or attacks on the right to asylum, to refugees coming into our country as i did when i was a six-year-old boy. >> new congress, new leaders. watch it all on c-span. >> the senate confirmation hearings for william barr to be the next attorney general of the united states begin on tuesday. in december, president trump nominated mr. barr to replace jeff sessions who held the position for a year and a half since the beginning of the trump administration. mr. barr is of counsel at his law firm and has served under president bush. watch the confirmation process ife on c-span3 on tuesday. >> congressman bennie thompson of mississippi has reclaimed the vel on the homeland security

committee. he's our guest on "newsmakers" this week. mr. thompson: we have 800,000 federal employees who won't get a paycheck today. nonetheless they are working. many of them are keeping america safe but it's not right to have people working and not being paid. >> mr. chairman, i want to ask you, in the absence of any kind of breakthrough in negotiations, it's increasingly looking likely

that president trump will declare a national emergency at the boarder to use funds from to the army corps of engineers to start building this wall without congress. in your view, does he have legal authority to do that? and if he gos ahead with it, what steps can a democratic house take to curtail that action? mr. thompson: i hope president trump doesn't declare the emergency declaration. accessing corps of engineers funds would put communities at risk that are already being ravaged by wildfires, floods and what have you and many of the projects associated with those natural disasters being limited with those corps of engineers funds. i hope he wouldn't to that, but

we have three branches of government. if the executive branch chooses its path, the legislative branch can do its will, we can challenge it in court and the judicial barrage will look at it. i hope we for whatever reason don't get to that point. i hope president trump's advisors tell him that this manmade catastrophe on the border is not what an emergency declaration should be about. this is not the way to go, holding those 800,000 federal employees hostage in terms of making them work without pay. should not be part of this iscussion. from what i gather it is seriously under consideration

but i would say to the president if he asked me, mr. president, you shouldn't do it. steven: i wanted to take you to the history of border barriers. i believe you voted for both of the fy17 and fy18 omnibuses, which included homeland security money. included in that is money to build about 122 miles -- replace about 122 miles of fencing, which the president says began uilding his border wall. i guess my question is, what is your stance on building walls going forward? why is that different than what you just built? do you agree with speaker pelosi that walls are an immorality? rep. thompson: barriers are one thing. what the president has started saying is concrete walls and moved it into other things. in every instance, we always had plan. when those projects were funded in those budgets, we knew exactly what was being developed. under the president's proposal,

there is nothing on the table other than what is in his head and what he is saying. gao looked at its last summer and said they could find no matrix as to anything for what they would do if they had this money. so while i supported historically protecting the border, democrats historically have supported it, but we tried technology, we have tried to add additional employees on the system so that we could work with that. we have identified assets that could be moved and various points along the border to be helpful and led support for protecting the border but what the president has tried to do is somehow create a national crisis in a situation where the statistics don't bear it out. >> so the president, particularly the white house, vice president pence says the president is willing to accept

the restrictions in the senate bill right now and last year's senate appropriations law saying only existing fence types, what was built at the end of the bush administration and obama administration, they would use those fence types rather than a concrete wall. given that, why is that not good enough to go forward in building as long as he is no longer talking about the concrete all? he is talking about the fencing you have voted for in those last two bills. rep. thompson: the only thing i'm saying is, in the instance that i have observed, the president hasn't said a word -- the vice president hadn't said a word when the democratic leadership was in the room. if he is saying something outside the room, that says we need to come back together and start engaging the onversation. but my experience is, it doesn't matter what other people are saying. the president, at the end of the day, is the person who drives

the definition and he tends to want it his way, without any other involvement. nicholas: to follow up quickly, in your view, are there portions of the border where additional physical barrier makes sense and if you were to sit down with president trump in these negotiating sessions, what points of agreement do you have about other technologies or allocation of resources for border security? rep. thompson: if i were in the room, i would say we have an 1800-mile plus border. there are a lot of different types of terrain associated with that border. in some cases, the fencing you are proposing doesn't adhere to the terrain, but we need a lan. i have not seen your plan.

if you offer a plan, we will look at it. have you talked to the business communities along the border? have you talked to the landowners along the border to see if there is support for it? a number of things. it is not just something you can make a campaign pledge and try to fulfill it. you have to design things based on a plan. ou have to design things based on what the experts say and again, i have not been privy to any of those types of plans. in the past, the projects i have supported i will support again if the plans are there but we don't have the plans and so, in absence of a plan, i'll join my democratic colleagues and oppose a so-called wall that has no matrix or anything associated with it.

