gilad edelman talks about a law. you can join the conversation with your phone calls, texts, and tweets. washington journal is next. host: good morning morning on this holiday weekend. the president at the white house hosting an event tomorrow for more than 1001st responders, essential workers, military service members and their families. congress is in recess. job numbers out today from labor department. a year and a half since the pandemic hit, an estimated 50 million americans expected to travel this weekend. phone lines are open and we are asking you about your view of the economy and whether you are

optimistic? if you are, (202) 748-8000. if you say no, (202) 748-8001. 202 the area code. you can join us on social media on instagram, twitter, facebook, and a text message, you can send us one, at (202) 748-8003. include your first name and where you are texting from. some headlines from the new york times about developments in kabul as the u.s. departs afghanistan and leaving just a few hundred military personnel on the ground to protect our embassy and other properties, effectively ending 20 years of war. the washington post, again, more from that makeshift memorial in surfside, florida as the recovery effort continues.

new worries about hurricane elsa, expected to hit the florida coast. not clear what effect it could have been miami. according to the wall street journal, the job recovery accelerates in the last month. that's from labor department. associated press has this from a san francisco fed official. with interest rates ultra low even as the economy improves, federal reserve officials are divided over how quickly they should adjust policies. should they withdraw their support for the economy soon or hold off until the job market is closer to full health? many policymakers agree on one thing -- the economy is strengthening faster than expected. in an interview with the associated press, the president of the federal reserve bank of san francisco saying -- she is offering this perspective. it is appropriate to consider tapering asset purchases this

year or later next year. the economy will be able to start functioning more on its own, which means we can withdraw a little bit. the bank is purchasing about $80 billion a month in treasuries, $40 million of month -- $40 million a month in mortgage backed securities to keep longer-term rates low and encourage borrowing and spending. is the economy's outlook good? (202) 748-8000 if yes, (202) 748-8001 if no. [video clip] >> people are getting vaccinated and of feeling safe and content again. the economy is reopening. we are seeing a ton more openings and opportunities. people feel like it is safe to

return to jobs. that was a big part of what happened this month. 40% of the hiring in june, the bulk of it in leisure and hospitality, so restaurants and hotels and arts and entertainment, and education. >> a slight uptick in the unemployment rate from 5.8% to 5.9%. can you explain? >> the basic story here is that it didn't go up a ton to 5.8%, but the key take away is, despite all these job openings we are seeing, there is still a slack labor force participation. that's a fancy way of saying we don't really have a lot more job seekers. people are still -- quite a few people are still sitting on the sidelines. i often hear about childcare issues or i hear about people who want to take a chance and go into different directions so they are not picking the first job that is available to them.

they are thinking about starting a business or going in a different direction, may be going back to school. that's why we see the slight uptick in the unemployment rate. we are not seeing a huge number of people searching for work again yet. host: our conversation with heather long. in the washington post this morning, the u.s. economy adding 850,000 jobs as the labor market shows renewed strength. i want to share with you this clip during the early stages of the pandemic. you see how quickly the job losses were created. we are back to about 145 million jobs. the people for the pandemic was about 152 million jobs -- the peak before the pandemic was about 152 million jobs. eric has this to eat. -- eric has this tweet.

"i am optimistic because we have a grown up in the room." tell us what you think. maria is not optimistic about the economy. she is joining us from atlanta. good morning. caller: good morning, steve, and everyone else. how are you? host: good. caller: i never had faith. the minimum wage is seven dollars. i am calling in to say that i enjoy listening to you. i will miss you. i hope that i will follow you somewhere and you appear to be a very nice person and you know how to talk to people and speak to them. take care of yourself, steve. you will be missed. host: thank you for those good wishes. this is from senator mike lee, republican of utah on the jobs report yesterday with 850,000 new jobs created, in excess of

the 700,000 predicted. he said despite the effectiveness of covid-19 in suppressing -- of the vaccine in suppressing covid-19 and openings at an all-time high, employment remained 7 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic levels. unchecked federal spending and suppressed employment contributed to inflation. we will go to rick in charlotte, north carolina. good morning. are you optimistic or pessimistic about the economy? caller: i am very positive about the economy. one of the reasons that i called is i want to say to all the people who are on the channel -- i know a lot of people do not respect -- hello? host: we can hear you. good morning. caller: a lot of people do not respect -- the greatest in the world -- but we have fox news, right wing media, which has

created a different world in this country. i called in once and i said that the republicans were off the rails, and i am not saying that you hung up on me, but i know that you do a great job. i will miss you. i hope the best for you. keep up the good work, whatever you do. thank you, man, because, like i said, this is the greatest country in the world but people do not like the truth, and since the fox news, right-wing media has taken 60% of the country in the wrong direction, i don't know if we can ever straighten this out, but i want to say thanks to you and i wanted to call in today to at least let you know how i appreciate what you have done. host: thank you. the great work of this network continues every day. it will carry on the tradition of what we do since 1979.

