and the white house is wary of measures being proposed. steve: agree or disagree? christal: yeah, i think it will be interesting if the senate takes action how that will go into the 2020 cycle. if they take some steps, if it is not sweeping background checks, what that would mean for the race and whether it would help or hurt. it will be interesting. steve: we'll give you the final word. josh well, the senate in play, i think there is going to be a lot of attention paid to the senate, especially if trump stumbles in the presidential election. i think democrats are going to be in reach of getting a senate majority, even though it is a little bit of a challenge. steve: we follow your work at national journal.com and usa today.com. to both of you, thank you for joining us on "newsmakers." christal: thank you. kopp kopp [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org]

>> chuck shumer and nancy pelosi will be holding a news conference shortly on a background checks bill. we will have live at 3:00 or when it gets started on c-span. the house judiciary committee will be working on gun violence legislation tomorrow beginning at 2:00 p.m. eastern. our live coverage is on c-span 3. you can also watch online at c-span.org and listen free with the c-span radio app. host: juli. she is a contributor to the nation magazine. she is here to talk about where the republican is with women voters and women in the party in general, representatives on capitol hill. we have you in because of the piece you just wrote in the nation, the republican party's

white women problem. it is been characterized by hostile sexism and women are turning away. what prompted you to write the article? guest: i was interested in a special election held in north carolina in july and it got a lot of national media attention because there were two republican candidates that made it past the runoff, a republican man and republican woman. the woman was heavily endorsed by a number of new efforts that had propped up in the republican party 2018. in the wake of 2018, which we kind of think of as the year of the woman, but it was the year of the democratic woman. womens of new democratic were elected in congress and state legislators across the country. the numbers of republican women dwindled. the numbers went from 23 to 13 in the house and 50 seats were

lost by republican women in state legislators across the country. they started sounding the alarm bells and started organizing efforts to endorse and bring money in early to support republican women candidates. they spent quite heavily in the republican race in north carolina yet the outcome was she lost by over 20 points to her opponent. that made me really question whether this issue, which i think there are some in the party that are sounding alarm bells over, can be solved by just recruiting and endorsing? can they endorse themselves out of this predicament? some $900,000re put into the race. have there been any after action reports or analysis about why she lost by such a big margin?

of the peoplee speculating and i think there will be some deeper dives into the day that when they are available. what we see and what we heard anecdotally was there are deeper issues with the republican brand right now, quite frankly with women voters. women of color have voted overwhelmingly democratic. black women are the core base of the democratic party. erosionhave seen is an of white women support of republican candidates. to 2018, we saw a 10 point swing and how college-educated white women voted. they favored the democratic candidate by over 10 points in 2018. non-college-educated white women, we saw a seven point swing.

you have a smaller base of voters voting republican and what you have is a base deeply aligned with president trump and very supportive of him. you need to look at the cultural driving support within the republican party base and whether that is conducive to supporting women candidates. what we saw in north carolina was it was not. many voters in the primary said they did not trust dr. perry and that she was significantly hard-core even though she ran on a pro-life christian agenda. that cost into question whether it is just a factor of early endorsement. it is hard for some candidates to get money early on and breakthrough, or whether it is a deeper issue. host: who on the house side is dealing with efforts to enlist women candidates?

she has been a leader in the party to try to find early was at and she said 2018 real crisis for the party and the need to address this. host: in your article you wrote that efforts to elect more republican women -- acknowledging the importance of diversity and inclusion only to a limited degree. this reflects a broader reality, all but one of the 47 women of color serving in congress are democrats, as are 96% of women of color that our state legislators. guest: it is a difficult argument to make that you need to broaden representation and include a wider variety of people to represent your party when the republican party is

overwhelmingly white now. it is hard to make the case that we need to be more inclusive with gender without looking at race. host: our guest is julie kohler. lines byroken up our democrats, (202) 748-8000, ,epublicans, (202) 748-8001 independents and others, (202) 748-8002. congresswoman liz cheney is the conference chair. any discussion we covered, she outlined how the republicans should approach enlisting more women. [video clip] i think it is crucial, we need to get more women to run. we need to find what are obstacles to women -- in my view, women spend a lot more time assessing what they don't

have, assessing experience they have not had rather than just going for it. i think it is important for us to encourage women to jump in. at the end of the day, we have to get more women voters. a large part of that at conference will be making sure our message is getting out, making sure we are demonstrating that if you put our policies as republicans against the policies of the democrats, and in particular the very far left policies are seeing now, coming from freshman democrats and their presidential candidates, that it is our policies that provide opportunities. it is our policies to provide security. it is our policies that help ensure everyone has an equal shot, we have an economy that is growing and providing jobs. and we are listening. a huge part of attracting women voters is demonstrating we are willing to listen to people's

concerns and we are willing to have conversations with small groups around the country as well as at the national level about the kind of future our party will build versus the kind of future the democrats will offer if they are voted in again. host: that was liz cheney back in january, talking about getting the message out. how is the message rested netting with voters? guest: i think it is not. i agree with her analysis. the ability to elect more republican women is connected to attracting republican women voters. women aree seeing is leaving the republican, at least from 2016 to 2018 and that is true for white women who have historically voted republican. whether or not that trend continues, it will determine who wins elections, but what the representation of the republican party looks like.

host: next call is from new york. caller: good morning. i am retired, and i wanted to question, do you think the reason why republican women don't run -- look at what these women go through. examples, sarah huckabee. other women in the trump organization, they are called -- every -ist there is. i think they fear now coming out in public to be labeled a >> watch it live on c-span dorgan take you live for minority leader chuck schumer and house speaker