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from the white house today, president biden is set to deliver remarks on rebuilding american manufacturing at 1:45 eastern. but we'll begin today outside of washington, d.c. yesterday four more states announced timelines for lifting statewide school mask mandates. with those announcements from delaware, connecticut, new jersey and oregon, now just a dozen mostly blue states have statewide school mask mandates without an announced date for ending them. this morning, we're getting your reaction to the moves impacting students. if you support lifting mandatory mask mandates for students, it's 202-748-8001. if you oppose lifting those mandatory mask mandates for students 202-748-8000 and a special line for residents of delaware, connecticut, new jersey and oregon getting your reaction on 202-748-8002. you can also send us a text.

202-748-8003. otherwise catch up with us on social media facebook.com//cspan. very good tuesday morning to you. you can go ahead ask start calling in now. this is the story from npr this morning. oregon the latest state to set plans to lift its statewide mask mandate for schools. that was yesterday following announcements earlier in the day from new jersey, connecticut and delaware. noting some of the timelines on those moves. connecticut governor ned lamont ending in schools and child care centers on february 28th. in oregon and delaware, those school mask mandates set to be lifted on march 31st. those are the timelines. this will start in the garden state in new jersey. governor phil murphy at his press conference yesterday. this video courtesy of the governor's office.

>> yeah, we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't recommend that you could lift it. but you also, you have to know your own health situation. if you've got some, i would think co-morbidity or if the district thinks there is a particular outbreak in that community. but all other things being equal, healthy child, going to school, they're going without a mask on march 7th. but, again, two things. you have to reserve the right as a district, reserves the right to keep something in place and, secondly, think most importantly, an individual based on their own health reserves that right. and we cannot stigmatize a decision like that. listen, we're trying to get, give it all the unpopular decisions we made when politics was really on the front burner. i think i will agree with you we'll disavow the premise of the

question. you're trying to get a whole bunch of data streams together and make the best call you can. and, so, it's a combination of cases, hospitalizations, positivity rates of transmission all going dramatically in the right direction. it is trying to project out what those data streams look like. weeks ahead of time. it's acknowledging that vaccination rates continue to creep up among kids who are more recently eligible and not as fast as we would like, but getting slowly but surely. the acknowledgment that judy mentioned that the committee is likely to admit and approve vaccines for kids under 5 years old. that combination has given us the sense that sort of plus or minus a month from now is the right time to do it. again, we're dealing with a pandemic. it's like dealing with mother

nature. you do the best you can. as i said, it's humbled us so many times in the past. but this feels right to us. >> governor phil murphy yesterday at that press conference with that announcement and rest of his covid briefing. you can watch that on our website at cspan.org if you want to watch it in its entirety. this map from the national academy of state health policy. showing in green right now the 16 states, the mostly blue states that have statewide school mask mandates. that 16 number set now to drop to 12 by the end of march with the announcements yesterday from the states as we said of connecticut, delaware, new jersey and oregon, the fourth yesterday. taking your phone calls. want to hear your thoughts on statewide school mask mandates where they support them, whether you oppose them. phone lines if you support 202-748-8001. if you oppose 202-748-8000.

if you're in connecticut, new jersey, delaware or oregon 202-748-8002. white house press secretary jen psaki asked about the new jersey move yesterday. here is her response. >> the cdc is still recommending universal masking in schools. >> that still remains our recommendations. >> are you pleased with the new jersey governor's decision? >> our advice to every school district is to abide by public health guidelines. at this point the cdc is advising that masks can delay reduced transmission and also a number of other mitigation measures in place but that continues to be cdc guidance. that is always up to local school districts to determine what they implement. >> a governor phil murphy so closely aligned with this administration get ahead of the medical experts and say, never mind what they say, school

districts, you decide. >> that has been our policy and point of view. our policy from the federal government is to continue to advise everybody to abide by public health guidelines. >> perhaps the public thinks it's time for a inge chain the federal guidelines? >> we've seen in polling that the public is tired of covid, we understand that. so are we. there have been some good signs recently a decrease in hospitalizations around the country and, again, we're in constant touch about what ittic loos like moving forward. but our responsibility as the federal government is to rely on the data and the science that is being analyzed by our public health experts and we'll continue to rely on that for what recommendations we're making. >> jen psaki in the white house briefing room yesterday. getting your reaction this morning to these moves in four states and specifically want to talk to residents of connecticut, delaware, new jersey and oregon on a special line for you. but phone lines open to viewers across the country this morning. we'll start with deandre out of

north miami beach. good morning. go ahead. >> good morning, cspan. good morning, america. i definitely oppose these mandates first off because when you put the mask on you're bringing in your own carbon monoxide. you're going to lock the kids up with masks on with the wifi routers they have on the ceiling right above the kids radiating them constantly and just going to be a pretext for them to try to lock our kids in school, quarantine them, force vaccinate them and the kids have the best immune systems. so we shouldn't be vaccinating them anyways. >> do you have kids? >> caller: say it again. >> do you have kids? >> caller: i got three nieces and a nephew, that are basically my kids, as well. you know, i full on don't want them in the school that has wifi routers that are like industry level like frequency that is

supposed to be on high rises and they is it on the classrooms. >> we'll hold the conversation on wifi routers for another day. we're talking about masking mandates. we've talked about vaccine mandates quite a bit in our segments here on covid. but statewide school masking mandates is the conversation this morning. dana, flint, michigan, good morning. >> caller: good morning. good morning, america. >> go ahead. your thoughts on the lifting of these school mask mandates in these four states and this trend going on around the country in the states that still have them. >> caller: well, i don't think that we should encourage people not to wear masks. i think we should also encourage everyone to get vaccinated. if you consider the possible origins of the virus, dictators so to speak, this is their way

of trying to get at us. we got to get this right. >> so, dana, this isn't encouraging people not to wear masks but pulling back the mandatory mandate statewide. for example, in new jersey school districts after march 7th can still decide on masking on mandates in specific school districts or schools to control outbreaks or spread in connecticut. it can be decided by school districts. this is just the statewide. this has to happen for every school in this state. and then individual students can, of course, make their own choices. >> caller: yes, i agree. i agree with that. i agree with that. and just beyond that, i'm going to go above and beyond kind of person. everybody wear your masks. i don't care if your governor says no mask mandate. you saw the trouble that they had in texas when he said that. so, i agree.

got to keep our country strong because someone is responsible of unleashing this coronavirus on us to begin with. >> when you say everyone wear your masks, some people ask for how long? when does it end? >> until we get the numbers down to a point where, you know, this is the worldwide thing. this is the pandemic. we're not in the bubble here in the united states. we should just keep doing it until we are in the clear and it's going to be, i think, i think it is going to be for a few more years maybe. just be patient. our lives are at stake. consider the source where the coronavirus initiated from the first place. >> right. that's dana in michigan this morning. from the governors themselves tweeting about these mask mandates in schools. first to the first state to delaware. governor john carney saying yesterday, we're lifting delaware statewide mask mandate

on february 11th. the mask mandate in public and private schools and child care facilities expires on thursday march 31st saying we're in a much better place than we were several weeks ago. his tweet yesterday morning. governor ned lamont from connecticut saying we made considerable progress against covid infection rates have dropped and folks across connecticut have many tools in hand to keep people safe. school mandates will be decided by the school, not the state. the decision was not made lightly. commissioners at public health department in the state decided at length and also consulted with other governors in our region who have or will be making similar moves soon. the governor of connecticut making his announcement on the same day as the governor of new jersey and delaware and then the departments of health out in oregon, as well, making that

announcement yesterday. so, these moves happening across the country. getting your reaction this morning. this is dana in spokane, washington. good morning. >> caller: morning. morning. you know, i can't believe we ever had these kids in masks. all the studies that have been done masks are very ineffective in, you know, the spread of this disease. and children weren't ever at risk. of dying from this disease. unless they had underlying conditions. the whole thing was insane, as far as i'm concerned. >> do you have kids, dan? >> caller: they're grown. if i had kids now, they wouldn't have been wearing masks. i tell you, that's child abuse. plain and simple. the damage that we've done to our children. keeping them out of school and then making them wear masks. it's insane.

>> dan in washington. one of those states that made the announcement yesterday. to connecticut, waterbury, this is deborah. good morning. >> caller: morning. >> how do you feel about this move? >> caller: i'm not in favor of it even though our positivity rate has gone down recently, it can go up and surge at any time. it could happen quickly. i just had one of my best friend had her niece pass away just on sunday from covid and she's only 30 years old. she was vaccinated. but she was around people who weren't vaccinated. and it's very sad and heartbreaking. and so i've been trying since this whole thing started to get people to wear their masks and

to get vaccinated. and i think it's premature for the governor of connecticut and other states to lift the mandate. >> theresa out of danridge, tennessee. good morning. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. excuse me. i don't support any mandates in schools. i live in a state that banned all mask mandates. but i'd say it's completely political. we knew in the election season this year that they were going to end the mandate just in time for the elections to get rolled out because they are taking so much heat about enforcing these mandates. when was the last time you heard joe biden say get the vaccine or get a booster? it's all ended. stacy abrams has been put through the ringer because she's being seen with a mask on while the children are masked.

are you there? >> yes, ma'am. go ahead, finish your thought. >> caller: so we all know it's political. we knew it was going to happen. they put our kids in masks to beat donald trump and now they'll take them out to try to win. i heard randy weingarden on msnbc this morning talking about what the mask has done to our children in the school district. she hadn't been worried about that for two years, you know. but all of a sudden now. and then one more other thing, glenn youngkin and desantis stopped their mandate and all they've catched is grief and all kinds of bad press for doing it. now all of a sudden democrats aren't receiving the same bad threats when they do it. it's all political. >> that's theresa in tennessee. glenn youngkin made districts

requiring mask mandates one of his first moves when he took office in the old dominion prompting several lawsuits challenging that in the state of virginia. the caller bringing in randi and quoted in "washington post" today on the issue of mask mandates in the four states we're talking about. said monday that she wants guidelines for the centers for disease control and prevention about when and how schools can lift these rules. she asked the agency to provide them. that story going on to quote her saying we knew back in the fall that there needed to be an off ramp on school mask mandates but it has to be informed by metrics and by science and not by politics. the idea of an off ramp here and what a normal, what normalcy looks like, the viewer was asking about joe biden's recent

statements on this. he was recently asked in a recent press conference about what life looks like, what normalcy looks like after covid. here's a bit of that exchange. >> based on your conversations with your health advisors, what type of restrictions do you imagine being on americans this time next year and what does the new normal look like for social gatherings and travel to you? >> well, the answer is i hope the new normal will be that we don't have, still have 30 some million people not vaccinated. i hope the new normal is people have seen what their own interest is and taken advantage of what we have available to us. number two with the pill that is appears to be efficacious as it seems to be, that they're going to be able to deal with this virus in a way that after the fact you have an ability to make sure you don't get very sick.

number three, i would hope that what happens is the rest of the world does what i'm doing and provides significant amounts of the vaccine to the rest of the world. because it's not sufficient that we just have this country not have the virus or be able to control the virus, but that we can't pull the wool high enough to keep the new variant out. one thing i want to do and we're contemplating figuring out how to do, contemplating how to get done and that is how do we move in a direction where the world itself is vaccinated. it's not enough just to vaccinate 340, fully vaccinate 340 million people in the united states. that's not enough. president biden talking about what a new normal might look

like. talking this morning about the statewide mask mandates. timelines for those to be lifted in four states yesterday. connecticut, delaware, new jersey, oregon. specific lines set aside for people in those states to get your reaction. cindy, good morning. >> caller: good morning. hi. i do support lifting the mask mandate i think governor lamont has been pretty even handed throughout this whole thing. but it is an election year for him. i do believe some of this is political. the cdc has been wrong on a lot of stuff. why we should do this ahead of the cdc guidelines i'm not so sure. i think they've done studies, but they squashed them because they didn't get the results they wanted. but i do approve -- >> what makes you think they're squashing studies, cindy? where are you seeing that?