back to your views on the economy. michael is joining from st. peter's -- st. petersburg, florida. good morning. what are your thoughts on the economy based on the labor department data yesterday? caller: things have changed dramatically since we have a new president. i think they are going in the right direction. things get done when people work hard to do the right things. you have people doing their jobs and thriving and getting this economy better with the things they are doing in this country. i would like to thank these people for what they are doing for the american people. thank you. host: thank you. fed chair jay powell was before a coronavirus crisis subcommittee last week and, with questions from jim jordan and other, an exchange on the pandemic and the role of the fed in the u.s. economy. here's a portion. [video clip] >> when you pay people not to

work you should not wonder why you do not have workers. we now have several governors, 25, who have turned back -- have said we don't want visit federal enhancement -- we don't want the federal enhancement to unemployment. i have never seen governors turn down federal money. it underscores how serious the problem is. you think it changes soon? >> these benefits run out -- >> what if the democrats were new them? >> excuse me? >> what if the democrats renew them? would that be a problem? >> i don't comment on the -- >> you said expected to run out and that will help, and i am asking if democrats renew them, won't that hurt? >> these are judgment for people -- >> i am just following your logic -- i mean, i have to be -- >> we will see strong job creation in the fall.

there are 9.3 million job openings, millions of people unemployed. there seems to be some kind of speed limit. it may be that it is hard to match up with a new job ad people feel like they can wait longer and shop carefully. >> it seems to me, chairman, and i know you will not talk policy, but i do nothing the democrats are doing anything right. they are spending money like crazy, proposing more -- a $6 trillion budget, causing inflation, inflation has went up the last four months. it continues to increase. you have two mandates at the fed -- stable employment and low inflation and we have neither. finally, on top of that, they are thinking about raising taxes. this is amazing to me. first, you pay people not to work and then the people who are working, you raise their taxes. somehow you think that will help

the economy when every employer i talked to says they cannot find people to work. host: that exchange from jim jordan, republican of ohio, and the fed chair, jay powell. if you are optimistic about the economy, (202) 748-8000. if you are not, (202) 748-8001. lizzie on our twitter page says this -- the stock market is like it always is, a place for the wealthy to get more wealthy. it is not an indication of a growing, healthy economy. from towns square, saying optimistic, but realizing people's buying habits may change -- may represent a change in a permanent desire to not waste money on unnecessary items, meals and services. a journalist writes the following -- this year is shaping up to be a year of raises. in the past three months, rank and file employees have seen

some of the highest wage growth since the early 1980's as employers are desperate to get workers back into restaurants, ballparks and plants, offering perks and higher pay to interface them to return. -- to entice them to return. ben joining us from baltimore city, maryland. good morning. caller: thank you for being the ultimate professional. i am sure that your parents are prey. -- are proud. you can look back and reflect and be proud of your accomplishments and the things that you have done and brought to this medium. i just think you guys are -- brian lange and some of the other guys have just been outstanding, and i hope the format never, ever changes, and i want to say thank you. add your future -- the wind is

at your back now. as far as the economy, i am concerned that too much money is being dumped into the economy, and at some point, it is going to hit a tipping point, and i think the tipping point will come sooner than later because there's so many obligations with infrastructure and stuff like that, and so i am not too, unfortunately, optimistic about where things are going in the short term. host: ben, thanks, and thank you for your good wishes from baltimore city, maryland. this is from william in, connecticut, sending us -- william in connecticut, and sending us this message -- no. 800,000 jobs created by the unemployment rate still went up. it is being blamed on more participants in the labor

market. the job market recovery accelerates, employers adding the biggest number of workers in 10 months as the wage bounces back. more from your calls. steven in staten island, new york, good morning. you are optimistic? caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. this is anecdotal, but in response to the idea that people are not going back to work because they are getting too much money, i have somebody around me talking about he was a business owner saying he was having so much trouble finding employees and my husband is out of work and i wanted to say to him, how much are you paying? he owned a restaurant that she owns a restaurant. we have a mortgage, payments, a lifestyle, and he has been out of work for months. and i know if i asked this man what he was paying it would not have been enough for us to sustain, so of course it will

not -- of course he will not take that job. it is good they are paying people. maybe this will pressure employers to pay a living wage. host: the other concern is that this is going to spike inflation. caller: i am not that worried yet. i think it might cause some inflation, but from what i am hearing from authorities, they say they don't expect it to be that serious and i am going to have faith in that for the moment. host: stephen from staten island. the other issue some of you are bringing up, the rising debt, now in excess of $28 trillion and growing rapidly. this courtesy of the u.s. debt clock. mike joining us from florida. good morning, mike. caller: good morning. i am not -- what was i going to say? -- i don't know how you boast about people going back to work.

these are not newly-created jobs. they are abandoned jobs where people are going back to them now that the pandemic is over, so i don't see what the federal government is bragging about. host: thank you, mike. front page of the new york times. hiring increases and wages jump. next to that, many retirees did not plan an early exit, a sign of how the pandemic has altered the country, the new york times looking at a look -- times taking a look at a number of individuals in their late 50's and early 60's who have decided to retire early. going to lutherville, maryland. good morning. elizabeth, you are on the air. caller: good morning. how are you? i am optimistic about the economy, maybe because of the stimulus checks we got. it changed my life to get that $1400 deposited into my account. i was able to pay rent, buy

food, buy clothes for myself. i think biden is a terrific president and, with the infrastructure plan and the stimulus checks and now the pandemic is over, -- i got my covid shot on my birthday, april 21 -- that was my first covid shot -- what a great birthday present? -- thank you. i am a disabled senior living a home. the uber company provided me free transportation to a mass vaccination site in baltimore county, maryland, so in my covid shot and my stimulus checks i am optimistic about everything going on in this economy. biden is doing a terrific job and we have a lot to be grateful for. i think that everything is going to work out for everyone, especially with these child tax