nicholas: congressman, i want to switch gears to election security quickly. we had the 2016 election and reports about foreign meddling. there are investigations going on about that. there was concern heading into last year's midterm elections we would have a repeat of that. i am curious about your postmortem. what did you see? it appears we didn't see the level of meddling we had in 2016 and led to believe might recur. did it not occur? was it hidden better, what was your postmortem? and what are your plans in your committee for future action? rep. thompson: thank you for the question. former secretary jeh johnson of homeland security declared our system of election as vital. we made available the talent in dhs to secretaries of state all of the country to help identify vulnerabilities. we have worked with the majority of those states after the 2016

elections where we saw potential meddling by russians, primarily, ut also rogue nations. we have said to them, your systems of elections need to be fortified. we will help you. we created a task force on the democratic side because we couldn't get republicans at the time to join us. we came up with a series of recommendations. many of those recommendations talk about providing moneys to states to acquire current equipment, but also the validation of the results was omething we were concerned about because the internet, as

you know, was a prime culprit in many of the shenanigans potentially that could be used. in 2018, however, i think because people knew we were watching that many of those things did not occur. many of those things didn't occur, but we look at it that we can't compromise the security of our method of electing officials, so we did not have as much mischief in 2018 as we did in 2016. some of it was probably associated with the training of the officials was better, i am xcited about that. as you know, with legislation recently introduced, we will join, the house administration will join the other committees

to make sure they don't have it again. house judiciary will do that. hopefully, we'll make sure it doesn't occur. nicholas: can i ask, you mentioned the states and the elections are state operations with federal oversight. will you produce a name and shame list of who is doing a good job and who still needs work? that is something your committee ould pursue. rep. thompson: we will work with the secretary of state's organization. we will offer the services. they don't cost states any money. and i'm happy to say i have not been apprised of any state that has turned down the offer of help from d.h.s. on that. again, that is primarily state-by-state decision. every state manages their own system of elections according to their local election laws. we want to work with them.

we want to make sure those things don't impede the quality of the election. one of the things we did find ut is the propensity for mischief because of the internet is we're always -- we're going back to a paper receipt for the elections. we have come full circle with the use of technology and now, all of a sudden, people are advocating looking at a paper receipt for the tally. we are looking at it on the homeland security committee. we hope by the end of the first

quarter to come up with a proposal. >> let's talk for a minute more broadly about your agenda for the committee. there are a number of issues, the shutdown is at the forefront, the effect on federal orkers and the department of homeland security, but you have in the past signaled you would like to look into other issues, detention policies at the border, response to hurricanes in the caribbean last year. what should we expect your first priorities to be in terms of hearings and legislation in the weeks to come? rep. thompson: the first thing we are going to try to do is get the secretary of homeland security to come before the committee. she only came before us one time last year, which was not enough. we are going to get the customs and border protection commissioner there, as well as the tsa administrator, to come and talk about the current state of affairs. we will talk about whether or not the shutdown has impeded national security, but we want to get to hear from the secretary what's her vision for he department. some have concerns whether or not she has been up to the task

but we will give her a chance to defend her position. we will look at that. we will look at election security, a broader vision for cyber. we will make sure disaster response in this country is adequate to that. we'll make sure the transportation systems for our country, whether maritime, air, or border, are secure as they possibly can. we will do oversight. in addition, pipeline ecurity. we will work with the pipelines in our country to make sure those systems are as secure as they can, as well as our ports. a lot of our concern about whether or not weapons of mass destruction or anything can get

into this country, many people believe our ports and our airports would be a potential for that. we will do quite a bit of oversight in those areas, but to be honest with you, we want to work with this administration, but they are going to have to come forward and provide us the information. in the past two years, we did not get a lot of information. some of it we got redacted, some of it we got beyond the time we needed it. we want to create a climate by bringing the secretary in, sharing with her what we want to do with the committee and get a pledge from her to work with us. i hope we can do that. stephen: i wanted to ask you about the committee deals with the structure of the homeland

security department. in terms of structure in the campaign last year, they were as a push by democrats and activists to abolish i.c.e. i am curious about whether that talk has died down a little bit. will you bring up an abolish i.c.e. bill? what is your stance on o the changes needed? does i.c.e. survey purpose at this point? can you abolish it? rep. thompson: i have been a supporter of i.c.e. they do a job just like any operation. we can review what they do, and if we need to tweak it, i am committed to doing that. there is some question about i.c.e.'s interior enforcement role. we need to look at that. we share jurisdiction of i.c.e. with the committee on judiciary. we will have to have joined hearings but i don't think there is any issue we won't look at to see if we can't improve it. stephen: would you bring an