>> caller: i did see a report today how they canned a study in june of 2021 because it wasn't getting the results that they wanted, which was, you know, to promote the mandate. you know, there's a lot of other countries seem to be way ahead of us on a lot of things. i don't think we're doing the randomized studs a that we should be doing. with that being said, i don't know what is going to stop the teachers unions. lamont left that caveat for the school districts to decide ultimately. and i don't know if the same thing is going to happen here what's happening in virginia, where youngkin for lifting the mandate. you know, i don't know if the same results can happen here in a blue state. so i do support it. it is very bad for the kids.

we've known this for a long time. yeah, i think it's a good thing. i just wish we stopped using each other as political footballs for all of this. if we want to go by the science. let's do the science and the same with now there's -- >> cindy, we'll take your point. you brought up virginia. couple callers bringing up what's happening in virginia with the republican governor elected there. this is paul in chesapeake, virginia. good morning. >> caller: first off i'd like to say you took a lot of heat yesterday and you did a really good job, i think. >> it comes with the job, paul. but go ahead. your thoughts on this school mask mandates. certainly an issue in virginia. >> caller: yeah. it's mainly the thing in virginia is that it's mainly the d.c. beltway that is challenging

governor youngkin's lifting of the mask mandate. and it's d.c. beltway. and the interesting thing that got me was when you showed the map of all the few states that still have school mask mandates. it's amazing how all of a sudden when four major democrat held areas are getting all this press conference and praise for lifting the mandate when many of these states have been way, way ahead of this and they have been following the science and not the political jargon from the cdc and the white house. >> you think it's crazy that they've gotten the last 24 hours, you think they've mostly

gotten applause for doing this? >> caller: oh, it's been all about them. and how amazing it's about time. how the media is praising them and saying how it's about time that they did this. and the great job that they're all doing for putting out this timeline. it's just amazing how with the mid terms coming up that they have done this and started listening to the actually, actually listening to the science. >> so taking a look at that map again. it will pop up on your screen in just a second. the states on that map that are in purple are the states that have specific bans on school mask mandates. and some of those dating back many months at this point and we've talked about certainly heard about the one specifically in texas and florida, but the purple states on that map, the

ones that have bans on school mask mandates. i wonder what your sense was of the coverage of those bans on statewide school mask mandates. >> caller: well my opinion on the state mandates, those states in purple, you know, again i believe they should go back to letting the local school districts handle the local issue. that is what they have always said. to me the federal government definitely -- i come from a family of educators and to me the federal government just needs to let the states handle their own educational system. and return it back to the local

localities and let them handle it. >> so, paul, if arlington and alexandria, those sort of inside the beltway districts, counties in virginia, if they want to have a school mask mandate for all of their students regardless of whatever vaccination status, you'd be okay with that for arlington and alexandria, if that's the way the local system wants to go, is that what you're saying? >> well, yeah, i believe it should be left to the local school boards. but, again, the local school boards are elected. now, i'm down in tide water and right now it's optional in the schools. they are following the governor's decision. and i've got two grandchildren. one in kindergarten and one in fifth grade and they're doing just fine right now.

and it's really a good thing. again, with the mask mandates i just think they're out of control and it's just become too political, especially in a mid term year. we've been going through this for two years. it's time the politics came out of it and let people make their own risk assessments. >> paul down in chesapeake, virginia. this is leo in harmon, illinois. good morning, you're next. >> caller: yeah. my sister died here from the covid virus about three weeks ago we buried her. >> i'm sorry for your loss, leo. >> caller: she was at a birthday party with her grandchild and she took her mask off just long enough to eat the cake and that's all it took her to get the virus and then she died from

it. >> i'm very sorry for your loss, leo. >> caller: i believe -- and i was around a person here because i can't get vaccinated because i have a deal where i can't get vaccinated and neither could she. and so we can't get vaccinated, not because we don't want to, but we have a medical condition where we can't. i was around a person that he had the virus and i didn't know it and i was wearing my n-95 mask and i was standing right next to him and i never got the virus at all. so, i feel the masks do help. but you know the kids in school, you know the little kids. they don't wear their masks half the time. their nose is exposed and, you know, it's on their mouth or their children.

chin. you can't get the kids to wear the masks half the time. but i still do think the masks do help from spreading the virus. >> leo, thanks for the call from harmon, illinois. this is earl in nashville, georgia. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you doing? >> doing well. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i mean i just want to make a couple comments and i hope you don't cut me off. there's one thing i would like to say that people are already complaining about. this is a pledge. if people actually took the time and obeyed their laws and stuff and got tested and i think we would have been a better scene. i also have three grandkids that live in atlanta, georgia, and they're in school. my grandkids wear the masks all the time and my 8-year-old is honor roll student two years

straight wearing a mask. so, my thing is if people want to put politics into stuff. it's not the politics. it's that the people. if you want to take power over your mind or control and you do the right thing, it will be okay. we need to stop letting democrats and republicans and we need to stop that. that's what got us in the problem today. we blame, we blame the leaders of the country. you know, so, yes, i agree to it. you know, that this mask mandate to a certain extent the number will go down because i don't want my grandkid to go to school and get sick behind a child not wearing the mask. can't go to school coughing and stuff. if a parent send their child to school knowing that child is coughing, send that child to school and that child gets

someone else sick, i fault that parent for it. >> that's earl in nashville, georgia. 7:30 on the east coast. halfway through this first hour this morning. in the first hour talking about statewide school mask mandates. four states sunsetting the statewide mask mandates for mostly blue states, new jersey, delaware, oregon. in connecticut, governor ned lamont ending the mandate in schools and child care centers on february 28th. in new jersey, it's effective march 7th. in delaware and oregon, it's march 31st. showing you the statements yesterday from the governors on the east coast. this is governor kate brown from oregon yesterday. oregonians have stepped up during the omicron surge wearing masks, getting vaccinated and

boosted. ask keeping each other safe. because of your actions, oregon will lift the mask requirements no late march 31st. many of these requirements including the ones in new jersey, connecticut, allowing individual school systems to bring back mask mandates, if they deem them necessary in response to surges but we're talking about the statewide mask mandate. getting your reaction on phone lines and a special line for residents of connecticut, delaware, new jersey and oregon. out of new york, this is sue. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i work in an elementary cafeteria. and i think it is so harmful for these children to have these masks on. they eat their lunch, they do not wipe their faces, they put their mask back on and it's just

harmful to these little children. working in an elementary building, people that think that these children should keep their mask on, maybe they should experience being around little children with their mask on. one day i heard this little girl all upset because some little boy got near her. they're afraid to be near each other now. i am just so excited that they are going to get rid of the mask mandate some day soon, i hope. it's really very harmful mentally and physically to these children. >> sue, thanks for the call. >> caller: thank you. >> in new york, here's the latest. the reporting from "wall street journal" and their wrap up of what's going on. in new york a judge in long island suspended the mandate after health officials needed approval from the legislature and reinstated a day later and the case is spending. the governor said monday that she was hoping to get to a place

where new york could lift its school mask mandate, but that she wanted to see higher rates of vaccination among elementary aged children. some school leaders calling on the governor to allow districts or parental choice in new york. that's the latest from there. back to the garden state. this is janine. good morning. >> caller: good morning. good morning. i definitely support dropping the mask mandate at school. i am a parent of a 4-year-old and 2-year-old. my 4-year-old son does attend public school. it is, it's heartbreaking seeing all these young children walking around with a mask on their face all day long. they don't wear it properly. most of them are wearing a piece of cloth over their face, which does nothing to stop the virus. back when this started coming out with covid, the government said you must wear an n95 mask. those are the ones that will protect you. and then they changed their mind

and said just put a piece of cloth over your face and that will help you. they did it because people did not have access to the n95 mask. they were giving people a false sense of security. put a mask on. it is safe. it will protect you. these children are getting scared of adults. i have a 2-year-old born into this pandemic. that's the only thing she knows is walking around and seeing adults with masks on their face. children are experiencing more and more speech delays and experiencing more upper body respiratory infections because they're constantly breathing in the germs. the teachers took a job teaching knowing they're going to be around children with germs. germs are little germ factories. the masks need to go. we cannot be hiding behind a mask and giving parents false sense of security that your child is safe at school. children have germs in them. that was known ever since school

has started. children go to school, they get sick, they spread their germs. >> do you mind if i ask. we are at some point are expecting vaccines to be approved for the youngest kids, kind of the 0 to 5 year olds. those trials still happening, still waiting on the data. it seems to be moving in that direction. your kids are in that age range. would you get your kids vaccinated when it becomes available? >> caller: absolutely not. i will not vaccinate myself. my husband will not be vaccinated. i do not believe in these vaccines that were pushed so rapidly. no long-term study done about this. anybody who says they are safe, they're lying to you. the government, again, is trying to give you a false sense of security pushing these vaccines. this is not, you cannot vaccinate yourself out of this pandemic. this pandemic, the covid-19 is here to stay. thanks, china, for giving it to

us. people need to understand this is going to be here. pharmaceutical companies want to keep us sick. they don't want to keep us healthy because they won't make money. >> one more question. with your children, did you get them vaccinated for the other series of vaccines, the other series of childhood vaccines, measles, mumps, rubella and all the other ones the kids get? >> caller: absolutely. those are true vaccines. you just get a mild case of it. that's nonsense. you really have to think about the pharmaceutical companies. they pushed this too soon. they say it's free. it's not free. i absolutely get my children vaccinated. i'm not an antivaxer. i'm antithis vaccine. we don't know what it is going to do to us. what about that super spreading aids that is now prevalent in the netherlands. this is creating more and more health problems.

you can't just keep getting a booster shot and booster shot and keep thinking this is going to make you better. if you're high risk, get it. people such as myself and my family, we don't need this vaccine. we need to just keep washing your hands, practice good hygiene. if you have a little runny nose, stay home. stay away from other people. >> that is janine out of new jersey this morning. taking your phone calls again. if you support lifting statewide school mask mandates. if you oppose and a phone line for those folks in a specific state that's new jersey, connecticut, delaware and oregon. it was yesterday on this program that we were joined by jennifer, an epidemiologist at johns hopkins university and we talked about masks for kids at schools. this is what she had to say. >> you know, i've got two kids in school.

you know, my daughter's in kindergarten. she's been wearing a mask in a school setting now for close to three years. so, i don't love it that they're still wearing it. right now i think it's offering some operational advantages in terms of our kids' school has not closed down in this recent wave of cases. i'm very grateful of that. i'm also grateful when i hear of cases in the school i can take a worry off because they're vaccinated and wearing masks and i can brush it off as not a big deal. i do think it's really important that we figure out how and when to get masks off of our kids and sooner rather than later. i think it's not just a simple fact of saying yes now and i think we need to make sure teachers feel safe and the adult staff in the schools feel safe. one because it's nice and also

pragmatic. the magic that happens in the classroom is there because the teachers are there hapfully and not feeling like they're there under dures. my tolerance may be higher than others and i would be okay sending them to school without masks. i don't know if there are other kids in their classrooms that have medical vulnerabilivulnera. it's more complicated than maybe the headlines portray. but i think we as a society and as communities need to define, define when to take off masks and, frankly, to do it sooner rather than later. >> jennifer from johns hopkins university. that was yesterday on this program. if you want to watch the segment in its entirety, you can do so on our website at cspan.org. back to your phone calls. 20 minutes left to talk about statewide school mask mandates.

vivian pinebluff, arkansas. good morning, you're next. >> caller: good morning. i just wanted to make a couple observations. i'm in a state where we have so far identified well over 800,000 total cases, which about 900, almost 1,000 added just yesterday. we're in, we're just coming off a second spike. people are still dying. we've had a total of almost 10,000 deaths in our state. and people forget, you know, when we shut down the schools, people -- we didn't know what the impact was on children in our state. thankfully we've only had two pediatric recorded pediatric covid deaths. but we still don't have total

vaccine protection for our children. and i think that we are still suffering from misinformation and fear and politatization from the last administration. that's just a fact. and, you know, individuals making statements about how harmful the mask mandate is when this little thing called science says that masks do help. prevent the spread of the virus. period. we know that the vaccine is working. we have proof that people who are still contracting the virus and people still dying from the virus and in some cases more children than others more than not. most of those people, over 90%

of the people still being affected are those not vaccinated. >> that's vivian in arkansas. vivian, you're talking about some of the numbers out there in your state nationwide. we're at 903,864 death since the beginning of the covid pandemic. the front page of "the washington post" has a scene from the steps of the capitol yesterday that congressional leader moment of silence for the 900,000 american lives lost to covid-19. it was speaker nancy pelosi standing there with other congressional lawmakers holding that moment of silence and holding candles and if you want to watch that, you can do so on our website, cspan.org. barry in williamwilliamsburg, v, you're next. >> caller: good morning. yeah, i support, i call them, i support the lifting of the mandates because i don't really

support mandating. i believe if you feel that your life is in danger and you want to go indoors, wear a mask. that should be your own common sense. the state may encourage or the government may encourage you to, but it's just we act like a penal colony where everything has to be penalized for not doing something. vaccines. i have to get the vaccine, but i can't see mandating it to anybody. it's just ridiculous. >> on vaccine mandates. the vast majority of school systems in this country require children to have a whole series of vaccines to be able to come to public schools. are you okay with those mandates? >> caller: sure. if the problem that you're

vaccinating against like a higher death rate. like maybe 25% death rate, i can understand that, yes. that's when the government should step in. but 90% of the time they just need to simply encourage you to do something, not mandate anything. >> barry, we're at a seven-day average right now of 2,685 americans dying every day of covid-19. does that concern you? that level. >> caller: well, i mean. a lot of people die every day. it's just now that the reason they're dying is probably natural conditions, plus the covid. but, i mean, it's just -- we need to worry more about -- >> that's barry in williamsburg. this is john in harvey, illinois. good morning. >> caller: i do not want to see the states regulate.