credits, people who have been unemployed and who have been able to go to work because they don't have daycare -- who haven't been able to go to work because they don't have daycare will get these tax credits and pay for daycare. where i live, not everyone works. both parents work, one at day, one at night, all day, everyone works. they just switch off. now that schools are open for the fall, and we have summer school year -- it is great to have the -- host: you sound great. thank you. caller: you are welcome. thank you. host: we mentioned child tax credits. we discussed the u.s. economy and the $850,000 -- the 850,000 new jobs we saw in june. the projection was 700,000, but still about 5 million job short of where we were before the

pandemic. here is biden on the tax credit issue. [video clip] >> families will receive one of the largest single your tax cuts the middle classes ever received, the childcare tax credit. here is how it works. in the past, you paid taxes and had a good income, if you did, you could deduct $2000 per child. that would come off the total amount of taxes you owed. if you had two children and owed 10,000 dollars, you would take off $4000. under the american rescue plan, we expanded that. now, a parent gets $3600 for every child under the age of six and another amount for dependents between six and 17, so instead of just being a credit against taxes you owe, it is a fully refundable credit, half of which will be paid out monthly. what that means is that this

year, middle-class families with two young children can expect to receive $7,200 in effect a rebate, a tax return, every month -- return, starting this month, until it is paid out. families who use direct deposit will get their refunds, will get a monthly payment on the 15th of every month from now until the end of the year until it is paid out. help for families most needed. most need help. it is important. i have set for a long time, it is time to think of ordinary folks, ordinary americans. host: that's from the president yesterday at the white house. as we said at the top of the program, he is spending the weekend in washington and will host first responders, nurses

and military families for the july 4 celebration. the fireworks tomorrow. the celebration continues here. are you optimistic or pessimistic about the u.s. economy? that is our question. (202) 748-8000 if you say yes. (202) 748-8001 if you say no. cnbc with a look at states, including maryland, among the newest state stopped out of the federal employment programs -- on a plymouth programs as you heard concerns from jim jordan about how they are too generous. other states dropping out. the list is available at cnbc.com. this is stu from arizona saying i am not optimistic. over the last 2.5 years, i have lost 60% of my savings. we will go to janine madison

-- janine in madison, wisconsin. good morning. caller: i used to think i would die of optimism one day. however, this administration has made me feel much more pessimistic about everything. the economy is in trouble. all of the federal benefits that are being given, especially in wisconsin -- tourism is a huge industry here. we don't have people to work because people are making $16.75 an hour to stay home. we need to incentivize workers. we need to, as they used to say, teach people to fish, not give them the fish. between all the things that are going on in this country, all the incoming migrants from the southern border, we cannot afford to take care of everyone.

we do not take care of our own citizens and the rates are going to go through the roof. printing more money and printing more money and printing more money is not the answer. let's get people to work. you get rights when you have responsibilities. if you do not do your responsibilities, you do not get your rights. host: thanks for the call. that is the sentiment of james, joining us from walker, louisiana, sending us this text message. ending the free money is boosting employment but the crazy spending will send prices through the roof. otis is joining us from detroit, michigan, the motor city. good morning. how are you doing? caller: how are you? i am optimistic. my name is otis mathes, from an area of southwest detroit, 217 the zip code, and what i saw on the detroit area prior to the

pandemic, when trump was in office, people were saying employment went up, but if you go through places in the community of southwest detroit, they were working two or three jobs. the minimum wage is eight dollars and something here in the state of michigan. people were working two or three jobs. they were happy to have the jobs, but they were not working -- not with their families. single mothers not able to afford daycare peers of the grandparents and great-grandparents became the daycare people with empty nests. some of them in their 60's, some of them in their 80's and 90's. with the economy increasing, the job market also, the difference is people are saying that they are looking to go back to school. they know this unemployment ends

in september and so what i want to know -- also, those who are not optimistic, like jim jordan, who did not complain when trump gave us big tax cuts and the only person benefiting primarily were those in the stock market making returns and the wealthy, but it increased the debt by trillions. they have no complaint on that. it is always when the economy looks at the favor of the blue-collar, low income, and they complained about the deficit. now, the last question i want to know is, are those states who are cutting offexcess money of unemployment, what are their unemployment's condition -- what are their unemployment conditions? if the job market boomed. are they having the same results as the other half of the country still taken the money?

i watch -- i watch c-span a lot. i will tell you something crazy. -- when someone tells you something crazy, you don't argue with them. if we are going to keep having grandparents and great great grandparents being the babysitter -- and the v.a. he is now looking at veterans who have been denied disability. host: we will leave it there but thank you for the call from detroit. this is from another viewer -- i am optimistic about the economy. more needs to be done and it is possible now that we have a leader whose sole interests are not himself. my optimism is tempered only by obstructive efforts of disgusting naysayers in the clips we are listening to this morning. from the economic times, this headline -- the u.s. economic

recovery putting 2009 to shame. some of the details. recoveries from recessions can often feature a burst of pent up demand, but the current boom has few precedents. if the federal reserve is right in its forecast that economic growth will reach 7% in 2021, it will be the strongest performance since the recovery from the double-dip recession of the 1980's, but this is good news and no accident. it may seem partisan to want to give no credit to this administration or the previous one, but this reopening is validating the past. the early successes of the recovery stem from how the congress and the federal reserve, our federal bank, tackled the recession using a new approach, go big on policy support. policymakers booked some conventional wisdom and entrusted households and businesses with cash support with few strings attached. congress passed stimulus measures with the general mantra that the cost of doing to you a

