of the members don't live there. edges to the their kids what to school together. they played ball together. their wives knew each other, or husbands. that's one of the reasons i think. i think another reason, and i have a different view than

nolan, i think gerrymandering has made a difference because particularly in the house. the supreme court since 1962 has made the legislatures reapportion u.s. house met and the state legislatures. about four years ago both parties had figured out we've got to control the legislature, we can change this to search around and we will have a lot better deal. today there are probably 350-435 house seats that are not competitive between the two parties. that means those 350 members of the house, they are not worried about the general election. they are worried about the primary. if they are saved in a democratic district, they're not going to let anybody get to the left of them. if there in the safe republican district they wil would not let anybody get to the right of them. that has hollowed out to center in the house of representatives.

it doesn't direct effect the u.s. senate but it certainly indirectly does because the legislation they see, because of the arguments that the senators constituents are hearing. i don't think there's any question this is happen. i do think there's more than one reason. >> i'm sure redistricting is important and will come back to that. i want to push you more on the discussion of party strategy in the '90s. as you moving into the majority republican congress, that was one of your huge accomplishments to pull that off in those elections, and to give your party that power. how did your party strategize in the early '90s? >> i will say to you it was a big advantage that we have contract with america. we have not had a majority in both houses in congress for 40 years. allows the republicans had won was in 1952. we lost in 1954 and now it is 1994. contract with america gave

people something to vote for. we are not polling and. most people who voted for republicans is a regular republicans over they voted against clinton. they were mad at clinton. but having something to vote for made it easier but also meant when they got the majority, we had an agenda. michael remembers, we spent the first 100 days, seemed like a 400 days, we spent the first 100 days training up all the 10 points of contract with america. interestingly at the democratic national convention in 1996 when president clinton made his acceptance speech he mentioned six things you been doing that were in contract with america. that he took credit for the encoding welfare reform and denver shortly there after the first balanced budget in a generation. >> let's get your memories. but do you think about bipartisanship i want to add in one detail. this is the period of 1995 for the white house does a study on

the impact of the internet on a medical communications and that's what it the idea of the conspiracy as being on attack against clinton and that's the theme of the clinton administration picks up. how did you guys see this question of bipartisanship? >> at the beginning of 1995, this is after speaker gingrich took office, we start in 1995 and is very contentious environment. remember in the early part of that year there were routine stories in the press about is the president relevant anymore? because all the energy was with the new speaker and a new majority and congress. but then the moral building was blown up in oaklan tocaloma saii think at that point president clinton found his voice again -- moral building blown up in oklahoma city.

>> polarization. >> and we get over and over again the fact that we needed to invest in the future of the country. we need to balance the budget. we need to protect our environment. we need to make sure we kept social security and medicare stronger discipline around the message carried us all the way through the year to the point and 95 when we had the big showdown with the republicans over whether not the government would be shut down. and leon panetta to be sitting here, ran the staff meetings at the white house in the morning. i would have to honestly say that we did not know and we're not confident we would come out ahead of the republicans over the question who was going to be blamed for shutting down the government. because of our discipline, because the president made the case for us, we ended up i think, and you probably agree, we came out on the upper end of that. that they moved us into the 1996 reelection year with a very

strong head wind. but i go back to one thing that haley said. i agree. when mrs. clinton was in the u.s. senate we had a practice event in office one day. i asked her, what is the source of this dysfunction and gridlock and polarization in the united states senate, the world's greatest deliberative body? and she made exactly that point or she said we don't trust each other. we don't spend enough time with each other to get to know each other well. if i feel like i go out halfway but something politically at risk, i don't have any confidence that someone will meet me halfway in the other direction. i would add to that, in that time, yes, there was a study of the internet in 1995 but, frankly, there was one all news

cable station at the time because fox had not come a long. nobody was using social media because it didn't exist. the internet site, the website for the white house have transcripts of my press briefings, which were not, i guess mildly entertaining, sometimes given the subject matter that we dealt with occasionally. it was not an era, it was an era in the major mainstream media shape the contours of the national discussion. you still had, i think at that point, probably 75-80% of the country that they got most of their news from broadcast reports, from daily newspapers, from the traditional sources of information that we used to be coherent as a country. that has all this aggregated now. newspaper circulation's have declined. audience share for the major

network broadcasts have been in decline. we don't have around a common campfire now to share our stories and develop a narrative. that is one of the things i think doesn't bring us together as a country. so we have a common good conversation. >> you are making an argument like its fragmentation or, instead of polarization, that we should be really worried about. i want to bring brett in for a moment. there's a list of things people often invoked as possible causes, redistricting, campaign finance, general fragmentation of the country. sometimes people point to the fact that since roughly 1980 elections have been much more contested than they were in the decades prior to that. in that regard we should recognize that we live in a period of contested for politics and maybe that's a great thing, what democracy is about. getting in the thick of it and fighting with each other over the direction that we are

heading. you are in the thick of it argued about the very contested election season. how has this issue affected your efforts to be a voice adding thoughtfulness to the public? >> in many respects it's more difficult just because if you are in the opinion business as i am in edge offer a view that is not perfectly in line with what your audience anticipates, you are going to be treated not as someone who disagrees on one issue or a few issues, but as a traitor and you will hear it almost immediately from 4000 people on twitter denouncing you in one way or another. it takes some intestinal fortitude not to try to palliate

or mollify that side of the audience, to think that there might be an audience beyond simply the angry people who have time on their hands to fire off a tweet or a nasty e-mail. but look, that's the real issue in journalism. one thing that i fear about modern journalism is that editors increasingly have lost control of the narrative. why? because we are looking newspapers at large, are looking at stories that are going to be popular with audiences. did you get on the most viewed, most popular, most e-mailed list this week? what does that say about the quality of what you are writing? there's nothing more depressing than when the wall street journal since the a huge expense to give report a story from burma and about four people read it. forget it, i could write another piece about donald trump i know it would have a huge audience.