i'd do anything without the science. first of all, states should be doing this. the federal government should do. the federal government should be running the whole thing simply because i was here in 1955 when dr. joan came out with polio vaccine. and when he came out with the polio, it took to the schools. i was a student. they vaccinated all the children then asked the parent. they just went ahead and vaccinated them. and then after that, it was gone. nobody talked about polio any more. they still don't talk about polio. but the thing of it is, they politicized this thing. this thing has been kicked around like a football. when we came back from vietnam in the '60s after fighting over there for the rights of the veet meez people. when you're new to the states

lik mississippi, alabama, georgia, we couldn't even vote -- >> on the issue of mask mandates in school, you think that should be something the federal government should say yes or no to for every student nationwide. that's what you're saying? >> caller: that's right. just like they were going to do for the swine flu when carter was in there. >> what would you say to somebody who says the school system, the crowding of schools, the spacing issues are different in a city like new york city than in a rural school in montana and that mask mandates should be different for those two systems? >> caller: the science should be totally controlled by the federal government. so, the science the formula and all of that would be the same. it would be the same formula

each time for all three of the vaccinations. okay. it would be the same, there would be no different one over here in alabama and different one in mississippi. just let the federal government come in and do it and go on. >> that's john in illinois. this is blairstown, new jersey. doug, go on. your thoughts on your governor's move yesterday? >> caller: yeah. i mean, i just -- what's wrong with him doing it now, though. anyway, i guess it's a start. the point i'm trying to make is last week a john hopkins study came out saying these lockdowns only helped one-fifth percent of helping covid and they knew this so why did they keep doing it? why is the main stream media not covering this? you know what, it's upsetting that our kids have to wear these masks when they're breathing in dirty, recycled air. they are not always using brand-new masks.

it should have been done a long time ago. it is a step. one thing you have to remember the democrats are the ones that wanted these lockdowns and they wanted the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates. and that's undeniable. people better remember this. the democrats did this. >> doug on that john hopkins study you talk about. we talked about that yesterday. we played a clip just a little while ago and we asked about that study. if you're interested in it and her response to it, you can just search nuzzo in the search bar at the top of our web page at cspan.org and watch that segment if that's something you want to look in to a little bit more. shirley, new york city. good morning. shirley, you with us? got to stick by your phone, shirley. this is rudy, douglas, georgia. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'm 100% in support of maintaining the mask mandates.

my wife is a schoolteacher here in georgia and they give the students here the option and she has had kids coming in coughing whose parents allow them to wear a mask and it jeopardizes her health and the health of the other students. you know, i'm a pastor and we asked our parishioners to wear a mask. and sunday one young lady refused to wear a mask and refused to have her children wear a mask. so i'm going to counsel with her on the efficacies of wearing a mask. and then i'm going to give her the option to listen to us on youtube and listen to us on facebook because it's just a precaution. and what i think really happened is when that last administration so frequently ignored the idea

of wearing masks, it kind of misled people. i'm up to 50 personal friends, people i knew well in high school and college and fellow pastors who have died from this vaccine. 50. i'm up to 50. so, this thing is real. >> rudy, as a pastor, you talk about the 50 people you know who have died of this. we passed 900,000 americans who have died of this and marked that moment on the steps of the capitol. according to the latest number, 3,000. 3,900 americans died of this. that's just the percentage of those who died around the world. as a pastor, if members of your congregation come up and say why is this happening, what do you say to them? because what god is trying to do is let the world know that there's more to the word of god than prosperity and money and

name it and claim it, snatch it and grab it. he wants us to love one another, work with one another and forgive one another worldwide and god has shut the whole thing down all over the world. trying to get man to be more humane and loving toward one another. the bible tells us that we are to love one another. pray for those who despitefully use us and we've gotten away from christian biblical principles to this whole concept of everything is centered around morality and everything is right. and i just think it's a sign from god that he wants us to come back to him and treat each other the way the bible says we should treat one another. >> and, rudy, what do you say if they ask, how many more have to

die for man and woman to learn that lesson? >> the sad part about it is that satan is the author of deception. and it's satan's job to trick us and to deceive us. you remember in the bible where moses told people if you just look up and you'll live and some people were to look up and died. the other thing that happens to us is with this 24-hour media, you almost need to be a linguist. i'm a college graduate and i have to almost use all the energy that i have just to decipher all these mixed messages that go on 24 hours a day, seven days a week on your webpage, on facebook, television, your cell phone. like going through a gauntlet full of smoke.

but basically this virus and like you said has killed over 900,000 people and for people to be cavalier about that number is. >> that's rudy in georgia. this is barbara is it patascala? >> caller: yes. >> go ahead, ma'am. >> caller: retired teacher here. i do appreciate the freedom that we have to call in. my statement is we're talking about a mask mandate here, not vaccinations which you keep referring to. let's talk about the mask mandate. back when it first started, common sense, thank god, kicked in for a lot of us. i took some people with me and i said, let's watch the store. let's watch people with these masks. constantly they touched them and

touched them and touched them. and then they'd touch the doors and touch the stuff in the store, all of it. and all they were doing was spreading the virus with these masks. constantly touching the mask, breathing on and spreading the germs. the masks spread germs. they did not help. that's the statement. thank you. >> ernie in pennsylvania. good morning, you're next. >> caller: good morning, john. everyone is forgetting basic facts. for the last 20 years the third leading cause of death in america is from the medical establishment with their prescription drugs and vaccins and the wrong protocols, exercised in hospitals, et cetera. and for some reason with all

these lockdowns, mandates, protocols to protect us, that's what they're using. that's a very nice disguised way to brainwash people. they have caused many people today to be part of. they're all in lock step where you see them still wearing masks and running to get in line to get vaccinated without knowing what they're putting into their bodies. without knowing that no masks as of today can prevent a very minute micron virus, prevent it from going into your body by inhaling and exhaling. >> that's ernie in pennsylvania. eric in buffalo, new york. good morning. you're next. >> caller: yeah, how you doing? i support masks because you said

it right off about the numbers of dead people every day from this virus. 2,600 something. that's horrible. horrible. and even if masks prevent one death, you know what i'm saying, that's a step in the right direction. step in the right direction. kids are resilient. kids will bounce back. i understand they could have some problems with, you know, speech or learning. but it might bring that shy kid out, if the shy kid's got a mask on, it might bring them out of their shell. another thing they're saying, political, they turn to political. i think donald trump turned to political when he didn't want to bring the boat in, the cruise ship, because his political numbers would go up. but i support masks. and science is evolving. we have to be patient. somebody has to tell us what to do. everybody doesn't like mandates, but somebody has to tell us what to do. somebody has to step in and be the adult in the room.

thank you. >> that's eric out of buffalo, new york. time for a couple of more minutes on this topic, if you want to keep calling in. we've shown you statements from governors that made those moves yesterday. also at a recent national governors association conference here in washington, dc, it was the chair of the national governors association, asa hutchinson, who spoke to president joe biden on this issue of mask mandates in school. here is a brief clip from that exchange. >> i want to thank you for your clarity on keeping schools open. your voice has been important from a national perspective. our schools are open, in-classroom instruction. and thank you for that clarity. a couple of things i hope that you will address today is, we need the cdc to help us to have the right standards to end this pandemic and move to more

endemic status. that's an important element that we as governors in a bipartisan way that we hope cdc can help to define that more clearly. we want to go from today to nor normal. >> governor asa hutchinson recently at the white house. ron from laporte, indiana is next. good morning. >> caller: hi, good morning. i have a couple of things to say about my father-in-law used to wear a mask especially during the holidays when we went shopping. if he went in, he wore a mask, just for the flu or colds or whatever. and it helped, obviously, he was no fool for sure. the increase in the -- you're going to have -- we used to these people -- that was back in the '60s, but down the coast they had these epidemics with

ground squirrels, he would go through like every nine years and just -- they would overpopulate and get wiped out and take another nine years for them to build back up again. just too many people, is part of the problem. there's -- god, i'm trying to read my notes here and figure out -- oh, my brother-in-law just got it. they don't wear their masks. the last -- they say they wear their masks, but every picture we see of them, they're not wearing their masks. we had some -- my wife's in-laws, sister's, in-laws, they died from it. there must be a reason for everything, it's turn, turn, turn. we have a period when we have to do things and we don't do things. >> that's ron in indiana. our last caller in this first

segment of "the washington journal." stick around, plenty more to discuss this morning, including up next we'll be joined by scott paul oflliance for american manufacturing to talk about the president's manufacturing push and his expected statements on that front in dc today. later, "the national journal's josh kraushaar will join us to discuss campaign '22. stick around, we'll be right back. this week on the c-span networks. the house and senate are both in session. the house takes up legislation to fund the government past a february 18th, midnight, deadline to avert a shutdown. the senate will follow suit on that bill. they'll continue work on president biden's judicial and consecutive nominations.

today, confirmation hearings for lieutenant general michael carilla. and at 10:00 a.m. eastern, u.s. surgeon general dr. vivek murphy testifies before the senate finance committee on shortfalls in mental health care for children and teenagers in america. on wednesday, at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3, the senate commerce committee holds a confirmation hearing for federal communications commission head. also the chair of the commodity futures trading commission testifies before the senate agriculture committee. watch this week live on the c-span networks or on c-span now, our mobile video app. also head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on demand any time.

c-span. your unfiltered view of government. c-spanshop.org is c-span's online score. browse through c-span's products. there's something for every c-span fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. shop now or any time at c-spanshop.org. "washington journal" continues. >> a conversation on u.s. manufacturing now with scott paul, president of the alliance for american manufacturing. we're having this conversation on the day we're expecting to hear from president biden on this issue. but before we get to those remarks, scott paul, remind viewers what the alliance is, what your mission is, how you came about. >> john, thank you. it's very good to be with you and your listeners today. the alliance for american

manufacturing is a nonprofit partnership between the united steelworkers union, america's largest industrial union, and some leading u.s. manufacturers with whom they have a collective bargaining arrangement. we were founded in 2007. manufacturing jobs were plummeting at the time. we saw the rise of competition from china. and the idea was if we work together, business and labor, you have a stronger voice and can make impactful policy change. >> according to the white house daily guidance today, the president is expected to deliver remarks on rebuilding american manufacturing at 1:45 p.m. eastern. do you have any more insights as to what he's going to say and the timing for these remarks? >> thank you, i don't know precisely what the president will say, but i do think that from their past comments, from their policy direction, it's very lear that this

administration wants to assure the american people know and understand that there is a strategy in place to rebuild american manufacturing. and it couldn't come at a better time. we've seen the types of shortages, supply chain disruptions, that have been brought about, not only from the pandemic, but also from national disasters, from potential political risk. and we've seen some of the capabilities in the united states erode as well. and so there is i think this newfound understanding of the value of american manufacturing, even in this era of globalization, of automation, how having production capabilities on our shores, everything from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals, is going to be vital not only for job creation in the united states, and these are good middle class

jobs, but also from an economic and national security perspective as well. and i will just say, it's not just the magical invisible hand that allocates manufacturing jobs around the world. a lot of it has to do with policy. for a long time the united states was reluctant to engage in an aggressive industrial strategy. i think minds have shifted in the democratic party, in the republican party. so now you see president biden and you see the congress pulling and pushing some policy levers beyond taxes and regulation into things like investment in research, grants, other incentives, workforce development, trade enforcement, and procurement to accelerate this type of reshoring that we need to see. >> to implement that kind of

aggressive industrial policy, is the subject of the american competes act being discussed? >> absolutely. the america competes legislation, not identical but similar legislation passed last summer, would aim to, number one, address a semiconductor shortage crisis. the united states, just a couple of decades ago, made one out of every three semiconductor chips in the united states. that's down to 11%, 10% today. the idea of america competes is that these factories are expensive to build. they take a long time to get up and running. and they involve a lot of research and development. and so from a public sector perspective, providing some incentive, providing matching resources for companies to locate their production here, is

going to pay dividends to the economy down the road. so there's $52 billion specifically for semiconductor manufacturing. there's a variety of other incentives related to reshoring manufacturing. there are some trade enforcement mechanisms in the legislation as well. but it is a -- i like to say it should be a down payment rather than the last word on an industrial strategy, because we know our competitors in europe and asia, are busy at work also figuring out how they can bolster their own manufacturing base. >> republicans arguing on the house floor last week that this bill isn't tough enough on china and provisions, including some climate provisions, in this legislation actually undermine the u.s. when it comes to competing against china. what are your thoughts on those arguments? >> i think unfortunately there's a political tinge to a lot of that, john. i do think that the legislation

you saw come out of the senate had bipartisan support. again, the house legislation is not identical. but if you look at the -- some of the provisions in it, they're specifically designed to bolster our competition with china. and they provide us with trade enforcement tools that make it much tougher for trading partners like china to cheat. and so i don't know that they're going to get a version of a competitiveness bill that specifically aligns with some version of kind of the trump presidency. but i do think that on balance, this represents a step in the right direction, and you see a number of interest groups from the chamber of commerce to the national association of manufacturers traditionally align more with the republican side come out in full support of the legislation. and so my hope is that we can come together, because it is