little was potentially greater then much. at the last downturn, when the government did less, people were still dropping out of the labor force six years into the recovery and labor shares of national income fell to an all-time low in 2014. the economic times goes on to write mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures remained near record highs. the unemployment gap between black and white people had risen to a multi-decade high-end 2014. -- decade high in 2014. this time, we are seeing the benefits of policymaking that isn't miserly. rebecca in california, good morning. caller: i want you to know you are a wonderful man. if you are a wonderful man. you are a professional and humble. that is a great combination and thank you for being dedicated to us and to your position. now, about the money, i

say no. i say this is a false sense of security. a crush this inevitable. i won't say a full-blown crash but people will hurt again, so i would suggest we don't get attached to what is going on right now because it will really change within the next four years. again, this is a false sense of security. and thank you so much for being a wonderful moderator -- i forget what your title is, but ua -- but you are a wonderful man. bye. host: rebecca, thank you. appreciate your words. this is from cap and in -- this is from kevin in lincoln, nebraska -- i don't see how giving out free money is helping. governor ricketts cut off unemployment because there are more jobs here than there are people on unemployment. randy is joining us from

waynesboro, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning, steve. it is my lucky day to speak to you before you are departing at i hope you get things straightened out in d.c. we need people like you. host: we will try. it is a big task. caller: yeah. like the lady said in california, you are a great man and we respect you very much. we hope you will enjoy the rest of your, you know -- rest of your, you know, being the person that you are and we will be ok. the economy will be ok. america is going to be ok. what we have to do is get these from supporters and we will be fine. god bless you. take care, steve. host: appreciate that. this is from bill -- better

paying jobs means higher prices, lower cost imports means fewer jobs and lower standard of living for americans. james in indiana, good morning. caller: i am confident in the short term with the economy, but i am concerned about what might happen in august, september or october. this covid thing looks like it might be coming back, and if it does, it won't be good for the stock market, and it will be good for the economy. -- and it will not be good for the economy. i am a history buff. history has a tendency to repeat itself. i hope i am wrong. i don't want to see the stock market collapse.

what goes up comes down. host: james, how much do you have invested in the market? caller: about $700. that's it. heh. most of my money is in silver. when i say most of my money, that's probably not correct, but anyway, i -- i'm real big on history, i'm real big. i'm 68. i have been around through the obama years, which were great years. trumpers, you cannot convince them -- about the big lie. that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother day. you might want to go on to your -- next caller. host: all right. you mentioned the variant.

the new york times says the president plans to celebrate independence from the virus on july 4, running into the unpleasant reality that less than half the country is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. the highly contagious delta variant threatening new outbreaks. the president and first lady hosting about 1000 on the south lawn. sharon saying optimistic? no. easy to see that prices are considerably higher and rising and employers are unable to find employees even at higher rates. a chicken restaurant cannot open their dining room. grocery stores are closing. there is a problem. we talked about the jobs report. more from the right house. -- white house. [video clip] >> the last time the economy grew at this rate was at 1984

and ronald reagan was telling us it was morning and america. -- morning in america. well it is getting close to the afternoon here. the sun is going up. the american rescue plan for strengthening our financial position and it grows our economy. it continues to grow our economy. the strip -- the strength of the recovery is helping us flip the script. instead of employees competing with each other for scarce jobs, employers are trying to attract workers. that kind of the competition does not give workers the ability to earn higher wages but gives them the ability to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace. more jobs, better wages. -- in the workplace. more jobs, better wages. that's a good combination. the economy is on the move and we have covid on the run. we have more work to do, to get

america vaccinated into get everyone back to work. we are aiming for full employment, that means keeping our pace on job growth including for black, hispanic and asian workers, but this progress is testament to our commitment to grow this economy from the bottom up and middle out. host: the headline from the wall street journal -- the job market recovery accelerates. the president talking about those jobs numbers yesterday. you can read the story at wsj .com. the bottom of the hour. we welcome your calls. if you are optimistic about the economy, (202) 748-8000. if you are pesto -- if you are pessimistic, if you say no, (202) 748-8001. a tweet from greg, saying i am optimistic but hate when politicians take credit. people do not hire because of elections. want to let you know about c-span's fourth presidential survey as we gather 142

historians, a cross sections of experts on the presidency, authors, educators. we conduct a presidential survey when there is a change of administration, the first one when bill clinton left the white house in 2001. abraham lincoln coming in at number one. barack obama number 10. tomorrow, a closer look at this survey with four historians who took a leading role in this project. they are joining us tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. eastern time, 5:00 on the west coast. check out the survey online at c-span.org/ presidentssurvey20201. you can take a deep dive on the criteria used to judge the 44 men who have served in the white house. our good friend from ithaca, new york joining us. good to hear from you again,

sir. caller: good morning, steve. and, if i may, i would like to thank all the people behind the scenes that put everyone on. everyone -- guests, hosts, and all of our callers. i think sometimes, even yesterday, the woman you had, i think some of the people think c-span is cnn. you listen closely to the way some people say you are putting this on, i think they are rebounding wrongly off of others comments and attacks, so first of all, thank you for all, and the gentleman who retired it i wish him well. tissue retired i wish him well -- wish him wlel.