so there's a shallow wind of journalism and shallow in of public rhetoric, public discourse and very naturally i think both politically people want to play to those shallower narratives. it becomes difficult to see complexity and issued it to become so much easier to simply say you are on one side, you are on the other, there is no gray zone, there is a between and there's no room for judgment or views that are somewhat shaded or colored by some kind of complexity. that's a real issue. one thing i want to point out, since i do write about foreign policy, what's happening in the united states this electoral season is happening all over the world. the philippines just elected as

president a man who is described as the donald trump of the philippines. we have a populist right wing party in many ways a liberal party governing poland same story in hungary. gaining traction in france. a movement on the left is gaining traction in spain. the kind of centrist politics that defined the postwar era are fragmenting, fracturing, falling apart not just in the united states. so i think it's worth asking why this is a global phenomenon. as tolstoy said, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, but it all seems to be happening at the same time. i think that's a question that ought to trouble is i'm not worried about whether democracy can survive. i'm pretty sure democracy can survive. i'm worried about whether liberalism can survive. i don't mean liberalism left wing. i mean liberal as in that set of

values that inform over it, pluralistic, rules-based, law-based societies. >> let me just follow up with a brick because what he makes about journalism and the pressure of his purity is felt by elected officials. there is a group in the country that wants purity. look at the two-party system. purity is the enemy of victory. let's just get straight about that. i used to work for ronald reagan. fred and i worked there together. ronald reagan compromise on everything. because the democrats had a majority in the house the whole time. and the compromise. used to say, a fellow who agrees with you 80% of the time is your friend and ally, not a 20% twitter. today as bret said, and if you think it's hard up at "the wall

street journal," think about if you are in the campaign headquarters in south carolina or kansas or montana. that pressure of if you are not pure, i'm going to be against you. where will i be against you? youquestion your party's primary. >> when is the moment you first registered this was a dynamic? >> first of all white don't think it came from, i think a lot of people attribute this to divided government, republican congress, democrat house. i'm a democrat white house. i don't accept that and i will tell you why. ronald reagan was enormous a successful in divided government. leon panetta and i were talking. we pass reaga reagan's economic, social security reform and tax reform with huge, hundred seat majorities, democrat majority in the house. i mentioned those because they are complex and controversial. but oakland was the same way.

bill clinton and six years, all republican congress, we pass welfare reform, the first balanced budget in a generation. it's not divided government. the president has to lead, and this president has chosen to try to lead the congress but, in fact, he is polarizing the it's not the only reason but that's a fact. >> one of my previous bosses was danielle patrick moynihan who wrote a wonderful essay, defining deviancy down to a different context that's partly what has happened. is that a slow-motion erosion of those things that bring together a common good and a sense of common purpose which, even when lit and and gingrich were battling back and forth they were still on the phone every night yakking at each other. it used to a the hell out of everyone on the staff of both sides because say what kind of get caught in their space, but they were, at the end of the day, working in a system that was designed to produce an

outcome, which is either some form of compromise or some sort of mutual agreement by where you're going to hate. that's what's gone. our fundamental function of government, the things that madison wrote about in the federalist papers are not working. >> the question is whether the breakup, social relations, happy to compromise, orientation to the common good and so forth, symptom or cause? i want to pull you back in and get you to share more. >> i do think all these things are really tightly related to onone another so it's hard to gt the symptom versus calls. you mentioned earlier the rise, party competition from everything is very competitive, every election is about control of the white house or control one or both branches of congress. that's a factor. one of the things that has gone

hand-in-hand with legislation, polarization is party coalition. being a republican goes with having a set of policy positions. they may not be logical here but everybody understands the republican policy position on each and every issue just as they often enter democratic policy issue on each question. this kind of extreme orthodoxy within both parties and the willingness to punish the heterodox has gone along with it in a lot of ways. i think a lot of the opposition, compromise comes from the fact these coalitions as we are seeing today are fragile and away. you have to enforce this orthodoxy because it's not particularly going to if you look at donald trump, i guess the silver lining is he's the first person who's willing to

challenge this orthodoxy and say the republican set position are not coherent. it doesn't appeal to voters. i'm going to go out there and break it. it will be interesting to see what happens in the future now that we have a candidate who is willing to say the republican positions on trade and the orthodox position on immigration are not the ones that appeal to broad swath of the electorate. we will see what happens. getting back to your original question, why do all these things go together and why do they start to change the same time is still very hard to explain. >> bret, back to your question. why do you think the global -- the system is collapsing globally? >> lots of reasons. one large point i would say is that since 1970, to give you one data point, france has not had a

single year of more than 2% growth. so 38 years, not once more than what and the united states is considered really mediocre growth. template 5% unemployment rate, 25% youth unemployment. same story throughout much of europe. for the last decade in the training we've had about 2% growth. stagnant economies tend to lead to radicalized politics. second thing is at least for the last 10 years, again i don't mean to be marxist and materialist, but -- >> is the university of chicago training in you coming out. >> historically, in economies where investors do very well and favors to, or speculators do poorly, tends to be a breeding ground for a certain kind of political radicalism. if you were an investor in the dow jones in touch with average in the last eight years be a downgrade.