going to take a bipartisan collaboration to make america more competitive and also to fundamentally address the challenges we see from other countries like china. >> one provision of the compete act, it would expand trade adjustment assistance. explain what that is. >> trade adjustment assistance is a program where if you're working in manufacturing or another industry in the united states and your job has been displaced either by import competition or by shifts of production abroad, your factory moved overseas, you're entitled to receive some sort of government assistance to help you get back on your feet, because the data, particularly over the last four or five decades of this, shows that workers who lose their jobs in a factory tend to end up in occupations that have far worse pay, far worse benefits. they tend to have poor social

outcomes. and many of them will not find another job at all. and so having a program that will provide for appropriate workforce training, to provide for some level of a social safety net, is going to be valuable. and the trade adjustment assistance program we have in place is bare bones and is not adequate to meet those needs, particularly when we're facing, all of us are facing situations where we're more dependent than ever on having flexible work schedules or access to transportation or day-care. and so an overhaul of trade adjustment assistance is something that's been needed in the united states for decades so that our workers who do lose their jobs due to some change in trade aren't left on the sidelines. >> we're talking with scott paul, president of the alliance for american manufacturing. talking about an issue that president biden is going to be talking about later this

afternoon, 1:45 p.m. eastern is when we're expecting remarks from the president. if you want to talk about american manufacturing, now is a great time to call in. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. if you work in manufacturing, setting aside our last line for you this morning, 202-748-8003 is that number. go ahead and start calling in. scott paul with us until 8:45 a.m. eastern. so we have him for about another half hour this morning. as folks are calling in, mr. paul, when china joined the world trade organization, the result was supposed to be more markets to sell u.s. products and perhaps a more liberal china due to the influence of the free market and due to the influence of western culture. and i wonder, did that happen since china has joined the wto?

>> no. it did not. and i think that -- i was involved with this debate when it was taking place in the late '90s and 2000. i have a poster that's out of sight, it says "no blank check for china," because that was more or less the provisions under which they were admitted to the world trade organization. and this idea was built on trust philosophy, that this reform would take place. it clearly hasn't. china is more authoritarian, it's cracking down on human rights, it's no more democratic, it's no more open to the world in terms of a fair trading regime. it's certainly benefitted from its membership in the world trade organization. and big global companies who wanted to source and look for very low cost labor and communities in which they could exploit the environment have done very well through this as well. but who has suffered? workers have suffered.

the environment has suffered. chinese people who disagree with the government are certainly no better off than they were. and you saw manufacturing get absolutely decimated in the united states throughout that first decade as there was a surge of chinese imports that came in and washed away 40 or 50,000 american manufacturing establishments, nearly one-third of all manufacturing jobs, and left communities absolutely devastated, some still have not recovered. and so, you know, for too long, unfortunately, the united states trusted in this philosophy or trusted in dialogue up until the trump presidency. and then the course has changed. and i think that it is permanently changed now. and you may see iterations of a different china strategy, but i think that the united states

understands that we can collaborate when possible, but we must actively challenge these unfair economic practices that are doing harm to the rest of the world and to protect our own interests that way. >> let me step aside and bring in some callers. james, central florida, line for democrats, you are up first with scott paul, alliance for american manufacturing. >> caller: yes. actually there are several things i want to talk about. mainly is getting the manufacturers that are in the chinese and bring it back to the united states. i know quite a few years ago, a manufacturer in north carolina was making underwear, they shipped it to china. of course it was the saving of the money, because the ceo [ inaudible ] that. what's the possibility to

motivate these companies, united states companies, to bring back the manufacturing back here, even so we have good working people, and work it from there? >> mr. paul? >> thank you for the question. it's an excellent one. and we have seen this type of factory closures moving overseas for decades in the united states. and gradually, and i think james makes a good point here, it moved from kind of like highly labor-intensive work like underwear garments, up to semiconductors. so there's really no sector immune from this. how do we get it back? i don't pretend we'll be able to recapture all of manufacturing. i don't think it's beneficial also to erect walls around the united states, either literally or figuratively. i do think global trade can be good. but i do think we can increase our own market share and

revitalize some domestic production. part of that takes intent on the part of the business community. like if you have entrepreneurs, if you have business owners, if you have shareholders who want that intent, who want companies to make something in the united states, they can generally find a way to do that, we have found. part of it has to do with public policy, which we're talking about with the america competes act. if we have the right incentives to onshore work and we have some punitive mechanisms that make it more difficult to make workers disposable and ship jobs overseas, we'll see better results as well. we also need measures to make the economy competitive. that's what the infrastructure is about, or investing in workforce training, so we can compete in a variety of different types of areas where you need to be successful in manufacturing. and we have seen some results. i will say that, you know,

intel, some other semiconductor manufacturers, have announced they're bringing some work back to the united states. ford, gm, some of their partners, are locating electric battery facilities in the united states. and so you're starting to see large scale manufacturing make decisions to locate production in the united states where it had been decades, it had really been decades since that was the case. i do believe it is possible to make some progress, although we're never going to go back to a situation we saw in the 1960s or 1950s when we had virtually no competition at all, and we took everything for granted. that's not going to be the case either as we move ahead. >> desoto, kansas, this is diane, republican. good morning. >> caller: good morning, mr. paul. first of all, i think this is a great thing. but i want to talk specifically

about pharmaceutical active ingredients. i specifically remember donald trump took on this challenge when he was president. and even talked about bringing this manufacturing to puerto rico. and i seem to recall he was working with kodak to built this facility. i have some experience with pharmaceutical manufacturing in a previous position. and it's very difficult to manufacture active ingredients as opposed to the finished product, which is much easier to do. i would like to know, do you have an update on that? do you know anything about what president trump had done and any actions taken by anybody to move manufacturing of the active ingredients to the united

states? >> we'll take the question, diane. mr. paul, something you can speak to? >> yes, absolutely. it's a very good question. we at the alliance for american manufacturing were raising alarm bells around this more than a decade ago, that we were dangerously exposed to an overdependence on sole sources for some active pharmaceutical ingredients, particularly in china and india. and if there was ever a supply chain crunch for some reason, that it would leave us vulnerable to shortages of necessary medicines. now, there were some steps taken in the trump administration to -- through procurement and other mechanisms to pursue collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to locate some production either in the united states or in puerto rico where there tends to be a pharmaceutical ecosystem as well. and we saw some progress there.

i think, quite honestly, one of the biggest barriers that we have seen are some of the large pharmaceutical companies themselves, whose business model kind of depends on low cost api sourcing from china and india. and it is expensive to try to reestablish that in the united states. i do think that that's something that is worth investing in, because we don't want to see ourselves in a situation of scarcity for critical medicines at a time of great need. and we certainly discovered that during the pandemic. i know that the white house has a supply chain task force that looks specifically at pharmaceuticals and that they have made some recommendations. but this will take the cooperation of the industry as well, as we move ahead. >> on twitter, a question, how

can the u.s. compete with cheap products from china? u.s. consumers love a $9.95 toy that falls apart in a couple of months. >> it's a good question. consumers i think are very accustomed to finding almost whatever they need on online or in a big box retailer for a very cheap price. the problem is the total cost of that good is not reflected in the purchase price by the consumer. and, you know, as the caller -- or the tweeter pointed out, there may be quality issues. you may not get what you pay for. but we have also seen, and there have been some consultancies that have looked at this, that well over 90% of goods could be competitively produced in the

united states. and again, that doesn't mean everything. but we could certainly see more produced in the united states at a very profitable rate. i think, again, one of the challenges that we face is corporate and financial behavior. and working against the notion that even if you have a profitable factory in the united states that's making products, if you can make even more money, that it should be moved to a country like china, which certainly was the herd mentality we've seen over the last couple of decades. and raising the cost of moving that production abroad i think has to be part of a strategy, if we are to reshore some manufacturing in the united states. and so there's not a particularly simple answer to this, other than we need to encourage the business community to have fresh eyes and to take a look at how they can make their next fantastic idea in the

united states. because for too long, it wasn't even considered to be an option. >> the individual on twitter mentions cheap chinese labor. there's also this issue of free and forced chinese labor. >> right. >> i wonder if you can speak to what the uighur forced labor prevention act is and how big an issue this is for american companies who have within their supply chains some parts and products that were made using forced labor. >> yeah, john, it's a very good question. we could spend a long time talking about it, but i'll try to digest it succinctly. the uighurs are an ethnic, turkic population in the western part of china who have faced discrimination for decades now. so this isn't anything new. but what is new are the active measures that the chinese government, the chinese communist party has taken to enact what the united states has

called and other western nations as well, as a genocide, through imprisonment, through forced labor, through sterilezation, and through other sorts of mechanisms to eviscerate this culture. and the problem is for us in addition to being a hmanitarian one, is that there could be potentially an awful lot of products that are sourced from this forced labor in some way, shape, or form. cotton is produced in that region. poly silicon for solar panels. lots of different parts that go into complex machines. and the problem for western companies is that we have virtually no visibility into the xinjiang region of china. outside observers who are independent aren't really allowed into these areas to inspect exactly what's going on.

so there has to be i think a presumption that any product coming from that part of the -- that part of china could include forced labor. in the united states law, there has been a ban against the import of products made with child or forced labor for a very long time. the uighur forced labor prevention act, which had overwhelming bipartisan support in the congress and was signed by president biden, would make clear what some of the consequences are for companies that aren't abiding by these long standing commitments that they were supposed to be making through u.s. law. and just moral and ethical guidance as well. >> to tom in harrisburg, pennsylvania, an independent. good morning. you're next. >> caller: yep, independent because we democrats used to be

the tariff party. that is the answer. and here in pennsylvania, our inspector republican along with democratic union members, for years, bipartisan, fought china and tried to impose the china tariffs. and then the radical left hijacked the democratic party and now for some reason we're against these tariffs. the tariffs worked. the tariffs worked. they were bipartisan. and since trump i guess came up -- he didn't come up with the idea, he didn't come up with it, the democrats did. but he brought it back so the media was against it. >> mr. paul? >> thank you, john. and we could talk the history of tariffs for a long time, there's a lot of great books that have been written about it. the original proponents of tariffs were george washington and alexander hamilton, who don't really have a political party today, but they've been a part of american governance for a long time, through lincoln, up to and including through the

post-world-war-ii period where they have been used less as a policy lever. i want to take a bit of an issue with john's characterization of the democratic party. i think it is true that national democrats like the presidential candidates the democrats have had for a long time, who have been reluctant to utilize trade policy and tariffs, and i think that's true of -- that was true of carter and of clinton and of obama. and that was true of republicans as well, of bush, both bushes, reagan, et cetera. and the change that we saw did happen with the election of donald trump. there are tariffs in place, up to 25% on some imports coming from china right now. now, joe biden has not taken those tariffs off. you know, many of those products, at all. in fact, understands that we have a lot of work to do to

ensure that our trade relationship with china is a fair one. but to john's point, i think this is very important, i think that we need the leadership of both parties to understand that tariffs can be one tool in the toolbox. i do think the way in which trump approached this left us open to criticism and may have been overly broad. and so having a strategic focus on the tariffs in addition to engaging our allies to also come with pressure on china, can be an effective approach as well. but as i said, i think at the outset, i do think that our approach to china as a nation has been unalterably changed and that we're not going to go back to this hopeful strategy we had in the early 2000s that china would eventually get there. i think it's clear from

president xi, from the ccp, that we have to act to protect our own economic interests ahead. >> 15 minutes left with scott paul from the alliance of american manufacturing. you can check them out online. we have a separate line set aside for those who work in manufacturing. don is on that line out of the buckeye state. don, what kind of work do you do? >> caller: okay, i worked in heavy equipment manufacturing. i don't want to say specifically, but let's say that it runs on the railroad tracks and leave it at that. >> gotcha. >> i know i want to see manufacturing come back to the united states, desperately. i know when i go shopping, i'm so tired of seeing the china label on everything i buy, i want prefer to buy american, but it's not offered, it's not made here. i think that years ago we had

this model where we didn't think we needed manufacturing anymore to have good jobs. we told everybody america is where things are invented and created and ideas come from. so let's ship the manufacturing offshore where it can be made cheaper, but we'll continue to do the design and innovation. what we found out there was that most of the foreign countries know that engineering is important, what we call now the s.t.e.m., and so we ended up with foreign nationals coming to our universities to learn those type of things and it priced our own u.s. citizens right out of the college campus. so we kind of lost. not only did we lose manufacturing. we lost onshore innovation creation like that. so, you know, with that being said, there certainly is a huge