-- i wish you not only well, but john kennedy said to the press that one is only held in error when one fails to correct a mistake. you corrected a mistake and were punished for it. you have hosted an open town forum for 30 years at c-span. that's not only to your credit, it is to your confidence and to your consciousness that the whole c-span crew bring. conscience, we are taught -- i was taught, three miles from where you are sitting, at catholic university of america -- has to be informed. ignorance is neutral. there is invincible ignorance -- how many stars are in the sky or grains of sand? you have brought that, and it is to your credit, and, like others

who have been attacked, especially getting to the point at hand, i am not optimistic. i am not pessimistic. but i am realistic, and the thing is, we went off a war economy when we left vietnam and had 22% inflation, and, from ithaca, new york, professor alfred kahn served jimmy carter as his so-called inflation director -- host: 1977. caller: yeah. and what reagan did in peacetime, he had the largest military buildup the u.s. ever had and we were not even at war and then we started using it. and in 1997, we had the new american century that -- what is his name who just died? -- and carlucci and the rest were just involved.

host: donald rumsfeld? caller: donald rumsfeld. you go to war with what you got. anyway, people have to start realizing, if we go slower or get there faster, i am on disability. i have not gotten my check yet. i have called jill, schumer, i have -- i have called gillibrand, schumer, reid. no answer. i called blank field, the cochair of the people living with disabilities caucus, and one is referred back -- i was happy to hear the woman earlier who said she was optimistic. i am for her too, but let me make the point. we cannot put old wine into new

wineskins, or as the kids like, my new update, you don't put old coffee grinds into a new filter. host: we will leave it there but thank you very much. you have been a regular listener and viewer of this program and hope you continue. thank you and be well. dave in orlando saying good morning. i think the economy will come back. hopefully our politicians will work and get the usa back on track. to plano, texas next. good morning. caller: hi. good morning. i would like to chime in on what is going on. i listen to -- i listened to the president's speech, and for a long time, corporations have been getting away with giving people the wages, making billions of dollars in profits,

and you think about the real estate collapse a few years back -- a lot of years back, actually -- and the government had to bailout all those corporations, and no one really complained about that. you think about republican governors now, and those who want to cut off people's unemployment to get them back to work so companies can continue to make their billions. if they just pay people a decent wage, we would not need unemployment. i am all for going to work. i have worked throughout the pandemic. i did not take a dime of unemployment. it teaches corporations that if you pay me $20 an hour, i will go to work every day and work hard. the problem is mcdonald's and gm want to make $15 billion in profit versus $7 billion, and

therein lies the problem of the american economy. for years, corporations have not been paying their fair share of taxes, billionaires have not been paying their fair share of taxes, making their money off the backs of poor and middle-class americans. now it is our time. i am for what biden is doing and corporations should get on board. the economy will continue to grow and working families can again have one person going to work and the other parent taking care of the kids. host: thank you for the call from plano, texas. a tweet from cynthia -- leader mcconnell trying to drag the rest of us down. the difference this time is covert uncertainty is affecting our return to normal. the economy cannot rule or back because politicians are still missing. that is the semi-conductors. i think i have that right. mary, from martinsville, virginia, good morning. caller: i disagree with the last

caller and several other colors. we have been in an area with -- we have been in an area that was hard-hit when nafta passed. we are faced with the city going back to a town. it is reverting, which is going to put a burden on the county of henry, where we reside, and we will be annexed into the city over the next 10 years, which we have children and grandchildren. i wonder what their future is. at some point, we have to pay for that, but i would like to see other parts of the country get new jobs. we have no new jobs. we badly need them. host: how far are you from the west virginia border? caller: pretty far. we are in the center of virginia, near the north carolina line, and we have lost -- like i say, we were the

sweatshirt capital of the world, martinsburg -- martinsville, years ago, and also furniture, and we have none of it back. no new jobs. small business here cannot afford to pay $15 an hour, mom-and-pops. we cannot afford to pay that, but the checks the government is giving out for people to survive, they are not paying their rent, they are not paying their water bill. they are blowing the money. host: thank you you for the call. 15 minutes left. for those on c-span radio, we are asking you about the economy, optimistic or pessimistic? the u.s. deficit hitting $3 trillion in 2021, may fade as the stimulus relief expires according to the federal budget office, the cbo projecting six

point $8 trillion in spending versus lesson revenue. -- versus less than that in revenue. steve in texas saying -- no. wake up, capitalism and try a free market. when the government thinks a -- thinks it can control the economy, that's socialism. more on the jobs numbers. [video clip] >> get prepared to celebrate independence day. the news brought us something else to celebrate. this morning, we learned that, in june, our economy created a hundred 50,000 jobs -- created 850,000 jobs. wages went up for american workers. since i took office, we have created 600,000 jobs per month.