if you do savings account at cd bank or whatever, maybe you've made 100 bucks. that's a phenomenon that is true from japan to europe to the tiny. there is an economic explanation. there's also a historical fact which is in the 1920s, the 1930s for a broad set of reasons the west became disenchanted with liberal democratic politics as a set of institutions that were in perfect, they created mediocre outcomes but were broadly fair and inclusive. there was this sudden first for a charismatic style of politics for men of action, the guys who would cut through the bull and make things work. the basis of man's, get through all that nonsense. a mystery in new york that donald trump, and make it

happen. i think part of the story here is that a failing of ordinary politics to deliver all the expectation that modern western societies have insurance other economic well being, their anxieties, their prospects has typically and is again turning people to say, let's look at these more radical, nonmainstream alternatives. what the hell, let's give it a shot. i think there's a lot of that in the politics right now with the strength of bernie sanders, donald trump as the presumptive nominee but also to the entire world. eat your just an ordinary middle-class person or lower middle class person with money in the bank, you have not done well and you've seen the speculating class as it is, or as it were, done fabulously well.

i think that is one of the contributing factors. all kinds of other things but those are the few that come to mind. >> again, i'm not trying to punctuate what bret says, but look at it this way. for three years in a row, and public polling as measured by the real clear politics average they published every day, more than 60% of americans have said america is going in the wrong direction. since only about 37% of americans are republicans, that means there our whole lot of people who are not republicans or independents or democrats that have now for three years thought by huge majority were going in the wrong direction. why wouldn't they? if you're in the heartland, if you're in the middle-class or working-class or small business person, you can't tell the difference between the recovery and the recession. still feels lik like a recessioo contact the national association of counties in january published report that based on four simple economic indicators like growth,

gdp, income tax, only 7% of our 3000 plus counties are out over the recession. 93% are still in the recession based on those measurements. you see why people are mad and they are scared. one other point i think is interesting that i think the hardest thing to understand, we have polarity with essential parity. the two parties are very close in numbers. i mean, they've got the white house, we've got the house and senate are we've got 31 governors, most of the legislators but they've got looks like an edge in the electoral college. you should in our country at least since the civil war, when we have been at parity we've also been bunched up in the middle. today there ain't no middle. >> although this election season is an interesting one as a couple of you pointed out, because on both sides of the

spectrum we've got the center. we've got heterodoxy coming out. policy paradigms breaking. trump n. sanders, immigration. then the question coming to make the point that there are serious economic and political problems that generate the move in politics towards extremes, in the out the center. starting to think about how to fix it question, how much do we, in fact, need to address these basic issues of interaction, risk tolerance for alternative views and so forth, as a part of preparing to actually engage the policy questions? that is, do we have to fix polarization in order to do the work on policy questions or can we not worry about polarization, just focus on policy? mike, what do you think? >> i think when you campaigned that are more aspirational.

the one thing i'm struck by our those numbers that say many americans come in fact the majority of americans, no longer believe that if they work hard and play by the rules, their children will have a better poet of life they have. that's the fundamental american dream that is that at the in the dna of what we think we are as americans. and unless we restore some sense of hope for the future in some sense that things are getting better, and by the way, there are different measures. i can't let haley get totally away with it. some measures, if you look at things that obama has been able to publish and do, that indicate that, maybe it's not a strong recovery but we've had 77 straight months of job growth. anyone from the white house where they would kick off a list of things and say look, obama has basically accomplished a great deal as president. ima communications guy.

i don't think they've told that story very well come and they don't think the country feels it. that's the important thing. but we've got to restore that sense that we are a country that moves forward, that does provide a better future for our kids. we need candidates and politicians who speak at the kind of lofty level, to really make us feel better about our future. we are not getting a lot of that in this campaign. >> do we need also in addition to seeking those aspirational and common purpose there is, do we need to be doing deep institutional work? bring it back to redistricting and have a debate about whether or not we need to be working off that. do we need to restructure the electoral process as part of building incentives to work in the opposite direction? >> i would like to restore the electoral process. i think to respond to haley's point, i think one of the

reasons why there's 350 members of the house has more to do with kind of regional realignments in the south and the northeast. people tend to find themselves now in regions in the country which were heterodox in the 1960s and 1970s. they are not strongly, strongly partisan. i think campaign finance has to be looked at. i don't think it's the primary initial cause. i think it's a major contributor. if you go back to 1980, the top, pointed 01% of the donors contributed 8% of the money for national campaigns. so the top 10,000 people contributed about 8%. now that's about 40%. we now have a campaign finance system that's basically unaccountable. very wealthy people can put their policy views, agendas

before the people without the same type of accountability that actual parties, candidates and so forth have. i think it's been a fuel for exacerbating polarization, at least in the last decade that's only gotten worse. a campaign finance i'm a little bit more interested in reform. where we have to look at in terms of institutional reform is about governance. i think ultimately polarization is not necessary a bad thing. in the 1950s political scientist worried that wasn't enough differentiating between the parties. the eisenhower republicans looked a heck of a lot like truman democrats on those things and that the real problem because voters don't have choices. it's hard to hold them accountable. if you might wish for something, you might get it. ..