market for skilled hands, carpenters, plumbers, auto mechanics. we have a huge market here with good paying jobs that don't require college degrees or at least require votec adult education, night school degrees or two-year associates degrees. we don't all have to be masters and doctors to make big money. so the other thing, i think we need to somehow reimagine how u.s. manufacturing works. my department, i ended up with a foreign national boss who ended up, in our smaller portions of what we made, it was all sent offshore. it was a thoroughly american company who was having all their

products, we designed them here, but they were -- china was given preferential treatment to actually manufacture all the parts that went into our final product. so in a way, we were sort of hijacked there. china was given preferential treatment as our manufacturer or what we referred to in the industry, a contract manufacturer. so that tilted the playing field right there. >> let me let -- >> in china's favor. >> let me let scott paul jump in. >> don, you raised a number of critical points. thank you for your work. one of the things, and you articulated this, i'm going to take that and reframe it in a different way, that i think too many in washington don't understand, is the value of manufacturing. that's partly because the ruling class, we all have bachelors and masters and professional degrees. most of america does not, most of america does not have a

bachelor's degree. and the importance of manufacturing, of skilled work that may not require a bachelor's degree, i think is underrepresented in policy in washington, dc. and so i go back to saying that our policy, our government policy needs to have intent to want to make things here in addition to designing it here, because there is a value added for jobs, for our economy, for national security, and for innovation, we've found. through a lot of business school studies as well, that co-location is very important as well. the other thing that we need is this change in business mindset. and i saw the business roundtable a couple of years ago saying, we're going to get back to what we call stakeholder capitalism, which is not only caring about your profit margins and your return to investors, but also caring more about your

workers, your customers, the communities in which you're operating. and so far it's just lip service. because if it weren't, you would see more investment in the united states. we have seen some companies step up, i do want to say that. even in ohio you've seen intel make massive new investments in ohio. and i'm old enough to remember when we were lectured that we would never see big manufacturing come back to the united states again. and so for someone like me who has worked in this, it's good to see that. but it takes that intent and it takes the public sector and the private sector i think working together to make that happen. >> to patty out of reidsville, wisconsin. good morning. go ahead. >> caller: yes. yes, we're a small community now of about 33,000. when we were bustling we were probably 35 or 36. that being said, we manufactured creams, ships during the war,

subs during the war, aluminum manufacturing. and now that has all been decimated and we are left with empty sites and massive, million-dollar cleanups, our rivers are polluted, lake michigan. but what can we do? yes, it's easy to point out grievances in other countries, but we have our own here. we have migrant workers and so on and so forth. so what should be the incentives of someone starting up a manufacturing plant here and keeping it here? thank you. >> thank you, great question. and this gives me a chance to point out that wisconsin is, by some measures, the leading manufacturing state still in the united states that has a very large percentage of the population still working in manufacturing, even though we have seen some of those plant

closures that patty mentioned. so starting up a manufacturing business is expensive. and just think about this for a second. when you're designing an app, you can code, all you need is a laptop, you need someone who knows coding, you may need a sophisticated marketing person. but that's literally it when you're starting it up. when you're trying to launch a manufacturing enterprise, you need a facility. you need machinery. you need know-how. you need engineering. you need production experience. you need workers. you need to find markets. it is much more capital-intensive. and so having some mechanisms, through grants, through loans, through tax incentives, i think is very important to help erase some of that startup cost disadvantage that you see and to drive entrepreneurs to think about hardware in addition to software and manufacturing that in the united states. now, there are some states who do this. there are some who do it well,

some who don't do it well. we've seen some massive failures as well. we have to be careful about how we do this. but i think we have to understand that that investment that you're making in starting up a manufacturing facility is going to pay dividends for your community down the road, because those workers will generally have middle class jobs, they'll be spending money in the other stores. it will make your community wealthier, as a matter of fact. and so we need to do that. that takes place at the state level, at the federal level. the america competes act, again, is one example of how we can begin to design a strategy like that that can be smart and successful. >> we just saw the january jobs numbers come out, the manufacturing sector in this country, in the area of 12.6 million jobs. i wonder, though, we talked about the devastation of manufacturing jobs in this country, especially in recent

years. take us back to the two months between february of 2020 and april of 2020, and what that was like in the manufacturing sectors, just by the numbers from the bureau of labor statistics, it was almost 12.8 million manufacturing jobs in this country in february of 2020. by april, it was down to just 11.4 million manufacturing jobs. >> yeah, since the olympics are on, it wasn't even a ski jump, it was a cliff. it was straight down. and one of the reasons for that is that manufacturing, virtually every manufacturing job has to be done kind of in-person, and you're doing it with other people. and so until manufacturers were able to figure out a way to safely return to production, all of that disappeared and then there was just the economic shock as well. and so i think one of the benefits that manufacturers have is they have to be particularly

attentive to health and safety and to work collaboratively with the workforce to ensure that that's possible, because there is moving machinery. you have to be able to -- and you also need sometimes sterile facilities. understanding that i think gave a lot of manufacturers an edge as they came back online. much of what we needed during the pandemic were manufactured products as well. and so i think some factory owners were able to do it better than others in terms of keeping the workforce safe. but i think manufacturing was able to ramp up. and we're at a point where we've almost captured all of those job losses again. i think we're about 250,000 or so short of that. and john, that's important for one reason, which is in every prior economic downturn that we've seen since the 1970s, we've never regained all the manufacturing jobs that we've lost.

that was true in the great recession, that was true in the tech bubble, that was true in downturns in the late '80s. but i think this one stands a very good chance of us being able to not only recover, fully recover those jobs, but to increase it from there. and that's in part because i think of this rediscovery that we need to have more capabilities in the united states as we're growing our economy. >> time for just a couple of more phone calls with scott paul of the alliance for american manufacturing. we'll head out to the corn husker state. this is craig in denton, nebraska. good morning. >> caller: good morning, thank you so much for taking my call. just a quick comment that we should not be surprised with dealing with china. it's an amoral country run by amoral people. but my actual comment is centered around a small company, and just an example here, where small companies were started by families, many of them, and they were started many years ago,

'40s, '50s. in nebraska we had a country called peterson manufacturing. they made a very familiar tool called the vise grip. very successful. a large conglomerate, namely irwin tools, came in and offered this family 200, $300 million. so quite a bit of incentive for a small company, and a family-run company, to sell out at that point. and now they kept jobs there for a couple of years but within a few years, the factory was closed, all the jobs were shipped over to china. so if you buy that vise group now, it's made in china. so my question is, how can we get, through maybe some type of ftc review, and get to the owners of these companies, these families, rather than just selling out, you know, to a conglomerate, some type of function, if you will, to better help these family companies

transition their company that they started into a u.s. manufacturing jobs. thank you very much. >> thank you. that's an excellent example. and it exposes some of the differences between kind of family-owned manufacturing, which is really the bedrock of manufacturing, the vast majority of manufacturing enterprises are small, mid-size enterprises that are family-owned, versus the larger multinational companies that may be shareholder directed. and i do think there need to be some safeguards put into place. there should be a national security review, whether offshoring that product is going to harm u.s. readiness in some way. i think that it makes sense to have an economic review. and i think that particularly with respect to the communist party of china, that there needs to be some investment restrictions that are

established. in fact there's a mechanism in the america competes bill passed by the house of representatives that would do that for the first time. and so, and then on top of that the notion of stakeholder capitalism among these publicly traded companies needs to be more than rhetoric. and if we need wall street regulation to do that, we can do that. or if we need more pressure on businesses to do that, we need to do that as well. and i will just say, and i want to be very clear about this, my criticism of china is directed at its leaders, at the chinese communist party. i think that the chinese people don't bear any ill will towards the united states. and i do think there is unfortunately an awful lot of xenophobia that takes place and some harm to asian americans as a result of that. and i think it's important to

separate the policy differences from any sorts of other things that may be said about china and to make that very clear. but at the same time, we should not hold back our criticism of the chinese communist party and its practices, and in any way be muted or censored from doing that. >> one last call, the land of enchantment, chuck in las cruces. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i had an observation and a question that's associated with myopic views of our government, how they view manufacturing throughout the country. and i would like to see what the answer is on having the narrow view, the steel industry was up in delaware, it moved down to

the south. and then moved overseas. we had brexit where clinton closed down a bunch of bases, to get more money. i just see government looking at these manufacturers as an opportunity to get money. and they're very shortsighted in what they do. i would like your opinion on how shortsighted our government is on silicon valley where they shoved them overseas because they overtaxed them and took away the research and stuff, like lockheed, for example, the research laboratories right there in silicon valley, and turned everything over to the chip makers. they went overseas because they were overtaxed. i would like your opinion -- >> chuck, we'll take the question because we're running out of time. mr. paul, i'll give you the final minute. >> you bet.

good question. i do think, again, we need more intent when it comes to manufacturing, to try to avert factory layoffs to try to encourage startups and to do it in a way that is collaborative. i think part of the problem is that the balance has been skewed. we favored a philosophy over results. we favored capital over workers, shareholders over stakeholders. and all of that has meant that manufacturing for decades got decimated. i do think there's another way. i think that the recent factory opening announcements represent a new dawn, potentially, for american manufacturing, that we can build on. so i will say i'm optimistic about what we can do moving forward. and i think having an infrastructure strategy, which we do, having a workforce strategy, and then having these investments in research and development, can pay dividends and produce well-paying jobs for

rebuilding the middle class in this country. >> it's the alliance for american manufacturing. americanmanufacturing.org is the website. i should note before you go, just in time for valentine's day, that's where you can go to download made in the usa valentine's day cards, including some of these catch phrases from the alliance. you can't outsource love. you've got to make it right here at home. a life without love is like america without manufacturing. missing a strong core. much like america's factories, my heart is open for business, is another one. and then this one, our love is as strong as american-made steel. all of those valentines, if you want them, available at americanmanufacturing.org. mr. paul, did you come up with those? >> i came up with absolutely none of them. we have very clever supporters and people on our team. so thank you for mentioning that. >> scott paul, president of the

alliance for american manufacturing. we'll talk to you again down the road. thank you, sir. >> you bet, thank you, john. up next, time to turn this program over to you, our viewers. it's our open forum segment. we allow you to call in on any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about. phone lines are on your screen. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. go ahead and start calling in now, we'll get to your calls right after the break. at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. hear many of those conversations on c-span's new podcast, "presidential recordings." >> season 1 focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. you'll hear about the 1964 civil

rights act, the 1964 presidential campaign, the gulf of tonkin incident, the march on selma and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded. >> certainly johnson's secretaries knew, because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. in fact they were the ones who made sure that the conversations were taped as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and theirs. >> you'll also hear some blunt talk. >> jim. >> yes, sir. >> i want a report of the number of people assigned to kennedy on me the day he died and the number assigned to me now and if mine are not less i want them less right quick. >> yes, sir. >> i'll stay right behind these black gates. >> presidential recordings. find it on the c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.

weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday you'll find events and people that explore our nation's past on american history tv. on sundays, book tv brings you the latest on nonfiction books and authors. it's television for serious readers. learn, discover, explore. weekends on c-span2. "washington journal" continues. >> it's our open forum, time for you to lead the discussion. let us know what public policy, what political issues, what state issues you want to talk about. republicans, you can call in at 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. this is the lead story on the front page of today's "the new york times." putin has the west guessing even

after macron's visit. the story noting president vladimir putin said he was prepared to keep negotiating over russia's security demands in eastern europe but offered a stark warning yesterday over the possibility of a full scale war between russia and the west using a five-hour meeting with his french counterpart on monday to keep the world guessing about his intentions. it was yesterday at the white house that president biden hosted germany's chancellor and president biden asked about the timing of a possible russian attack on ukraine and how americans in ukraine should respond. >> i know that he's in a position now to be able to invade almost assuming that the ground is frozen above kyiv, he has the capacity to do that. what he's going to do, i don't know. and i don't think anybody knows but him. >> reporter: the americans currently in ukraine, should

they leave the country? >> i think it would be wise to leave the country. i don't mean -- i'm not talking about our diplomatic corps. i'm talking about americans who are there, i hate to see them get caught in the crossfire if in fact they did invade. if i were there, i would leave. >> that was biden yesterday on the international front. on the domestic front, a short term government funding bill introduced in congress. house appropriations committee chairwoman rosa de lauro introduced a bill to avert a government shutdown set to hit at the end of next week. more work to do before that government funding bill is passed. but the mechanics now in the

works to avert a government shutdown of the house and senate working on that this week. time for your phone calls. roosevelt out of brooklyn, new york, line for democrats, you're up first, go ahead. >> caller: yes, good morning. i would like to discuss the last gentleman you had on. one important area that was left out of the whole discussion is artificial intelligence. the factoies of old no longer exist. it's all about artificial intelligence. i'll give you an example, a quick example. i grew up in an agricultural community in florida. people used to be pick the vegetables. they did most of the manual labor. i've revisited my hometown