we have now created over 3 million jobs since i took office. more jobs than the government has created in the first five months of any presidency in modern history thanks to the incredible work of the entire team. this was historic progress, pulling our economy out of the worst crisis in 100 years, in part through our progress in vaccinating our nation and beating back the pandemic at other elements of the american rescue plan. today, the u.s. is the only major advanced economy where the oecd projections of a future output are higher today than they were in january of 2020, before the pandemic hit. and america was ranked first in bloomberg's covid resilience ranking. none of this happened by

accident. it is a direct result of the american rescue plan. and at the time, people questioned whether or not we should do that even though we did not have bipartisan support. well, it worked. in february, the congressional budget office projected 2021 economic growth would be 3.7%. yesterday, they doubled that number to 7.4%. and in large part thanks to the american rescue plan and our work to defeat the virus. host: that's from the president yesterday at the white house. asking you about the economy. optimistic or pessimistic? steve has this point -- i am a disabled senior on a fixed income. the ever-increasing cost of survival takes us out of the game when what little we get buys less and less. this is the sign of a rigged economy. one previous color making a passing reference to donald

rumsfeld -- previous caller making a passing reference to donald rumsfeld's death earlier this week at his home in arizona. earlier, a conversation about his book on his career in the nixon, ford and bush administrations, serving as the youngest and oldest defense administration. forced out in 2005 during the aftermath of the iraq war. donald rumsfeld passed away at 88. conrad joining us from philadelphia. good morning. caller: i am optimistic. and i am not sure, because every time -- taxes will be raised. the bottom line is that the average person cannot raise a family on $15 an hour. they need to go and try to feed

a family of two on $15 an hour. you will be lucky to bring home $120 a week. the billionaires cannot pay $15 an hour? what did they do with all the profits they made? 20 years of ruling, one year of downfall, now why they campaign anybody? -- why they cannot pay anybody? -- except the democrats. i am a republican. i never heard a republican say they wanted to do anything for blue-collar workers. always for corporations, tax breaks, trickle down. for the last 20 years, have not seen anything trickle down. the bottom line is we need help. we do not need -- any they say something about the blue-collar worker, republicans cry, no, no,

no. they send our money to japan, israel, hong kong, afghanistan. if they keep all that money, we wouldn't have a problem. host: this is from jt in kentucky, saying i am optimistic for the economy with a new infrastructure plan being passed. the economy should boom. i have never felt better about it in my lifetime. the debate over infrastructure and whether there will be an agreement between democrats and republicans continues. the house and recess for the july 4 holiday weekend but lawmakers return the week of july 12. live coverage of the house on c-span, the senate on c-span2, and on that select committee, nancy pelosi has appointed eight members, including representative liz cheney. it is to be determined whether the five names suggested by republican leader kevin mccarthy will be on it.

that chaired by the congressperson from mississippi's second district. we will have live coverage of that select committee and all that happens here on the c-span networks. this headline -- below the fulton the wall street journal for the weekend edition, huge old wealth, new owners paired the story says the greatest wealth transfer in modern history has begun. baby boomers and older americans have spent decades accumulating an enormous stockpile of money. at the end of this year's first quarter, aged 70 americans and above will have a net worth of dirty $5 trillion and they have started parsing it out -- of $35 trillion and they have started parsing it out to their heirs and others. caller, good morning. caller: good morning. the answer to the question is yes. there's no reason to not be optimistic about the economy,

particularly given the jobs report, and if you listen to the economic talking heads on some of these programs, they are all saying that we should be cautiously optimistic about the economy. there is some possible chance of inflation. things should be looking good and the economy will continue to grow. another point. you had a person call in, talking about how people are not using their stimulus, just blowing it they are not paying bills. it is amazing to me how ideological venom and tripe substitutes for informed opinion for a lot of people, right and trump supporters. you know, let's just stop all that, people. listen to the information, have an informed opinion based on the information available, and stop all this animus and grievance. thank you. host: thank you for the call.

oscar is joining us from rose hill, virginia. good morning, oscar. welcome. caller: i would like to say joe biden has talked about rebuilding the economy from the middle out and the bottom up. well, he is creating a funnel, which is sending all the people in the bottom down the tube. until we get the cost of living down, poor people cannot make it. and i mean, you know, they talked about the jobs numbers. the truth is just because people are no longer on unemployment doesn't mean half of these people do not qualify for unemployment anymore. i mean, it is a complete joke, because the living is so high that a poor person cannot make it. it might be great for people -- but poor people have their money invested in their children and

everyday living, and if you cannot live, the economy is not certain whatsoever. host: a tweet saying remember when prices for everything rose for everything in the 1980's post stagflation? leaving that as a question. the u.s. scanning 850,000 jobs in june, a sign of strength -- u.s. gaining 850,000 jobs in june, a sign of strength in the economy. employment increased to 5.9%. gary joining us next in orlando, florida. good morning. host: my name is gary -- caller: my name is gary. we have all these billionaires trying to fly into space. i watch them give $2 million during the trump administration. at the same time, poor people were struggling just to survive.

-- but you will not let somebody living in a trailer or a single-family home be able to afford a single-family home? people keep saying, and i keep people hearing -- and i keep hearing people saying over and over again, that they are spending money unwisely. most people take money to pay light bills. they said themselves, they keep giving billions and trillions of dollars to people like exxon and all these lobbyists going to congress. give the money to people who need it. give the money to the people at the bottom. they spend money on things they need. host: thank you for the call.

bill devi with this tweet, calling it a flashback from last september. it is lame to blame mr. trump for the unemployment numbers when the job losses are attributed to mandatory closures by the governors. eric getting the last word from binghamton, new york. good morning. caller: yes. i wanted to say this. i am on social security. my thing is they want something for nothing. they want you to wake up for $1.5 an hour for these businesses. you have to survive. i am 70 years old. i only get $800 in social security. i have to pay rent. i have to buy food. and the thing is, with that, people don't realize -- a lot of

people cannot even find a job. so i don't understand how people feel that everybody, you know, everybody can make it without having -- especially the poor. host: thank you for the call. the conversation continues on our social media pages. we continue with your comments on facebook.com/c-span or on twitter at cspanwj. we turn our attention to the situation in the middle joining us here in washington is james jeffrey of the wilson center. and we will turn our conversation to the debate on student-athlete compensation with journalist michael mccann. you are watching "washington journal." stay with us. ♪