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we instruct the party committees, the dnc and the dccc at all those people raising money, there will be sanctions against you if you host events for your candidates during that period of time. the expectation is a member will call someone from the other side of the aisle and said let's go have breakfast. let sit and talk or let's get a group together.

there's a wonderful group called faith and politics institute that gets people together for bible study. that has been very important to the members that participate. there's a least one-third of the senate participate in the. we create some space is for these people to get to know each other and create relationships that can then translate to more trust when it comes to legislating and doing work of the country. >> my own modest proposal is mary a liberal. [laughter] >> or a conservative. >> advice i took and it does me some good in the sense that look, the essence of a good citizen in a liberal democracy as a person who can say i might be wrong. i'm only in possession of 80% of the trip that i don't know which one fits is wrong. that's an important personal characteristic to against the

course record is what are the institutions in our society which are cultivating qualities of self-doubt? i mean that. this is something we think about often in our editorial meetings, which might shock some of you do here. [laughter] speed and tell us more about self-doubt at "the wall street journal." [laughter] >> we try to resolve them before will be put them in the paper. but also in terms of our pedagogical institutions i guess i would turn around on u.s.a. what a university is doing? one of the things that astounds me when i get mail in connection to the current political season is this line, we gave up on this do-nothing republican congress. we gave these republicans the big mature and what did they do with the? you attempted to write back, do you realize that the government can't be run out of the caucus? that you need the cooperation of

the president? that's the way the system works? so this nonstop -- nonstop assault from certain radio show host, i will not mention, about the losers in congress who did nothing and it didn't overturn obama to impeach the president, x, y and z, clearly these people don't seem to know how our system of divided government and checks and balances work. i wonder why that is. i wonder what failures have taken place from grade school to college to what people are listening to on their morning commute or what they're reading in the papers if they still read papers that they don't understand these things. all these institutional fixes are terrific but they are not going to work unless you have human beings who might say to themselves, i might disagree with the president. i might disagree with in vietnam but that doesn't mean i think is a bad man -- with him

vehemently. i guess that's what i keep returning to. one last point. .. i believe you are not as the national governors is a nation with a non-core curriculum, which was in the beginning a bipartisan effort on the part of

governors at the state level and as we all know now it has become a controversial issue fully embedded and polarized conversation. one feature of the development of the core curriculum is that the national governors is a nation was working with educators are medical with to establish standards in english language arts education and social studies education. the therapies allow. out. it was unachievable because of polarized views about how we should engage with the american has three ended some sense, the battle over whether the narrative should be fundamentally triumphalist, whether the narrative should be critical about the failings of the u.s. in the effort to overcome them. we have a quite a problem actually with regard to education and our inability to share a common historical

narrative. >> i was in office. in fact, some of you may know that i stayed is a little conservative. there were a lot of people against common core. i publicly supported the development of the common core curriculum. but here is what never gets said. common core only affects english and math. that is the whole curriculum. all the complaining is they are going to take religion out of the schools. they are going to teach god knows what in terms of history and social that he is. the mississippi department state of education ultimately decides the curriculum is. they have common core standards for english and math, but they decide every going to use for

teaching. the state-controlled but at the end of the day. the federal government doesn't pay but that goes back to something that i think was the 1.10 going to make here if i didn't any other. i became chairman of the republican national committee about the time the rise of rush limbaugh. fox news. i loved it. i have drawn up in the same america as well when i graduated from high school any week 96:00, 90% of abc come and take on the cbs. it's not all of them were liberal. we were finally going to get conservatives out there telling our side. it worked out for a while. in the last three or four years, the most bitter, the most harsh, but most negative critics of republicans have been the conservative media will be. the sean hannity, rush limbaugh,

laura ingram. some of these people are friends of mine. the fact of the matter is it may just be because ratings, but they are the leaders. they are the agitators for the people who say if you don't agree with me, you're a bad person. that is exactly the opposite of how you went in our system. the american two-party system is about a bigger part. it is about addition, multiplication. like i said, if you think we are going to have a party where people agree on everything, you nature had him in. my wife and i don't agree on everything. she says i have the right to be wrong sometimes. [laughter] in our party, democratic party, republican party, we cannot get

to where you have to agree on every aim to be a good republican. one of the biggest state do is we ever had, one of the things that was most proud of this state after state is a pro-choice republican voters vote pro-life republican candidate because they decide he agrees that manner she agrees with me on 10 issues out of 12 and i am not going to vote. that is how parties are supposed to think. until they get back to that, we have a hard time. >> mike, what we do? >> on this prior point, there was a national committee that looks at the curriculum that would leave us going out into the world as they move in the