recently, and machines are doing all that manual labor. so what i think america should focus on is retraining our workforce. artificial intelligence is the thing of the future. factories will exist, but they will be totally artificial intelligence, 20, 30 years out. that's my comment. thank you. >> that's roosevelt in new york. this is jerry in the natural state, rosebud, arkansas, republican. good morning. >> caller: yes, sir. i would just like to bring up the point that when trump was first elected president, my girls got ticket and we went to washington, dc and we stayed at the marriott hotel. but when we was walking down through down on the mall and stuff we stopped at the trump hotel and i walked in to see how beautiful it was and i noticed

that the manager came over and i told him the part of arkansas that i was from, about 80 or 90% of the people voted for him, and he said, well, you're in washington, dc and there's only two or three votes for him. so those poor guys from arkansas just walked through the capitol, i just don't see where they're kept in jail for walking through the capitol. i don't understand why they weren't just fined 4 or $500 and turned loose. it didn't make sense to me that they would treat american citizens like that because they didn't have ski masks on or anything and this state here in arkansas, the county sheriff, county judge, [ inaudible ] everybody is republicans. and i don't want to see the

country go where if you go in a certain state and you're a certain political party, you get thrown in jail. >> jerry in arkansas. this is kent -- i'm sorry, this is sandy in kent, ohio, independent. good morning. >> caller: good morning, yes, there's one question i have never heard anybody give an answer to. that is about china, that sent us the virus, and when we tried to get in there to investigate, they wouldn't let us in. how they have the right to not let us in there to help find out why this happened? and nobody has an answer to that that i have ever heard. and also, talking about products, i was in a store, and they were naturally selling masks, everyone does, you turn the mask over, made in china, made in china, so they send us

the virus, then they make the mask, then they make a profit off of the virus they send us. i mean how ironic is that. >> sandy in ohio, this is stand in florida, line for democrats. >> we still have 1,300 people dyingy everyday for the virus, but i want to talk about republicans what happened on january 6th. that was a disgrace to this country, trump brought those people me, said we got to fight like hell, the other guys said we got to file by combat, other one said kick ass and take names, 144 police officers were hurt, some lost fingers, some lost lives, smashed over the head, some bear sprayed, that was by him because he can't believe he lost an election. i'm sorry, and he made all his products in china.

his daughter, him and everybody else, and when he charges on products, maken people pay that, not china. >> we spent the first hour of this program yesterday talk begun former vice-president mike pence, that speech he gave on friday, breaking with the president on why he, whether he had the ability to overturn the 2020 election, i wonder your thoughts. it was a republican-only segment we had yesterday morning, i wonder your thoughts as a democrat on mike pence. >> mike pence? should have spoke up right after, they wanted to kill him. guy had a crow bar in his hand, these people watch fox news. if they watch once in a while, c-span, cnn, or another channel, would see the people coming in, smashing up saying i want to kill mike pence, this guy had a crow bar in his hand walking down the street saying i'm going to drag the held out of these people down the street, he would

have killed mitt romney, if they got in the chamber, if that brave police officer didn't take him up the stairs the other way, they would have been taking heads. everyone saying it's a disgrace, saying oh, democrats are in charge of house, in charge of senate, we got to go after trump's people, if we don't, we're going to lose, that's what lindsey graham says, nice ride -- >> that's stand in florida, this is joe, redbank new jersey, republican, good morning. >> caller: hello, i'm calling about two weeks ago in the guardian newspaper had an article how russian hackers disrupted all of ukraine's internet, now russia may be getting ready to invade ukraine and president biden said if they do that he's going to put sanctions on the russian leaders but what's to prevent the

russian leaders from turning around and doing the same thing they did with ukrainian government's computers trying to disrupt our internet? in the united states, we're almost entirely dependent on the internet these days. >> you have faith in our cyber defense capabilities that they're better than ukraine's? >> they may be better, but the russian hackers are probably quite sophisticated as well. so i hope that the biden administration is coordinating with homeland security and defense and the treasury departments and making sure that our internet defenses are up to speed and at least to be able to resist any possible russian hacking. >> that's joe out of red bank, new jersey, just after 9:00 a.m. eastern on the east coast, this program runs for another hour this morning, but over on c-span 3 in about a half hour, just to let you know, president biden

has now made lieutenant general michael carilla to be the next head of u.s. central command, if confirmed, will replace general kenneth mckenzie junior, armed service committee holding a confirmation hearing this morning, starts 9:30 a.m. eastern you can watch on c-span 3, online at cspan.org and on our app. good morning, you're next. >> caller: thank you, for my quick 30 seconds that i get to get on c-span in front of the nation, once i'd like to give thanks to my jesus christ and go back to matthew 5-3 speaks about oath and our elected officials have basically vowed to the oath of the constitution and with that said, let your yes be yes and no be no, anything else is

from the evil one. i got to say people, i want to be positive so anyone listening to the news, listen to all the news but i got to say fox has been right about a lot of things over the past two years, not everybody they say, i can't agree with everything that's happened but the all i got to say is we need to come together. >> henry in florida, this is margaret out of wood ridge, new york, line for democrats, good morning. >> caller: i recently -- said i voted for trump, and i didn't like it, but i didn't vote for trump and he's putting out propaganda -- >> i'm sorry, margaret, i don't really follow and i think you're breaking up, to caller in florida, good morning. >> caller: good morning. the president of the united states, they've been doing, trying to keep me out of the

white house and i need help to get in there. >> all right, niki, we'll hold off on that call. our phone lines in this open forum. 202-8001 for republicans, some news out of president biden's white house yesterday. this, from the new york times, eric lander the president's top science adviser resigned sunday evening after acknowledgic he disrespected his colleagues, behavior that prompted immediate questions about his job, accepted the resignation letter, jen saki acknowledged in a statement, he will continue to keep contributions to the scientific community in the years ahead. mr. lander, a cabinet level official apologized in an email

to his staff after internal investigation found he violated a policy with rules for a respective work place conduct. he expresses regret for being disrespectful, that from the new york times, the reporting, politico on that story for a while and that story coming to a head in the white house briefing room this week. eric, in water town, new york, good morning. you're next. >> caller: morning. this is in reference to the previous segment, i understand that it is important to tell other countries how to deal, specifically china how to deal with minorities, however i think economic power allows us to do that but in such a world, we need to lead not also, also by example, but also have the moral currency to trade around the

globe. we are often reminded by other countries that we need to take a look at our own country where certain minority groups, take for instance american indians. they may not be forced labor with them but there's a systematic neglect that often puts them so far behind. so we are unable to trade on that moral currency or lead by example. so in order -- our inability to do that sort of hand cuffs us when we want to be policeman around the world on what needs to be better. wemds us, quite often, to look at our own country and what we're doing here. unless we can lead by example and have the moral currency to trade elsewhere, often times, economic sanctions won't work in places like china because they're constantly reminding us, even putting says don't tell me how to treat my citizens, look our your citizens are treated.

so we need to do better on that front. >> that's eric in new york on the issue of manufacturing and our previous guest, scott paul with the american alliance for manufacturing, more spill-over from that segment, comments from our text-messaging service, paul in kansas saying for an instant in history, usa was the leader in manufacturing following a population with major resources being the only nation unaffected by the devastation of world war ii. to expect a moment to last futile, paul writes, when sheep goods need to be affordable to the masses. from kentucky, saying i'm in the manufacturing industry and there's a constant tug of war between automation and labor, more automation takes jobs away from citizens, wondering how to find that balance. more comments from our text messaging line, can always reach us through 202-704-8003, or call

in, from oklahoma, good morning. it's our open forum. >> caller: oh, okay. from 2016 to 2020, president trump won the election, he took it over and during that time, he has been insulted and personally attacked instead of his policies for four years. 2020 came about, i believe more people voted against him because of his personality and not his policies. so what happened is when the country decided to go with biden because they didn't like trump, well, they found out that biden wasn't the guy, or he isn't, for now. and trump is laying back there

and all these people that they worked to propaganda and all the news and all the russian thing going on, have created a hate for him which was a false thing. >> if donald trump runs for president again, do you expect him to change his personality at all? >> caller: no. he's a character, just like all of us. that's his character. he's a counter patcher, you assault him, he wants to come back and say something back to you. >> paul, out of merl beach, south carolina, good morning, sir. >> caller: good morning, yes, talk about the distance of the main stream media and the left, if you talk about the coronavirus when trump was president and i'm not a trump support you are, i'm independent, but there was a counter of how many deaths took place during his presidency and just continued until, you know,

it's all trumps fault and then when biden took over that counter went away and all they talk about is january 6 and the insurgency which there was no guns, there was an insurgency, it was terrible, but the true insurgency was in afghanistan when biden let the taliban take over, that's an insurgency, that's all i have to say. >> paul, on the counter for deaths in this country, so this is the daily graphic that runs each day in the washington post. total deaths from covid now 900,000, this is the front page from the washington post this morning, it's a picture of that event last night, house speaker nancy pelosi, and other congressional leaders holding a moment of silence on the steps

in the u.s. capital for the now 900,000 plus americans who have died of covid. >> yes, and i understand that and been double the deaths per year with biden's presidency i thin so i'm not blaming biden or trump, saying the media blamed trump and like the guy before me said always trying to make him look bad and he did have some terrible personality. >> is that a bird in the background? >> yes. >> is that a pet? >> it's a quaker parrot. >> what's its name? >> kiwi. say hello, kiwi. oh he's not going to talk now, he can whistle to andy griffith tune. >> can you get him to listen now? >> i don't think so. >> okay, paul in merle beach.

arkansas, democrat, good morning. >> caller: good morning, i'm from arkansas, i just want to say i feel those people that were into the on the january 6, all those people that were on the capitol building should be held accountable, it's not about democrat or republicans it's about right or wrong. thank you. >> robert, in the constitution state, out of mill dale, independent, good morning. >> caller: hello, yes, back to your earlier statement with the manufacturing. i work in the computer industry for disaster recovery sites and if one system would go down we go around the country, different grids, texas would have a grid and california, and out here in the east we have a grid. so you would spread your eggs not in one basket. i think that congress should do the same kind of thing for manufacturing. we want to have expensive goods

for overseas then the required the manufacturers to have at least 10% of the manufacturing compassately here. it could be more expensive here but you throw that into the overall price so things like with what's going on now, where we can't get goods across the ocean because of the covid going on, you can just power up these plants here in this country and start producing even more because you already have all the infrastructure in place. i guess intel is kind of doing something like that, maybe putting a plant in ohio because of taiwan, china might take taiwan, disaster in that happens, we won't get our chips, but that's the kientd of thing i think we should do for pretty much all critical manufacturing, 10% of the manufacturing capacity in this country at least. those are my thoughts. >> robert, you say, so build the cost of that into the price, so are you saying that americans should be prepared to pay more for their manufacturing goods than they do now for this security that comes with having

those plants here in the united states? >> caller: yeah, and i don't think it would be that much of a price increase. if 90% of it, of the good is still at the original price, the other 10% cost of that good is maybe, maybe it's going to cost twice as much but that's 10% of the overall cost. so maybe we as a consumer might see a wrench or a computer, maybe has 2% price increase for the benefit of being able to say we can run up our factories if we have to, and then of course, if that happens, the price of the computer is going to go way up. but once the disaster is over, you can start going back to having overseas when their plant's back up again. >> robert, thanks for the call out of connecticut. this is michael out of san diego, good morning. >> caller: good morning and i'd like to thank c-span for giving

americans a place to vent our opinions. venting time. our founding fathers did not want any kind of religion to be affecting the way our government or country is run. unfortunately, that has not happened. how is it ever going to happen when every session of congress they have a chaplain lead them in a prayer? i think that needs to stop, just like god was not on our money or pledge of allegiance until eisenhower decided to put them in there. i heard someone describe the bible the other day as christian mythology, it to me, that was the perfect description of it because it's all words written by man, no proof to any of this stuff existing and i think it was terrible that billy graham was allowed to lay in state in our nation's capitol. >> michael in california, last caller in this segment of the washington journal. stick around, 45 minutes to go until the house comes in and in

that time, joined by the national journals josh kraushaar to discuss campaign 2022 as we're nine months away from election day. we'll be back. >> this week, on the c-span networks, house and senate both in session, house takes up on funding the government to avert a shut down, senate then follows suit on that bill. upper chamber continues work on president biden's judicial and executive nominations. today at 9:30 a.m. eastern live on c-span 3, senate armed services committee holds a confirmation hearing for michael carilla to be head of command, and later, u.s. surgeon general testifies before the senate finance committee on short falls

in mental healthcare for children and teenagers in america. on wednesday, 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3, senate commerce committee holds a confirmation hearing for gigi sound. later, on c-span org and app, the committee chair's trading commission, on what needs to be done for crackdowns on cryptocurrency markets. watch on c-span networks or c-span now, our mobile video app, head over to c-span.org for streaming video, live or on demand anytime. c-span, your unfiltered view of government.

>> washington journal continues. >> now 9 months from election day, good to be joined by josh kraushaar, host of the national journal "against the grain" podcast, josh kraushaar the latest column you have against the grain, wave watch, a potential look at upsets in the 2022 midterms, explain what a wave election is and if we know when one is going to hit.