abolish i.c.e. through your committee? rep. thompson: no. nicholas: you mention an interest in a collaborative relationship with the administration as much as possible. i wonder after the opening of this congress, the pitched battle we are seeing that seems to be moving nowhere over many issues we are talking about, if you think that will still be possible. are democrats' plans to find areas of agreements with republicans that make policies, are those feeling realistic at this point in time? has that changed? rep. thompson: i think we will have some challenges, no question about it. but the history of our committee, we have had a fairly bipartisan, reasonable relationship through the years. there have been some issues of this agreement but at the end of the day, our posture has always been that we want to keep merica safe. we'll do that, and one of the

common comments you hear quite often is when terrorists come, they don't ask party affiliation or religious affiliation. they just want to hurt americans. it is to our advantage to come up with legislation that protects this country and that is what i intend to do as hairman. nicholas: one of the things you just mentioned about terrorists coming to the country, you have been one of the biggest voices in terms of asking for a focus on domestic right-wing terrorism and i wonder specifically what steps your committee plans to take to push for the administration to deal with that, explore that issue, what are the problems out there structurally and what solutions are you going to deliver? rep. thompson: conceptually, the committee was too narrow in the past years, looking at domestic

terrorism. it only came from a muslim religious focus, but when we look at the domestic terrorist acts that occurred in this country over the last few years, they were conducted by american citizens. many of them who had a right-wing slant to their ideology and so we look at domestic terrorism as a whole. we want to make sure that those individuals on the right or left who want to do terrorist acts in this country, that we prevent t. ne of the items that is coming front and center recently is that many of those arms and ammunition acquired by those terrorists were bought with credit cards. we want to see whether or not we can tighten the acquisition of firearms with credit cards to

perhaps stop potential terrorist attacks. i don't know if it can be done, but it is something we should look at. stephen: can i ask you on this issue, is right-wing terrorism here in the country a bigger issue than radical islam in terms of terrorism and do you have any sense whether president trump's election has fed into that? rep. thompson: i don't have any sense that president trump's incendiary language in so many instances has fed into that. it hasn't helped. i know when you look at the facts, the facts say that we have had more domestic terrorist activities occurring recently by right-wing groups than you have any other group. we will look at it. we'll talk to law-enforcement groups around the country, especially those in urban areas. they have a real concern about it and we plan to bring the

witnesses in and try to craft a strategy on how to address it. you can't ignore what the facts lead you to and we plan to do that on the committee. >> just three minutes. nicholas: changing the focus to your home state of mississippi. there was a lot of national interest in a special a election will in november for the senate, ultimately won by republican cindy hyde-smith, but there was a margin that was considerably closer than we have seen in statewide races there in recent years. you said before the election, democrats didn't have enough of a position to win statewide, that was right. i wonder what you think that race portends for 2020 when hyde-smith will be up again and other democrats. potentially mike espy running again. what's the state of the party?

rep. thompson: unfortunately, my predictions came true. democrats didn't win. we had a good shot at it, but what we did find out is our democratic party apparatus in the state of mississippi is better. we had a better geo tv effort, we had a better voter identification effort, and better fundraising effort. we had a candidate that raised over $7 million. that was unheard of for any candidate in the state of mississippi, so we had potential. i'm happy to say that mike espy has announced he will run again n two years. we can look at the experience of the past elections and build on it. if you ask me that question now, hich i assume you are, i think

we have a better than 50-50 chance to win a repeat match based on these two candidates. nicholas: can i ask why that is and what steps you think the party needs to take in the next two years? rep. thompson: will continue to build out. we've adopted the system of voter identification and what have you. we've brought on more professional staff at the party on a full-time basis. we'll have statewide elections this year. we have a strong candidate in jim for governor who is our current attorney general, as well as a good field of other down ballot candidates. i'm convinced we'll do that. but it's still a work in progress. i'm excited about this potential. the candidate, senator hyde-smith, has not distinguished herself. she supports the wall and a good

number of people in our state do not. i am looking forward to helping that race again. i am serving in the seat that mike espy held before he went to be secretary of agriculture. he has the potential, i believe, to win the election in 2020. >> on that note, we are out of time for this week. chairman thompson thank you very uch for being c-span's "newsmakers" guest. we appreciate having you, please come back. mr. thompson: thank you. >> chairman thompson suggested he is looking increasing like that the president will declare a national emergency as his way to end the situation we're in. what is the process. what would happen if he declares a national emergency? stephen: he would tap into most likely army corps of engineers funds. they would have to feigned that money from within their existing appropriations, and then