violation and a cambodian age. there has to be an intentional commitment to that work in schools. you're asking a largely public school system to dan newson things that are raised here. i acknowledge that because socialist eddie's teachers than when they are dabbling in things about how this government where, how to parties work and how do they function, you know you were on shaky grounds in tanzania can impair crew coming in to complain. that is where collectively voice is stand up and say we cannot afford to cheat the students i have some basic understanding of what it means to be as it is sin in understand guerrillas in the diverse the that we have. a lot of work has to be done on that. i am going to tell a very short story. when i first went to work in the u.s. senate as a senate press secretary, in 1979 there was a big piece of legislation that would reform labor law and i

worked for the labor committee, pro union democrat. as i wrote a press release monday, it was actually aimed at orrin hatch leading the filibuster against labor law reform. i wrote a little quote in that draft the set and a senator who suggest that this largest nation lead to mandatory unionization stretches truth to the breaking point. that was the exact quote. my mentors, the administrative assistant said, not me, took me in the hall and said you better be glad that press release didn't allow. if that had gone out, i would fire you because that put a statement that more or less calls one of our colleagues. stretch the truth to the breaking point. compared to what we have now.

who is taking the young hotshot press secretary said washing their mouth out the show. some sense of stability in our discussions. the media used to be sent in like a referee. now they are for reasons that hayley just that, they are part of the problem than part of the solution. collect the late, it sounds pollyanna-ish to say that there's been senior statesman is stand up every once in a while. that's not what we do here in this country. that's not how we conduct ourselves in this world of politics. we just frankly don't have enough people doing it. >> let me ask one question before we turn it over to everyone else for questions. your point about setting standards are very well taken. i want to ask the question from

your point of view, what can newspapers and news organizations to? can they do anything to set standards? that a lost cause? what do you think? >> that is a great question and more than a two minute 252nd and third. so look, there has been a shallowly of good news and it turns out not only does that make for bad journalism, i think it makes for board readers. it is not an accident that the newspapers that are still doing reasonably well, magazines are the ones that take the deeper dive because the country 300 million if you have 1% of the country, that's a lot of readers read the journal has 2.4 million. we would like to get to 1%. that means sort of bucking the almost irresistible trend

towards catering to the audience to audience preferences and to what seems to be popular now. it means essentially following steve jobs definition that you don't know what you want until i give it to you. you have no idea you wanted an iphone until you got one and then you can't live without it for whatever kind of phone you have been to have. the news business can do something similar, which is try to get back control of who actually get to set the agenda. there is a wonderful line in scoop in which the lord, whatever his name is question all be answered up to a point. the question is see how, is the capital of japan. the answer must be up to a

point, sir. a lot of what we do in the news business should be stirred if considered. of course we want our readers to be in sync with dust. actually point, [booing] are not in charge of the newspapers, not the audience preference. that is sure in academia where i sometimes feel the professors have lost the agenda setting prerogatives. maybe in government as well, where senators, as hayley mentioned are always terrified of being primaries. how do you get the grown-ups to be in charge. i don't think that liberalism survives people talk about democracy for another day. i must does grown-ups reassert those prerogatives. >> let's go ahead and open it up. we have the microphones and would love to hear from you.

start over here. >> i understand washington in the early days of our country boy at the beginning of the two-party system would be the death of the republic. this year in the primaries but i'd and i understand and primaries is always going to be a disagreement and people saying mean things about each other. in this particular year, candidate after candidate has said that one of the candidates is a con artist, a pathological liar, and dangerous, all sorts of scary things. and now suddenly that he is presumably going to be the nominee, suddenly that is okay. i have a problem with the idea

that party politics is just some kind of a game and i think that the preservation of our country as we know it should be more important than not. so i am wondering how you feel about that. >> ski well, yeah. mike mentioned that wonderful phrase from pat moynihan defining deviancy down. we have a new normal in this country were serious presidential candidates get away with saying things, which i find scandalous and that is not going to stop unless some larger number of americans say no, this is not actually write it off and we are going to run you out of our political system for saying these things. this is what really worries me about this political season. i will say something overtly partisan. these are the candidates we are

getting. when growth is around 2%. one day growth is going to be minus 2%. what are we going to get dad and what is going to be considered all right then? one last point. you mentioned george washington and i was three breeding george washington spent than time as a young man writing out rules for conduct instabilities. wonderful, werewolf reading about not fitting in public or how to comport himself with a lady. this is how the son of the demand of that kind of character republicans to go on and on about the character issue, and rightfully so maybe should care a little bit more about the character of the candidate they put forward for high office. >> one observation about the two-party system. one of the 19th century french philosophers said the two-party system is a miracle of america

because that is like a teeter totter that if one party got too far over this way, the public would run to the middle and get them straightened out. that certainly hasn't happened in either party this time. in fact, one of my old friends from the white house saw me the other day and he said do you understand this? i said nobody can. he said he. they had to create a new term to describe the nominating process after sanders and trump and put called iraq tile dysfunction. [laughter] [applause] we are hoping one of the big pharmaceutical companies -- >> i think we all needed that. thank you. >> first, mr. stevens just made