>> we had a lot of wave elections in the last 10, 15 years because voters have been pretty dissatisfied with whatever party is in charge, it's around objection of the government party where the out party, the party not in power generally takes control of congress or picks up a lot of seats in the house and senate and has been a reality at least since 2006, we've seen a whole lot of wave elections whether it was, you know, trump being rejected in 2020 and democrats taking control of the house, or, you know, republicans in 2010 and 2014, capitalizing on anger against former president obama. the part of the reason we're seeing so many wave elections is that the public just doesn't trust government, they don't trust either party, and the power goes from party to party in cycle after cycle. >> is a red wave a certainty come november at this point and do you have any sense how much

that wave would watch democratic seats away in the house and senate? >> well nothing is ever a certainty and we're 10 majorities away from the election but the signals are not looking good for democrats, president's approval rating in low levels, 40s in most polls. you have an intensity gap that should really be alarming for the biden administration in which even those voters who support him, don't support him intensely, not nearly to the same extent they supported president obama or president trump, they had stronger support from their own base of the party. biden doesn't command that same degree of loyalty. then you just look at, you know, the smoke signals on the economy, a good economic report this past month but inflation is a real concern for voters, the state of the pandemic is a real concern for voters and, you know, frankly, the biden administration has not shown a whole lot of competence on a lot of fronts and the covid situation is a good example.

you see democratic governors in blue states like new jersey and connecticut taking a more leading role in trying to get schools back to normal and setting a plan for having kids take their masks 0 off in schools. you're not seeing the white house lead on an area where they should be benefitting politically with omicron, starting to fade away across most of the country. so look, they can always, the republicans have their own issues, it's a party that's divided, you have the trump factor playing a big role in some of these primaries but fundamentally looks like a tough environment for the democratic party. >> what would be a realistic scenario you can imagine for democrats holding the house and senate? >> well, holding the house is going to be really tough. it's probably less than, you know, 5% if i had to put odds on it right now just because they have a very small majority and, you know, the district hasn't turned out as tough as a lot of democrats feared but the

political environment looking a lot worse than they expected a year ago. so what do they need? they need an economy to really get back on track like we saw in last month's job reports, see inflation dissipating which is not looking likely because the fed is expected to raise interest rates and that's not going to be helpful politically at least this year for the administration. and you got to have a sense of normalcy if voters are going to the polls and still frost rated by covid regulations or if there's another variant, god forbid, that's a problem for the white house so there are things that can improve their standing but the house is going to be really tough for democrats to hold. senate is another story and even though the republicans only need one seat to take back the senate majority, republicans have a lot of issues with their candidates or lack of candidates running in a lot of these races so i think democrats have a stronger chance to hold the senate majority but even that is looking challenging with the political environment.

>> who is the most vulnerable democratic senator out there? >> i would say actually katherine cortez in nevada which goes against the grain if you will, some of the conventional wisdom, you know, georgia, arizona, both represent more republican-leading states, than does senator masto but nevada is a state where you got a large hispanic population and a large working class population, both of those demographic groups are moving away from the democratic party and you also have a be likelihood of a credible candidate, and someone acceptable to the trump and mcconnell wings of the party and having a wing of unity consensus within the republican party these days has been hard to come by so that's a good sign for republicans. >> if you like chatting politics, now is a good time to

call in, josh kraushaar with us, author of the against the grain column, podcast, senior political columnist with the national journal, will be with us until the house comes in today at 10:00 a.m. eastern so we'll chat about any of the house or senate races you want to talk about, what the midterms are looking like, let us know what candidates, what races you want to talk about. 2027488000, democrats, independents 0002, josh kraushaar, minute ago, you talked about the trump factor in the republican party, i want to talk about that in the wake of that speech that former vice-president mike pence made on friday, breaking with the president, rejecting the idea he could overturn the results of the 2020 election and then we saw republican lawmakers take to the sunday shows, many of them defending mike pence and then

republican leaders on capitol hill, getting questions about that yesterday, we'll see if that continues through the rest of this week. does that play into any of these projections for 9 months out or is that, you think, a one week or couple of days story here. >> it's a challenge for republicans. you're seeing a war, a low-level war brewing between the establishment and the activists within the party and the fact that the republican national committee, you know, condemned liz cheney and adam kinzinger at the very least, dividing the party. you know, a lot of -- may not be a lot of antitrump republicans left in the party but there are a lot of republicans who don't want to see candidates literally looking backwards and endorsing what happened on january 6th or condemning republicans in good standing, liz cheney, whatever you think of her is part of one of the most prominent republican party families in the country.

so there is this civil war that's taking place, under the radar in many cases. you have primaries in many important battle ground states and it could get ugly, i know party leaders want to avoid those divisions, paper them over but this is the biggest challenge facing the republican party that you have these very right-wing trump-aligned activists within the party that are not electable or if were nominees, in graces for the senate or house, could cost republicans a very important seats. so that is the biggest problem that is affecting the party, the republican party for 2022. the presence of candidates more loyal to trump and not electable to a more mainstream audience for the general election. >> then let's talk about the democratic party. if you're a democratic candidate in a tough election this cycle, do you want president joe biden coming to your district or state to campaign with you? >> no. i mean, unless, if his numbers maintain at the level they are

now, president biden is going to be a drag on at least, democratic candidates in swing states and swing districts. it's actually kind of striking that republicans are now using joe biden as a boogie man so to speak in their campaign adds more than nancy pelosi, more than aoc, more than even dr. fauci who has become something of a republican party villain. biden's numbers are really, really rough for a president in his first mid-term election and, you know, economy has generally been rough, i think there's a lot of frustration over his handling of covid and culture a issues, education issues, other staples, immigration that are just, with the democratic party in the white house been a little out of touch with where the overall public is so biden was once seen as the guy who could go to middle america, go to some of these swing districts and be an asset for the party, that's

no longer the case. and i don't think you're going to see him campaigning in many swing states and districts for this midterm cycles. >> let's chat with callers, lewis up first, out of the tar heel state, line for democrats, good morning. >> caller: top of the morning for all you, c-span and america. i understand that a lot of people want to try to downplay biden at this moment, but it's just been, i think he's doing out standing job for what he has to work with, you know, the republican senators don't want to vote on anything -- anything but the democrats pulling the load, you know, democrats vote on saving our government from shutdown, we have two democrats that don't want to go ahead and put out filibuster for voting rights, my question is this -- all the republicans that's running and all these

gerrymandering states and counties. can you tell me how much that will play into how much if the republicans do happen to take the house or not the senate but take the house, and what you think about these voting restrictions and these voting suppressions and these one ballot box drop-off for a million people. tell me how much that's going to play into the winning that you say, they're going to crush the house. i don't believe it. >> josh kraushaar. >> so the good news, remember, the encouraging news for democrats is the worries about gerrymandering and how that could affect democrat's ability to hold the majority or lose seats, that did not end up transpiring like they were worried about. in fact, democrats in many states they control including

illinois, new york, nevada, new mexico, pursued gerrymanders in their own interest, now republicans have been stymied in some states by the state supreme courts over ruling the partisan maps and forced them back to the drawing board so my colleague and friend david wasserman at politico report projected democrats may actually gain a couple of seats when all is said and done of the redistricting process in their own gerrymanders so that's one thing, if democrats lose the house, it's not going to be anything to do with gerrymandering, it has everything to do with the political environment. the issue of voter suppression and voter rights, that's an issue the biden house led on, really talked about, even demagogued the issue from the beginning and when they couldn't pass the voting bills through congress i think caused a lot of political trouble because they raised expectations so high with

their own base and exaggerated in some cases, as the caller may have hinted at, exaggerated in a way that was sort of beyond reality and then when they didn't actually pass anything through and talked about other issues beyond the voting issues they depressed their own base in a way that could be damaging for the party in the midterm elections, especially a state like georgia, where which is where president biden spoke last month, the kick-off the new year. so, you know, i think these issues are, you know, going to be debated, going to go through the political process in the various states. turn-out was at historic levels in 2020. there was historically high levels for the 2018 midterms. i don't think you'll see any major changes to voting rules, that will appreciatably limit the ability for anyone to vote for any state in 2022. >> this is brian, independent, good morning. >> caller: good morning, can you hear me? >> yes, sir. >> caller: hello, josh, i want

to ask you, we're always saying we're trying to be fair in this country so let's look at one incident, i think i can keep it pretty quick. now you have two sons put it this way, get this hunter biden, and now i worked naval intelligence you won't find a more credible man than tony balinski, he has had a lot of proof and a lot to say. can you tell me that hunter biden is getting treated the same way as a lot of trump's kids? when you put that side by side. now our brains work as about 90% of it is visual and occupies a lot of our brain decision making process. when we put out things for over a year or four years against a guy, trump, the way we did in the visuals and we don't do the same way with bidens because he's in a different party, i

find that weird. again, have you interviewed, tony, i asked john to get him on here, get him on here, bring out all the things we know about the hunter biden, treat him the same way we would one of trump kids. >> josh kraushaar on president 's children. >> look the caller may have a point on a double standard, bought that's not going to be a real voting issue, not trying to rally the presidential kids or double standard on who to vote for in 2022, you can certainly find all that, it's an issue that's certainly uncomfortable for this white house, but it's one that frankly, is not going to be a voting issue for most voters. >> if we're heading into primary season it means recruiting season is over. what would you put as the biggest success and failure for democrats and republicans when it came to recruiting for campaign 2022?

>> that's a great question. you know, i think, i don't know if i'd count this as a recruiting success but one of the biggest recruiting relieves for republicans is in pennsylvania, where there was a likelihood that the trump-endorsed candidate, harnell, who was a little too right wing, a little, i think, too unelectable for pennsylvania electorate ended up dropping out of the race for personal issue and see that created a wide-open primary field. now, you have dr. oz as one candidate and david mccormick who may end up the favorite in that primary, trump national security adviser and someone who was a hedge fund owner and a lot of background in the business world. you know, mccormick as the nominee in pennsylvania i think would be a very strong candidate especially in this political

environment. i think republicans dodged a bullet because trump's candidate who had electability issues ended up dropping out of that race so we'll see about mccormick, we'll see about a few other candidates also in that primary, but they dodged a bullet with parnell dropping out. on the democratic side, i'll stay with pennsylvania, would be interesting to see whether connor lamb, congressman who is a perhaps more electable candidate ends up prevailing or john fetterman who is a more unique populist progressive figure, state governor, ends up winning the primary. pennsylvania is one of those races where the state of the party, the health of the party is going to be determined by those parties and that's one of the positionest battle ground states for the senate in the country. >> this is richard in brent wood, good morning. >> good morning, gentlemen. first of all, i think your guest is being a little disingenuous

in trying to downplay the hope for conclusion or effectiveness of gerrymandering on a part of the republican party. they've been resolute across the country bringing those about so i think they're very much counting on that kind of success and as far as the other caller talking about hunter biden, if we could get ivanka trump and discussing her chinese associations would bring some balance to that, but the purpose of my call really quick, the democrats have an obvious problem with messaging and the republican party, they're very good at that. so much so that they can offer themselves as a viable alternative to four years of biden when they have no policy successes after controlling the house from 2010 to 2016 so they're just not effective at

governing and they give control to the republicans again, we're going to be in trouble. but lastly -- >> you bring up a lot of points. josh kraushaar, what do you want to pick up on? >> well let's talk about gerrymandering, both parties are trying to jerry mander as effectively as possible, they're allowed to, no restrictions on that, but what you've seen is republicans hit road blocks in dealish with state supreme courts, not the u.s. supreme court but state supreme courts in many of the biggest states in the country, ohio, north carolina, foremost among them, so new york, saw a map democrats may gain three to four seats from as result of a very efficient and ruthless party jerry mander, north carolina, the courts blocked those maps from taking place so both parties want gerrymandering, it's party politics, both parties want to maximize their

power as ruthlessly as possible but the courts have been more sceptical of the republicans maps, the new york map will face a legal scrutiny but a lot of republicans are sceptical that liberal new york state supreme court is going to do the same thing as what happened in ohio, north carolina, in turning over these partisan maps. >> bring us to the u.s. supreme court, new york times front page, alabama congressional map said a lower court diluted the power of black voters, the court poised to become more sceptical to challenges of voting maps based on claim to race discrimination, 5-4 vote, joining with the courts three liberal members in dissent. >> this is a fascinating case and involves racial gerrymandering and in alabama has one district that's specifically drawn to pack a lot of african american voters in it, the one democratic district in the state and a lower court essentially ruled that there

needs to be two district that is at least give black voters a chance to win seats in the state of alabama. supreme court, for different reasons said that they kind of overrule the lower court, and they expressed a lot of skepticism in the ruling for the need to draw minority, majority districts in the big picture, that traditional gerrymandering and redistricting package can still apply and, you know, this is a complicated issue because even democrats have actually looked at some of this packing that, you know, there was something about unholy alliance between african american leaders and republican political leaders in trying to ensure minority representation but by packing and drawing all the nonwhite voters in a specific district while maximizing republican representation elsewhere so alabama is going to be an interesting case study of that. it's a win for republicans in the short term but in the longer term, you know, revisiting whether you need to have all the

black voters packed into one district to guarantee minority representation is something to look at again and may be interesting ideological alliances that form, more sceptical of that kind of crude racial gerrymandering that's taken place in the past. >> from alabama to mississippi, james, independent. good morning. >> caller: how you guys doing? >> all right, go ahead, james. >> caller: yes, i want to let him know that this stuff that they're talking about -- hello? >> james, go ahead with your question, we're hearing you. turn down your tv. >> caller: how could anybody say that the president is losing and his record, when you got two democrats and all the republican, most of them, are turning away from him and these

lies being said about this economy, because you got two democrats that refuse to help him get the build back better package out. you got all kind of lies coming from the republican party, let me tell you all something. if you think that democrats is going to sit back in 2022 and let this situation go over their head, you're going to see -- to see so many people voting, it's going to be more than 87 million or whatever come in 2022. this year, just like a president election coming up -- >> we'll take your point. josh kraushaar, on joe manchin and kyrsten sinema who are not on the ballot in 2022. >> yeah, i think the caller may have answered his own question. the reason biden is having

problems isn't just republican because of opposition, but because president biden failed to secure supporting of from manchin and sinema on his most important initiatives, when your party is divided you're going to be losing the argument, losing political capital. so this stems from, i think, the president's overly ambitious agenda that he literally wanted to pass trillions and trillions of dollars in spending that are just not politically tenble in states like virginia so i think from the beginning, president biden misread his mandate, one for normalcy campaigned on bipartisanship, restoring normalcy to washington, tried to get through one of the most ambitious democratic agendas we've seen in the first year and it failed so far.