redirect that funding $5.7 billion, his current request, is going to be quite difficult. you heard the chairman say that some of the other things such as disaster relief that the army corps does is where that money would come from. there will almost certainly be legal challenges. you are essentially looking at another travel ban case in terms of a challenge to presidential powers, and the courts will grapple with those same issues of the president acting on behalf of the national security in what he will have declared as an emergency situation. folks i talk with, legal experts say this is perhaps a firmer case for the president than the travel ban, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in court. it is a process that would take a long time, greater than 2020 when he is up for eelection. in the short term, there seems to be an assumption that government would quickly reopen and president trump would agree to that, the house and senate

could pass some short-term spending bill to get things opening up again, but i'm not sure it will be that straightforward. in the meantime, we are about to cross into the longest shutdown in government history. >> why would it not be that straightforward? passing a continuing concurrent resolution? nicholas: they could pass a continuing resolution. the bigger issue is getting the est of the big bills done. the omnibus that would include the seven bills that have yet to be passed. there are other issues left, including detention beds for .c.e., which the president has asked for up to 52,000, i believe, and the current level is ability 40,000. there is also a big issue about the mexico city policy, which was the first reagan administration policy prohibiting the use of u.s. taxpayer funds to fund certain family planning organizations and nongovernmental organizations internationally. the senate bill the house democrats have been passing

included overturn of that policy. the white house in its statement of administration policy, the veto threat from a week ago said we can't accept that. they will have to o work those out as well. >> we've got to zoom back here and we asked the chairman this. even if we do get government reopened, this is a very portentous way to start this new congress. democrats came in pledging to try and find areas of commonality with the president, prescription drug pricing, infrastructure, potentially other narrow areas. it is pretty hard to see how nancy pelosi, mitch mcconnell, and president trump will have negotiations on any of these topics given the toxic quality hat has already overtaken that relationship and the fact that pretty soon, 2020 campaigns are going to be ramping up.

i'm pretty curious to see what, if anything, actually gets done beyond messaging bills that will ever become law. >> let's take that macro question to homeland security. the chairman had a long list of oversight issues he wanted. he talked about the collegiality and cooperation of the committee but at the same time, raised questions about homeland security secretary's competence. how does that play out? stephen: the list he gave, there is a lot of -- he's right, there is a lot of bipartisanship on the committee. this committee has produced several border security bills passed by unanimous vote in the last few years. he's right, there are going to be opportunities for that. the real focus and place where they are likely to make a lot of news and attention is on that oversight. he has asked the homeland secretary to come up, he has demanded a whole bunch of documents and responses to unanswered letters to come in later this month before that

hearing. so that oversight role is where democrats are going to make their mark, particularly on the homeland security. particularly on the security of the family separations policy, the death of two illegal immigrants last month, those are fruitful areas. >> as we close, what about americans' concerns about their own security as this shutdown plays out? this area he's responsible for, t.s.a., etc.? what is the level of security americans should have that the government is keeping them safe in the shutdown? nicholas: we saw some of the federal unions associated with the faa yesterday offering warnings about flight safety as the shutdown continues on and employees are not paid. at this point there is no evidence people are at risk at the moment. the risk is if this goes on for two more weeks or a month, you start seeing federal employees

leaving these vital security agencies and you could end up with staffing shortages, morale issues and it is harder to put your finger on how that will affect the security outlook, but in the long-term, there are reasons -- not to mention with future recruitment, which is something you have started to hear republicans and democrats worry about for the agencies. >> that is it for our time. thank you for coming back to "newsmakers. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> it is day 24 of the partial government shutdown but congress is in session today. the house returning at 4:00 eastern for legislative work, taking up four bills, five bill, four dealing with small business issue, one extending the temporary assistance for needy families. we'll have live coverage when the house gavels back in at 4:00

here on c-span. >> the senate confirmation hearings for william barr to be the next attorney general of the united states begin tuesday at 9:30 a.m. eastern. in december, president trump nominate police department barr to replace jeff sessions who held the position for over a year and a half since the beginning of the trump administration. mr. barr is at kirkland watch the confirmation process for attorney general nominee william barr live tuesday at :30 a.m. eastern on c-span3. >> now, virginia democratic governor ralph northman delivers his state of the commonwealth address in richmond. he talks about a proposed budget plan based on expected new revenue from last year's federal tax overhaul. he also wants lawmakers to consider his plan for