a remark that i fully agree with. i.t. would be very concerned if we become a country with a minus 2% growth rate reminiscent of their early 30s in the late 20s elsewhere. my question goes to the opening remarks when there is the of some statistics about the negativity that is felt towards our potential candidates for president. over the past 30, 40 years, we have seen a diminishing percentage of our citizens voting. are we going to continue to see that? and if so, is that a real threat to the democracy? >> actually, we haven't seen a diminishing since 1972 and is a

good reason why a drop in 1972 and 18-year-olds got the vote and still don't use it. once you factor that in, the real changes have been increasing numbers of noncitizen residents who cannot participate. since 2008, turnout has been high, higher than it has ever been. it looks like it's going to stay there, yet it hasn't really resulted in kind of a diminishing of this conflict. one of the things that concerns me is the lack of public opinion polls and see that voters have much more extreme views than nonvoters. it seems obvious you should get some non-voters to vote. but once they become voters, they become just like voters. and they have just as extreme views. i hate to be negative on this, but turnout is probably not the problem.

the problems are probably deeper than that. >> i was just wondering about how much the polarization has to do with the come gap between wealthy and poor. and then a question for the governor, which is if you were still the committee, the republican national committee chairman, which you have endorsed trump? >> you know, life is a series of choices. if the choice for president is hillary clinton are donald trump, i am going to vote for donald trump. it wasn't my first choice, but that's the real choice i got. having been through two parochial things come a third-party candidate is a vote for clinton. instead of voting for some

third-party candidate. i was chairman of the republican national committee. i don't know if you're bored then. no, he wasn't. thanks for confirming. [laughter] it is not my party. donald trump is going to get 12 or 13 million votes in the republican primaries. mine was not one of those. but he is one and i'm not going to put my opinion, my views about these people. they've got the right to pick the nominee and i've got the obligation to compare the choices. i voted for some democrats in my life. don't get me wrong. i'm just not going to go for this one. >> one of the things we do know

is that periods of american politics are also those periods of times in which the economic divisions have been the largest. the polarization was quite high during the gilded age to the 1920th, obviously a period of time and which by definition the gold nature is one of high economic inequality. the low periods would be the lowest of economic inequality. not coincidentally is the same kind of economic inequality started going upwards. the ultimate causes based on my work in others there is some causal relationship with different groups of american it

is also continue to collate with one another. low growth does lead to political extremism sbc in the united states and increasingly throughout the rest of the world. >> thank you for assembling a great panel. this has been a terrific day. thank you for sharing your thoughts this past sunday. very appreciative. my question is more along the line of the difference between governance and ideology. we see a play now for several decades as far as that's what paul bearer would call truthfulness, where facts are

now seen as subjective, not objective. we have state legislatures here that are pro-solution to nonexistent is in sending huge amount of taxpayer dollars on problems that don't exist, and it exists in people's minds or place their politics. again, where does not raise some , but based solely on opinion or identity politics. what do we do when it creeps into the way we govern. >> well, i was a republican governor, the second republican governor since reconstruction

mistake. i had a democratic majority senate seven years out of date. the last thing i wanted was a partyline vote. so what if we do? we made sure democrats understand my job was to get the job done, that we had some problems we had to deal with that when two big problems we had to deal with. i never one of those without winning the democrat. just mathematically impossible. we did it by dealing with the facts and being focused on solving problems. i used to tell trent lott, the majority leader of the senate. he's a third-year law student and i was a freshman. anyway, the difference between governors and senators and senators talk about doing things and governors do things. that is the attitude you've got to have. brent and mike were both talking about that as we went through this. hard to work together and learn

to get the job done and it doesn't have to be 100% highway every time. that is the attitude you've got to have. my job is to get the job done. >> i want to defend press since we are here in honor of the 100th anniversary. the surprising thing for a guy who used to be the human and not a kid you know, the ability to really make fax, five and make the truth important enough and vivid enough that people engage regularly in his a hallmark of brilliant journalism and it's not sufficient going back to send you said earlier a journalist to say we've got to run our numbers up.

we've got to get more linux, whose circulation. that has never been to task for the journalists. the task is to take the important information and make it interesting enough that people will pay attention. we didn't know about slaughterhouses in chicago until the first month. we've got to get more of we understand and communication in politics you have to say things over and over and over again for them to penetrate. you while in the news biz i say we tell you one and we've given you the news and is therefore no longer new so we don't have to come back and report it again. the things that matter need to be on the front page day after day after day with interesting angles and different takes on new perspectives. i do want to shortchange the kind of journalism out there. we need more of that were going

to actually get people to focus on that which is truly. >> advocate anchor panels. terrific conversation. thank you so much. [applause]

>> julia ward howe and increasingly focused on her position as a mother, which is of course what is driving her support for suffrage. her position as a mother to say that women are different than men, that women can do society better than men have done. >> resolute without even bellicose. strong without being arrogant. and that is the kind of america that will help lead to peace in this world. >> the time has come for us to leave the valley of despair and climb the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn

for peace and freedom. >> would never do justice as a birthday, the chief brings in some wine and we toast the birth date or at work girl and sing happy birthday. we are missing our chorus later because truth be told, most of them can't carry a tune. [laughter]