>> sunday night on q&a, a look at american president to the lens of the books written with journalist craig fairman. you saw it in the quote that kennedy's father was the one pulling the strings. that is not true. jack kennedy won that pulitzer prize. he told another historian that i would rather win the pulitzer prize then be president. because he had a strong desire for literary fame, he got himself a prize. in new york city and washington, d.c., people have been gossiping, did kennedy really right that book? i wonder how much money they are getting out of the royalty checks? the pullets are made it -- the pullets are made it an ethical question. when i was at the kennedy residential library, i looked at the c was deceiving from

variance, school teachers saying, did you really write this book and they were responding. you wouldn't have accepted that prize if you didn't write the book, would you? >> you can listen to q&a as a podcast wherever you get your podcast. >> on june. the -- on june 13, 1971, the classified papers on the vietnam war were released. this subsequently led to a special investigative unit in the nixon white house which became known as the plumbers. author michael dobbs, formerly of the washington post, has written a book titled "king richard," which looks at that special unit that resulted in

the resignation of the president of the united states. 50 years later he focuses on that time in history in the event that is well known today as "watergate." >> michael dobbs on this episode. listen wherever you get your podcast. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we want welcome james jeffrey, the chair at the middle east program at the wilson center. he served as a special representative to syria for engagement between the u.s. and that country could welcome to the program. guest: thank you very much for having me on. host: i want to talk about the recent airstrikes of the was -- of the u.s. military in iraq, iran, and syria. you say, can biden do everything

. addressing overreach isn't an all or nothing endeavor. to your place, can you explain? guest: certainly, it was in reaction to people very understandably are saying, look, president biden is promising a foreign policy for the middle class. that means jobs, finding a sweet spot on immigration, keeping americans out of forever wars. i sympathize with that, that does not mean that sibley turning our back on what's going on in the world. the problem is, aside from these immediate benefits, the american people, since the 1940's, have lived in peace and prosperity in a world that is a sickly despite what you are seeing on the news, far more -- then it was. we don't want to go back. this requires the united states to play a modest but critical role as a leader on conflicts

and international disputes and to support the international order. the biden administration seems to understand that, but they cannot get us tied down in every little dispute. some are important, and some aren't. host: the headline this weekend from the new york times, the u.s. departing from afghanistan, essentially ending a 20 year war in that country are your thoughts about that move. guest: first of all, this is no criticize him to the brave men and women, including my son and daughter-in-law who served. but rather, it is a reflection of the fact that our, if you will, recipe for how afghanistan is a state should be organized was not successful enough to defeat the others, specifically

the taliban, on how the state of afghanistan and people of afghanistan should be organized. at the end of the day, we were not able to build up a sustainable system that could survive, not totally on its own, with at least just american and allied support, some money, and some advisors. we have done that in other countries. and it is time to leave. host: the u.s. attacking iran backed militants what was behind that move and did the u.s. need -- meet the objectives? guest: i am a bit skeptical but i support the decision to strike. the american people have to realize that we are facing, in this important region in the middle east, in a ran on the match throughout -- an iran that is on the move. the iranians are trying to take over these countries to dominate their own governments and

peoples and push up the international system, including the united states. it is an important mission that everyone supports. they are being attacked by irani and insurgents to put them under pressure. president biden is right to strike back. i have been involved with these tit-for-tat struggles with the iranians for decades. it is going to take more than that to get them to settle down. host: you write about that, the headline, the iran nuclear deal is not the problem, iran is. if and when an agreement is reached, the biden administration will also need your counter iran's initiatives in the middle east. guest: like withdrawing from afghanistan, which is a way cutting our losses in something we can't early when, -- we can't

really win, the problem is the larger context is a middle east that is being threatened by iran and over the horizon russia this requires the biden administration to walk and chew gum, take these steps while also ensuring they don't signal that the united states is giving up on the region or turning its back or pivoting to asia. asia is the most important but we are begin of and powerful enough to act in many different areas unless the question is, will the biden administration localized the israelis, the arab world, turkey, together to stop iran's march to the region and contain russia. host: but with the recent airstrikes against iranian targets that the press secretary was asked about whether there

was any concern the airstrikes we are looking at courtesy of the defense department will result in any retaliatory attacks from iran or let's watch. [video clip] >> the president's view that it was necessary, appropriate and delivered action. the strikes designed to limit the risk of escalation. he believes we should and will take necessary and appropriate steps to defend partners and allies in the region. certainly i would say that we continue to believe that, and have never held back from noting that iran is a bad actor in the region. they have taken part in and supported and participated in a problematic, extremely problematic behavior in our view. at the same time, we feel we are moving forward and seeking the opportunity to move forward on negotiations to prevent iran from acquiring nuclear weapon

and that is in our interest. it was not linked to the president of israel or any elections in iran either. host: your reaction to what you heard from the white house press secretary in the view of the biden administration. guest: she was a little nervous why she was trying to explain why we have to deal with this bad actor and assign a deal on a nuclear account. i support both, but it is complicated to sell to the american public and the international community. the strikes we took have not done any real damage to iran or its surrogate militias in iraq and syria. they send the signal, this was a pinprick this time but i am willing to use force next time, we might do something more serious. if the iranians except that position, they may be careful in