it's a lesson, you cannot out run your mandate and the representation you have in your own party and congress. >> to john in oregon, independent, good morning. >> caller: good morning, john, josh, thank you for taking my call and very interesting discussion. i just want to comment that, i'm sure josh will agree, that the winds of political opinion can change fairly rapidly with events and in this case, we have, the president has passed the largest infrastructure program in decades, frankly, and this country needs it. they need to put their hat on that, and then also, over time, the fact that we are finally out of afghanistan, that money pit, that blood pit, will look better and better with time.

whenever you lose a war, it never looks good when you leave. and that's the case here. god love those 13 service people that gave their lives. now, build back better, yeah, what they need to do is just look at the parts that they can pass, do it. and voting rights >> john let me hold off, you bring up afghanistan, infrastructure and build back better. josh kraushaar, what do you want to pick up on? >> let's talk about afghanistan, because i think that was the moment the biden administration lost its political standing. that -- the issue of creditability of brought to question. the issue of competence was raised in terms of how this administration is handling foreign policy and frankly, issue of compassion. biden ran as a compassionate president and looked sometimes like he was disconnected from

the horrors taking place overseas so i think afghanistan is not going to be the number one voting issue clearly, in the midterms, but this president ran as contrast to the trump administration as compassion, creditability and all three fronts afghanistan wiped out those assets the administration once had so i think that was sort of the gate way, afghanistan was a gateway drug in where swing voters looked at the administration more closely and wondered if there was a wizard of oz moment, what was behind the curtain and there wasn't a whole lot so on foreign policy you also have to wonder what's going to happen in ukraine, this president's leadership in trying to deter russia from causing havoc in eastern europe so i don't think afghanistan was a political success. i think that was one of the biggest political blunders this administration made so far. >> 15 minutes left in our program so far today, senate and house in at 10:00 a.m. eastern, at the white house, president

biden expected to give remarks on manufacturing, expected about 1:45 p.m. today all available on the c-span networks. check for watching those and staying with us throughout the day. josh kraushaar, we talked about the supreme court a little bit earlier. i wonder your thoughts on the implications for election day 2022 if, on the final day of the supreme court term, this term, the court overturns row v wade. >> yeah, that is one of those issues, the issue of abortion, that could change the dynamic of the midterm. i don't think it will dramatically change the fundamentals but it could give democrats, abortion right supporters, specifically, an opportunity to engage and show up and turn out. and that, you know, democrats really, that's sort of the biggest wild card and the biggest waert lately, that their base is disillusioned, upset they didn't pass build back

better, they talk about voting rights but didn't end up doing anything about it. you know, that's, trying to literally fight on the abortion front if row v wade is fully overturned could give their voters an opportunity to also show up and engage in the midterm elections which would benefit democrats but i think the abortion issue is a little more closely divided than sometimes conventional wisdom has it and, you know, we saw in virginia, trying to raise the specter of abortion rights being raised back. saw in texas, clearly, referring to the issues down there and didn't really pay any dividends for him. abortion was not a leading issue for virginia voters. so, you know, i think it does, it is going to mobilize part of the democratic base if row v wade is overturned, i don't think it will dramatically change the trajectory of the midterm elections either. >> to patrick out of california, line for democrats, good

morning. >> caller: good morning, josh and john, i just want to say i'm a 48 state long-hall truck driver, have been a long time and hear a lot of opinions from around the country. and it seems to me like after what happened on january 6th, especially people who listen to the testimony from the capitol police and law enforcement, everyone still is not 100% condemning, what happened, that shows their trueness and really heartbreaking that so many people, seem like they're good people, republican, democrat, whoever, they are, can't find it in themselves to discondemn that and i agree with what james said in mississippi, now you open up the row v wade thing, if that is overturned talk about demonstration and protest. i have a question for josh, i hope the coming election goes well, my question, josh, is that

if president biden, who to me seems like a pretty sane, together person after listening to his last press conference a couple weeks ago on c-span, the guy really seems like he does have it together. people want to insult his mentality and it's a shame, i guess a lot of people just hate whoever they can hate, you know, from martin luther king to mexican people who grow the food we eat and ship it and everything, to, you know, just full of hatred, it's sad, but my question is if president joe biden were to step down during his term to assure that at least for a short while we have a lady, female president of the united states, to me, kamala harris seems like she has enough together to do some good work. what do you think about that, if we have a lady president. have a good day everybody, love you. >> josh kraushaar -- >> so i don't think president biden is voluntarily going to

step down unless it were for an absolute emergency, health issue or something of that sort. frankly, democrats are privately worried about vice-president harris's political standing. they have been frustrated with her inability to have a smooth interview with national news casters with her fumbles on key policy issues so she could certainly turn things around but her numbers if you look at the national polls are actually worse than president biden's and in some cases by a pretty significant mark and that's saying a lot given where president biden is right now. so there is, i think the bigger question politically is if president biden only serves a term and there's an open primary, in 2024, you know, vice-president harris would probably be a front runner if she chose to run but it would be a pretty crowded and wide-open field given that democrats are not, have not been impress with her political aptitude in the first year of the presidency and

vice president. >> my first question for josh concerns economically, fuel prices, food, everything has gone up, i have a place up in the catskills in new york, just paid $4 a gallon for fuel oil, in the fall of 2020, i paid $2.17 for fuel oil. and as far as the energy, which is what i'm talking about, we had energy independence in this country, president biden is begging, you know, the saudis to pump more, you know, oil to supply us. people should take into consideration how many billions of dollars has the working class person paid to commute to work for what the costs are at the pump? it's been phenomenally expensive for people just to survive. and i also want to finish with this. i always appreciate his father's input and josh, haven't fallen

far from the tree. god bless. >> josh kraushaar. >> yeah, so the price of gas, the price of goods, inflation, polling shows that that is the number one worry, the number one economic worry of most americans. now, that could be at one point, this administration was saying it's transitory, that inflation is only going to be around as long as we kind of get through the pandemic and it's going to stabilize. that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. and that is the biggest drag right now. along with covid, but the inflationary environment, the fed is likely going to be raising these interest rates over 2022, that could stymy growth. the economic environment, even though we had a good jobs report last month still very volatile and risky for the party in charge. >> was your dad into political prognosticasting or referring to

charles krashamer. >> i'm not sure who the caller was thinking of -- >> good morning, john, and it's an honor to speak with you, josh. i believe that our country is in bad shape. i believe many of us who are not only democrats, republican, and i, myself, independent, were very disenchanted. i voted for biden and i regret that i did because i feel nothing is getting done here in california our gas prices are so high. and the food has doubled. we're suffering. and i believe, like some of the callers who called before me, break this bill up into pieces. pass what is important. covid is not going away. our economy is killing us. josh, can you give us some kind of scope of hope here? and again, it's an honor to talk

to you. and you have a good day, john. i'll take my answer -- >> before you go, before josh kraushaar jumps in, you said pass what's important in build back better? in your mind, what are the important parts of that, rhonda? >> there's so many, just so many, john. numerous ones -- i just can't .1 or two out. there's so much and john, we need to also remember about those that are on social security and medicare. got to look at this, and thank you, john, thank you josh. bye. >> josh kraushaar. >> yeah, the caller i think is in the same space as a lot of swing voters, which is that they voted for biden, kind of sick of trump's antics, the chaos, but they have not been satisfied with the results of the biden administration and the economic reality that's taking place in 2021, 2022.

and that's a problem. there are more biden voters that have the same sentiments as the caller. that's why the environment, that's why the tea leaves are looking ominous for democrats right now. >> to mila out of virginia beach, virginia, good morning, democrat. >> caller: good morning and thank you very much. i would like to go back to the redistricting issue. i think that it's a very interesting thing to take a look at the fact that i like that it certainly is something that is going to affect my congresswoman who, elaine luria who actually is having to move in order to stay in her district, physically move, and as a democrat, i'm very concerned about the fact that there are competent women in congress and in the senate, it's so often that they are

attacked by republicans. and i don't understand why the republicans don't want to support women in these roles. i think that it's been a long time coming. i think it's important for women to participate. it is something that just shocks me. it shocks me that in this day and age we don't have that kind of support for our women. but anyway, i would like your opinion on that one, josh. thank you. >> well, to your first point, so virginia was, is one of the states where the courts essentially drew the maps. it was actually a bipartisan team of two experts that drew the virginia maps. congresswoman luria's district had a little more republican, but it's still -- it was not changed nearly as much as other districts across the country or even in virginia. so, you know, i think her biggest challenge was she's a moderate, someone who i think has pretty good standing in her district but her biggest

challenge is the tough national environment for the democratic party more than the specific lines of her new district. and yeah, i mean that is what we're seeing a lot of -- that's part of the gerrymandering process sometimes, mannereding process sometimes. even the the most independent minded redirecting draws a member outside of their home district and creates a bit of chaos or tumult. but ultimately every teen years the lines need to be redrawn. and inevitably even the best line drawing inevitably entails some degree of disruption. >> we'll stay in the commonality. this is greg out of reston. independent, good morning. >> good morning, josh, i wanted to ask your prospects for primary election reform. it seems like the biggest part of our problem and see -- each party elects extremists within their own party. and that's why there is so much anxiety about gerrymandering appear thn that sort of thing.

thanks. >> jae, that's a great, great question. unfortunately the prospects for widespread primary reform, changing how primaries are conducted, unlikely. but there are some states that tried to implement their own reforms. and tlsk encouraging results. alaska is probably the biggest state in theeks cycle instead of a traditional primary they have all the candidates and all the parties running the same ballot and using a variation of what's called ranked choice voting and. so lisa murkowski is up for re-election. anti-trump republican senator. probably would have a tough time in a primary. but given the new system in applause she has a much better chance of winning erection. ia is one of them. washington state another, top two primaries where it's a similar reform where you have you have candidates of all parties running on the same primary ballot. i'm not sure it's dramatically

changed, the ideological makeup of the delegation or the people running in though races. but it's a reform tried and maybe you'll see it expand to other states in the future. >> as we expect, the house to come in the next minute or two, i wonder, has there been a viral moment or viral ad from campaign 2022 in your mind so far? >> well, it's early. so there haven't been a lot of ads. i will point -- since we're talking about stuff in the news, there was a viral video of stacey abrahams, the democratic nominee for governor in georgia. taking a picture at an elementary school while all the kids wore masks. it's an issue generating a lot of controversy. one of the political issues republicans look to exploit is something like -- the hoips of the public health officials, the hypocrisy of public officials

saying one thing you've seen with that governor abrahams. governor newsom. not living up to political standards is very potent. i wouldn't be surprised to see those show up in ads. >> leave it there. josh crash aur. columnist with the national journal. it's an the against the grain column and podcast. >> thanks, john. a conversation on road safety in the uns pops cathy chase serves as advocates for highway and auto safety. cathy chase, first a look at the numbers on highway road fatalities in 2020 to 2021. some 32,000 cash deaths in the first nine months ever 2021. 12% higher than the same period in 2020. the highest 9-month period percentage increase since the year 1975. the question is why. >> good