>> we are live on capitol hill this morning. jeh johnson will be appearing for the senate judiciary committee discussing his agency's counterterrorism efforts in the recent terrorist attack in orlando, florida. the committee will be conduct an internal business to get started and then we expect to see the secretary at about 9:45 a.m. eastern. this is why bonds is being too. -- this is live on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] ..mac

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> once again we're live as we

are awaiting the marshall homeland security secretary jeh johnson. he will be appearing this morning before the senate judiciary committee to discuss counterterrorism efforts, and talk about the recent attacks in orlando, florida. this is set to start at 9:30 a.m. we are unsure if this story may be impacting the start of the string. the story in the "washington post" reporting along with other sources there was an active shooter on the grounds of andrews air force base. that is the home of air force one. we have not heard of any injuries and as we get more information we will pass that ontonto you. of course, andrews air force base just outside washington, d.c. and were air force one is stored. we will again, as we get more information, pass that on to you. let you know that some of the other events coming up on c-span networks. at 10 a.m. the senate small business committee will hold a

hearing abou of the coverage las and rate increases for flood insurance. that will be live on c-span starting at 10 eastern. also live on c-span at one eastern, christopher hart, chair of the national transportation safety committee, will talk about safety of the development of self-driving cars. white house briefing set for 12:30 p.m. eastern. you can watch that at c-span.org. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> i want to open with executive session, but we don't have a quorum so i'm going to start figuring. i guess now we are just starting it pretty much on time. and there's some things going on that secretary johnson will tell us about that may interfere with our hearing, but i'm going to start figuring. because of those circumstances, i think i'm going to put most of my statement in the record but let me describe what i was up to. i had several instances where i

think that we haven't protected our country adequately. i've got several examples. everybody would recognize the name of katy steinle as an example of where immigration laws have not been adequately carried out and our country is in danger. and some of my analysis of that, and were i think there's some shortcomings within the administration. and this hearing is an oversight hearing that we will get into some of these details. but because of the present situation i think i'm going to put my statement in the record i will turn now to senator leahy. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i'm glad as secretary johnson back to the committee. i think hearings about security in the nation is timely. the massacre of 49 innocent

people, lg deny club in orlando, it is a national tragedy. >> lgbt. a planned parenthood clinic in colorado springs. the historic mother emanuel church in charleston, a jewish community center in kansas city, a sikh temple in oak creek, an elementary school in newtown. we need to take action to keep this country safe. we need to do a now. we know we can have as we did with oklahoma city and we saw one of the worst mass killings in our country. so if we focus on homeland security, we have to look at what all these acts of domestic terrorism have done. many have said, the majority of

american people, we've got to toughen our gun laws. they want to know that congress is finally doing something to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and suspected terrorists. have universal background checks, the same kind of background check i have to go through if i go to a gun store in vermont, but the universal background checks for gun shows and elsewhere so people can't use the internet for gun shows to evade background checks. we need to strengthen our laws -- purchase firearms for drug cartels or other criminal gangs. the department of homeland security, the department of justice, the fbi need more funding to combat acts of terrorism and hate. that shouldn't be a very controversial thing. another step we should take is finally pass comprehensive immigration reform. we did that here in the senate three years ago.

the house did not want to bring it u out even though they had te votes to pass it because it would somehow violate the dennis hastert rule. i don't think that's an excuse to not have immigration reform that bring out of the shadows of millions of people came here for a better life. it improves our national security. we know who is here. we are also safer when we are united earlier this week this committee received divisive testimony from witnesses who cast suspicion on patriotic muslim-americans, including two members of congress. i expect some of the same extreme voices will use the recent bombing in istanbul to congratulate themselves for their position. but make no mistake, no one should congratulate themselves winners an act of terror. rhetoric doesn't make us safer.

certainly doesn't make us safer. it cast suspicion on her neighbors and fellow citizens because they belong to a particular religious, ethnic or racial group and doesn't make us safer to talk about building walls on our borders but it doesn't make us safer to call for a muslim band or to suggest that terrorism appetizers infiltrated the administration or to insinuate that all muslim-americans are somehow complicit in the orlando attack. these statements are not only wrong, but actually create a greater problem. they undermine this a good of this country. they feed right into the warped narratives of groups like isis and al-qaeda. they undermine the state of the muslim-american community which has faced a dramatic increase of hate crimes over the past year. so let's stop the scapegoating, fear mongering, ugly rhetoric and divisive proposals.

we all want to keep our nation strong but let's know that sometimes the reality makes a lot more sense than the record. i put my full statement into the record. >> could i -- [witnesses were sworn in] >> thank you. i thank you very much are coming. everybody knows that jeh johnson is to give homeland security. i've introduced him several times. i will not repeat that. thank you very much, and you proceed accordingly. >> thank you, chairman, senator leahy, members of this committee. i appreciate the opportunity to be here today. you have my prepared statement. i will say just a few things for the record here this morning. first, we do have as reflected

on the news and unfolding situation at andrews air base, which may require that i take a break from this session. and hope you will not mind if i need to do that, chairman. second, let me say a few words about what happened in istanbul two days ago. and what we know at this point. so far based on what we know, it appears that there were three attackers, three explosions. there are reports out of turkey today about the possible identity of these three attackers. we don't have confirmation yet of their nationality or their names. 44 killed, including the attackers, and some 256 injured. one u.s. citizen who suffered i understand minor injuries.

