classroom is the deliberation phase. it is perfectly set up and ready to go, classroom discussion of deliberation on a variety of topics that are current and relevant today. >> if you are in middle school or high school teacher, join thousands of fellow teachers across the nation as a member of the c-span classroom. it is free and easy to register .t c-span.org/classroom and you can request a timeline poster. which is a display of all 45 presidents. find out more at c-span.org/classroom. washington journal continues. todaywe and our program with open phones. talking about any public policy issue you want to discuss. what is undermined? it was a call. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000.

independent colors, (202) 748-8002. eddie, good morning. i enjoyed the wall street journal and c-span but you dropped the ball with john hannah. is part of theho weapons of mass destruction that no one found. he should be the last person you should have on there to have a comment. thank you, good day. host: let's go to john, good morning. go ahead. 28 years ago, according to what i have taught at a university in rotc, i know for a fact that 28 years ago, these introductions into ukraine, north africa and going into iran eventually is what they planned to do, it was all planned, 28 years ago.

host: how do you know that? caller: because they worked in military intelligence. and it is a fact of life. -- it is aple government program called social modification management of human congress this. may -- it isly a basically a nato nazi syndicate born my country now and they are lying to the american people. host: ok, we go to gary and sterling, virginia. go ahead. caller: hello? many of my fellow republicans complain about high taxes and growth and entitlement and refugees and immigrants. anchor babies. queens, etc.. but then they fight against birth control and try to defund planned parenthood. which gives me the impression that they are trying to have it both ways.

some people it is about the i havey of life that worked up in a section eight housing project and about 7.5 hours, i was propositioned by three women, three different women of their, who are going to let me spend time alone with their children. and i don't think there is anything sanctified about that. so, you know. the road to hades is paved with good intentions. -- that isher lady too far. she is a woman. -- she told me they were her best behaved children. but they were catatonic children. host: i get your point. more on the calls in a few moments but i do want to let our

washington journal viewers know that there is a special election taking place in kansas today. for more on that, we are joined by dion lefler of the wichita eagle. this is usually a traditional safely republican seat. this is not safe at all. this has been 20 years since we james thompson. and this is not safe at all. all the experts say this could go either way. host: remind us how we got here? pompeo wasuse mike

appointed as chief of the central intelligence agency. and that opened the seat. and we have been having a special election ever since. if heated up in the last week. republicans started to get nervous about the seat. so they pumped quite a bit of money into the ron estes campaign. yesterday we had ted cruz, who is a very republican popular there here in kansas and thompson people have been fighting back. they got a lot of money and from small donors and democrat for donors around the country. host: a tweet about three minutes ago from president trump's twitter -- "ron estes is running today for congress in kansas. i need his help

on health care and tax cut reform." what should we read from the president tweeting about this? that is the fourth congressional district. is is about the bigger picture here about national politics, trump, democrats, congress? guest: it really started out -- you saw the first inklings that james thompson could be a factor here with the women's march. we had 3500 women marching in downtown wichita. that is almost unprecedented.

that probably was a trump factor. factor number two is that our well, i is probably -- believe he is the least popular governor in america right now. his best popularity rating is around 25%. so the james thompson campaign has hammered on the -- people right now are not happy with the state government. deficita huge budget and there are big fights going on in our state capital. so that has been a factor. interestingon is an -- he is an interesting evolution for the democratic arty because he has been

bernie sanders supporter. the moreocked off establishment democrat in the many convention they had to choose the nominee. kansasof the energy in -- people who were former who were part of the bernie sanders phenomenon last year. so they're out there working. they are working hard. and that is giving him a big boost. host: what time are we expected to know the results tonight? good question. we have new voting machines. so we will see how that goes. but we will probably be hearing something by 9:00. 9:00 or so, central time. your time. host: good luck covering that all. a busy day for you out there. thank you for the time.

phones for the last 20 minutes of the program today. any public policy issue you want to talk about, and we go to been in nebraska. good morning. caller: good morning. the last time we talked, you asked me a question before we got chopped up and i will answer that but first, i want to talk about health care and i watched betweente 25 years ago oregon and canada and the united we spend 14% of our gross national product -- and one lady in new york wrote a spent 600 how she thousand dollars to keep her rich husband alive for the year that it took but in canada,

everybody is covered. spend 9% of their growth national product. anybody with any smarts could see that that is a difference. and my question that you asked me before we got cut off or whatever happened was, who read -- the senator from the northwest -- i think he was a congressman. you had him on as a guest here. dr. who is retiring. and i don't know his name. but what he said was he read the five oilion and companies get 70% of the income off the oil. -- if itnk it was wasn't ceiling, it was close to it. because the rest of the people. and before that, before the war

started, there is a general in arizona who was selling irrigation or something to do with water services in iraq. and he begged us not to go into war with iraq because he was making a living and we killed the other story about how reagan bombed his granddaughter and killed her. if you have any more stuff you want to ask me, go ahead. host: keep on calling in. we go to north carolina. on the line for independence. good morning. are you with us? go to robert. in texas. a democrat, good morning. caller: i like to me a couple of

observations here. one about the recent attack on syria. timing it is wonderful on the part of the trump administration to basically distract the american people and get a rallying cry around him about this bold action. when in reality, the fellow is right about to call -- right about to fall off a cliff with all that is going on with russia. basically his collaboration with the russians and, you know, the election. the election fraud that took place. is collusion or not, i think that is probably the main story. and we have been distracted once you know,aying of oh,

somebody is leaking information and/or there are wiretaps within the trump tower and all of that nonsense. of theto shift the focus investigation. a lot of the points that you are making, our guest makes those comments in his piece in politico that is dated april 7. he said it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the president is just trying to change the subject. if you get a chance, take a minute and read that. something else you wanted to talk about that? caller: i do. it keeps being a maggie -- it keeps being a nagging issue. entitlements. how do we solve this huge two thirds of the budget issue?

for the life of me, i cannot see why politicians can't give up the monster -- get up the muster to simply say ok. we will lift the cap. we will lift the cap on social security. we will lift the cap on contributions to medicaid. ,verybody pays the same amount regardless of the income. involved. if they did this, it would free up so much money. the fact that social security is andire straits in 15 years we have a cap on it at $117,000 every year and anybody who makes to payhat no longer has anything into social security. it is absurd. they are the ones who can most afford to continue to pay for it. just suckpoliticians

it in and say, i'm sorry, guys. i know you are rich and you backed my campaigns. but everybody has to pay their fair share. host: thank you for the call. albert is in brooklyn. on the line for the independents. caller: hello? well, i perceive that there is zero evidence that president assad used chemical weapons against his people. such claims were made before and they were proven to be false three or four years ago, four years? host: ok. we are to bob in texas. good morning. is an: hello, since this open phone line, i wanted to just talk for a brief second

about the media. everybody, a lot of people call in and complained about the media, on the right or the left. the way that a lot of conservatives have to see it is , abc, nbc,instream cbs, washington post -- and most importantly, the corporation for theirean heavily left in reporting. and it is obvious. one of the things that his major -- when the news presents stuff, right they want to jump on this fake news idea. that theyou find is major news media does never retract things that they say. for not being true. and they often take on arguments like the thing about sweden. if your member a month ago,

everybody jumped on trump for talking about sweden having terrorist issues. and later on, it proves to be the point. that the media doesn't cover that. it is a sticking point with a lot of us conservatives. host: who do you trust? caller: i read the wall street of us ared a lot forced to listen to fox news which is obviously more winning more right. but it presents a little bit more down the center. and obviously i like to listen to you guys. host: why do you say forced to listen to fox news? hardr: you can see how they lean and the slanted they are. he said yourself, that can't be the way things go. you can follow it.

host: i appreciate the call. joseph is in new york. on the line for democrats. good morning. my belief is that the republicans are going after to their robotic strictly as political. completely political. it has nothing to do whether they are christian caring. it has everything to do with the fact that most women vote democratic. host: a few tweets this morning. as we have this discussion in open phones. syria -- $90 million wasted to improve trump's poll numbers. steve on twitter asks, is it true that ivanka trump actually called the strike? possibly referring to this headline. bombd trump's decision to

syria was posted by his daughters outreach -- that is what one of the sons told the newspaper. the strike was influenced in part by ivanka trump. the story quoting the son of president trump saying ivanka trump is the mother of kids and she has influence. i'm sure she said, this is horrible stuff. time now for a few more calls. jerry, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. this is the open line. future, withto the the world population of the i had a we are of population every 50 years.

now and7 billion people we can't employ them. and they are having trouble all over the world. where do you think we will be in the next 50 years with the world population about 14 billion? global warming and stuff but the big issue is coming up that how we take your such a fastith population. host: what do you think it will be like in 50 years? in 50 years,nk it'll be such a revolution that he will not be able to recognize what we have here. our democracy. trying to feed people and house them and take care of all their needs. we are already 40 years into

what we are looking at with wars . virginia,abeth is in good morning. caller: thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. i am glad to have open phones. i want to switch gears. representative hastings from florida have put forth a , numberon last year 752, and he has resubmitted that as a resolution 30. to address something that is really difficult to look at. it is the practice in china and other asian countries of torturing dogs and cats for example -- the dog and cat meat festival. they are tortured, and dismembered to death. and it is so horrible.

mr. hastings was brave to send a letter to the chinese president and there is a sister resolution, 1406, which addresses this issue on making it a federal crime in the united to kill a dog or cat for consumption. there are two states, in particular, that are seeing a problem with which is california and hawaii. in the united states, there are only six states that have outlawed this practice. in the greater world, if you ever have the opportunity, and you only need to see at once, to see a video of what is done to the dogs and cats, many in china are actually stolen pets. the torture that they go through is thatthought process the more you tortured animal, the more adrenaline will go primeh its body so the

objective is to treat it as cruelly as possible so you receive a benefit from drinking a soup made out of its bodies. host: can i ask how you came onto this issue? this is something you are very aware about. hastings presented it and i would love to have washington journal invite mr. and some of the other activists to come on and speak situation.tremendous because it is something that is so painful and horrible. most people can't even look at it. it is unbelievable. a a country, we are sent into tailspin when mike vick was found in the dogfighting ring. the public outcry.

well what is going on, this makes michael vick look like a choir boy. when any human being tortures and animal for their personal benefit or gain, intentionally, for their benefit, it is wrong. and speaking out against it, when you have attention, it is the only way of saying we live in the 21st century and this kind of behavior and this action is something you would expect in the dark age. -- whatwant to ask first brought you to this issue? caller: i work as a volunteer with a rescue. and seen these dogs rescued rescued and taken to other countries where animals are treated more humanely.

when you see an animal that look see you and is so afraid that they cower in a corner, they are terrified of human touch. they don't know what going outside for a walk means because they have never been treated like that. if you canhave -- imagine having a pet and having that pet stolen and then knowing -- because this is what people do in china. their petthat when goes missing, most likely, it will end up in one of these slaughter places. it happens in vietnam and thailand. it happens in the philippines and indonesia. but because aely, small population pet graduates the countries

don't address it. host: we have to end it there. we are running out of time on today's program. tradee dog and cat meat hastings hasct -- posted about it on his website as a member of congress if you want to check more into that issue. it for the washington journal today. we see you back here tomorrow eastern.t 7:00 a.m. have a great tuesday. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> and first feature since he