this has the hallmarks of an attack by isil, although there have been no claim of responsibility the last time i looked. here in the homeland, since brussels, we have enhanced security at airports around the nation since the brussels attack in march. our tsa viper teams have been more visible at airports and transit centers generally. the american public should expect to see this july 4 weekend and enhanced security presence at airports, train stations and other transit centers across the country by tsa and state and local law enforcement as well as security personnel generally. we have enhanced aviation security over the last two years since i've been secretary. as i said last month, we will not shortcut aviation security

in response to increased travel volume and longer wait times. i'm happy to report that with the support and approval of congress, we have reprogrammed funds to convert a number of tsos from part-time to full-time to expedite the hiring of additional tsa's, and additional tsa officers, and to make other surges in resources so that wait times today at airports nationwide have been reduced. 99% of the traveling public now has a wait time of 30 minutes or less nationwide. 93% of the traveling public today has a wait time of about 15 minutes or less. we are focus on the nation's busiest airports to ensure we don't have a peek of some of things we saw around memorial day weekend in the month of may. in general, my caution is that

when it comes to public places and public events, we should not focus our attention on things like airports to the exclusion of other public places, public events. as we said in our national terrorism advisory system bulletin issued just about two weeks ago, we are concerned and focus of generally on public events and other places across the nation. and in general we continue to encourage the public to travel, to associate, to celebrate the holidays and celebrate the july 4 holiday, continue to go to public events but be aware and be vigilant. public awareness and public vigilance can't and does make a difference in terms of detecting possible terrorist plots, terrorist activity. so with those comments i will

look forward to your questions. i will be happy to answer any questions you have. thank you. >> thank you very much. we will have -- we are going to seven minute rounds for questions. last week the supreme court affirmed the decision on the fifth circuit that keeps in place a nationwide injunction on the president's executive action to effectively legalized millions of undocumented immigrants. i'd like a commitment from you today that the administration will not implement any administrative work around of the supreme court decision. >> chairman, the supreme court equally divided vote affirmed the decision of the fifth circuit, and we intend to abide by the injunction. >> as i said in my opening statement, although i didn't read the entire statement, katy

steinle was killed in san francisco one year ago today. in the last year nothing noticeable has changed. more american families are suffering from because loved ones have been murdered or killed i criminal immigrants. san francisco is a sanctuary jurisdiction. instead of changing their ways last month, the board of supervisors upheld a sanctuary policies for people in the country violating our laws. do you feel such a enough tools in your arsenal to go after sanctuary jurisdictions? >> i would like to see more cooperation from counties and cities -- [shouting]

>> not one more deportation. not one more deportation. [shouting] >> we will stand in recess. >> not one more deportation. not one more deportation. not one more deportation. not one more deportation. not one more deportation. >> would you proceed, or did you finish? >> yes. [inaudible] >> we will stand in recess. [inaudible]

>> you have one warning. [inaudible] >> you have blood on your hands. he was deported where he met death. jeh johnson, you have blood on your hands. in all of deportation. jeh johnson, you have blood on your hands. i'[inaudible]

>> your one warning just went out. >> i want to be arrested. >> it will be very efficient if anybody else wants to be stand up and be removed, and starting the meeting again. [inaudible] >> jeh johnson, you have blood on your hands. into deportation -- in the deportation.

>> if anybody else wants to exercise their right to speak, do it now, please. okay. secretary johnson, i don't know whether you completed the answer to my question, but if you would proceed i would appreciate it. >> yes. in general, but like to see more cooperation from various counties and cities in terms of working with us on immigration enforcement. we disc you'd -- discontinued the program because it wasn't working. there was some 14,000 detainees by our immigration enforcement personnel. they were not acted upon in a number of counties and cities across the country. we replace it with a priority enforcement program which i believe solves the political and legal controversy that we were

seeing of the 25 counties that were the most resistant to our detainers, 17 of those 25 are now working with us again on the enforcement of our immigration priorities. i think that is a good thing for public safety. we continue to have these conversation with a number of jurisdictions. i will note that i've had conversations with city officials in philadelphia and in the county, without success so far. and i've urged -- cook county -- it for the benefit of the public safety that dangerous criminals not to be released who are removable so that our immigration enforcement personnel have to go find them again on the streets and round them up and put them in deportation proceedings. we prefer cooperation in this regard. as i said, the 25 jurisdictions

that were resisting as before, the largest ones, 17 are now working with us again. this is a work in progress and there are those where we need to continue to make progress. >> i think in the final analysis and then i'm going to go to senator leahy, that what you just told us, talking to some cities and not getting cooperation and in 17 cities where you say you are getting cooperation, that the situation with sanctuary cities isn't illegal situation in violation of federal law. i think that's a very good reason why a couple weeks from now or maybe next week even we will have a vote on senator toomey's amendment in regard to sanctuary cities and help people take this testimony we have had here where the secretary says in some cases his program works, in

some cases it doesn't come and particularly in chicago and new york city as an example, the need for the legislation. senator leahy. >> thank you. you know, we've talked about executive orders. i mean, we had the supreme court couldn't reach a decision in u.s. taxes. that's one of the reasons we now have a quandary concerning expanding daca, a 4-4 split. ..