what they do. they may not stop entirely but will be careful not to inflict casualties on americans. that is one way forward. the other is they simply increase their attacks. i have seen this before in a cycle with iran in the early 2000 that resulted in the death of the main military commander in the region and missile strikes on u.s. bases host:. a long and distinguished career, began serving in vietnam and representing the u.s. in a number of o-matic posts, including u.s. ambassador to turkey, romania and representing us in iraq. he is joining us -- in a number of military posts, including u.s. ambassador to turkey, romania, and representing us in iraq. the israel hamas conflict, is it a reminder that everything is

connected? he ran -- iran's is the common factor. -- iran's role is the common factor. guest: i have been enrolled as an army captain and i went in in 1973 between israel and various arab states. it is a particularly unstable region. we have been involved in one or another way in conflicts there. none the less, at an underlying level, it is basically stable your nationstates have not disappeared. you have not had changes like russia's occupation of crimea, largely because america and most of the countries in the region what the stability. the country that is causing most

of the serious problems we can't seem to fix is iran. iran is an expansionist country with an ideology that pushes it to try to seize power, if you will, or effective power in arab countries of the way to the mediterranean and beirut. that is the problem, the underlying problem. russia has returned to the middle east in a big way since 2015, first in syria and now olivia. russia -- and now in libya. russia is trying to create instability with their partner in some respects iran to offer deals to work with russia rather than the united states in some kind of regional arrangement. russia is not a stabilizing factor anywhere. host: how do you temper iran? guest: first of all, by contesting in every country where iran is active it's

illegal and illegitimate and violent presence you do this by supporting local actors. you don't send in huge american armies. that is a mistake we have made it repeatedly. you work with local actors. we work with elements of the iraqi army, counterterrorism force, we work with partners in northeast syria, the syrian democratic forces, also holding terrain. we mobilize the arab league, the european union. we work with israel. israel has worked with the arab states to build up an alliance to stand up to iran. we think it is going well, but it requires continued american engagement, primarily diplomatic, occasionally military. host: our guest is james jeffrey. (202) 748-8000 for those of you

who are democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. we have a line for independents and you can also send us a tweet. let me ask you about the change in leadership in israel as the long serving prime minister bettman? -- benjamin netanyahu, how cohesive is it? guest: israel has a 120 member parliament. this government has exactly the minimum number needed, 61 members out of some eight bodies to maintain power. it is very fragile, but israel has a long history of eclectic coalitions of countries with parliamentary majorities of 1, 2, three people without collapsing, and we will just have to wait and see. right now it is the government of israel and we have to work

with them. host: one viewer saying i did not vote for war with iran. is that where we are heading? guest: absolutely not. one reason i support the return to the nuclear agreement with iran is if iran comes close to a nuclear device, and they know how to build nuclear devices and we know that from intelligence, if iran comes close to that, it is very likely there would be a war. in this sense the biden administration is trying to preserve the peace. what we are doing by contesting iran's presence is not getting involved in a war, although occasionally as someone drops a bomb or two, but rather working with partners in the region with this zone of conflict like counterterrorism. it is not a war. it is of some concern because troops are exposed at times, but it has been effective in the past when we do it right and we

will do it right again. host: let's begin with dan joining us from independence, oregon. we lost dan we will go to pat in keyport, new jersey. good morning. caller: can you tell me, are we going to reach a point where we are going to have to tell these sovereign nations in the middle east you have to defend yourself? at what point, if you want to remain sovereign, why are they taking responsibility for their own defense? and do you know what the future is for the abraham accords? guest: to good questions. that is what -- two good questions. i am confident these countries can stand up to iran and russia. we are not fighting battles for

them but working with them to ensure they have backing from the international community. they will do any fighting when it has to be done on the ground. we will provide logistics, advice, and international support die believe the abraham accords will survive the change in government in israel -- and international support. i believe the a ram accords will survive the change in government in israel. it was interesting then none of the arab states are now members of the abraham accords who took any serious action against israel. the relationship is good. the israeli foreign minister was just in the arab emirates. while that occurred in the trump administration, the biden administration is warming quite

obviously to it, and that is a good thing. host: and to dan, i apologize we lost you could try to call back and we will look for you. another question, i know iran funds has below but do they fund any other terrorist groups? guest: they fund more terrorist groups than i have fingers. let's start with hamas, the islamic jihad in gaza. islamic jihad funded by iran, there are funded in a rack in certain groups in syria. they fund malicious from afghanistan fighting against the syrian people as i speak now. it goes on and on -- they fund militias from afghanistan

fighting against the syrian people as i speak now. it goes on and on. iran is a major supporter of anyone in the region who wants to pull down the international order, create terror, and basically scramble everything. host: why still try to rejoin the iran nuclear deal? guest: because that is one area where we believe that with the right controls and the right inspectors from the international atomic energy agency that we can postpone any kind of final action on the iranian program for the better part of a decade now. it is not a good agreement but better than the alternative. that is where we are in the diplomacy period wish i could reassure viewers that we have solutions -- in the diplomacy. i wish i could reassure viewers that we have solutions. host: another viewer says we want resources and that is well

we are -- why we are in the middle east. follow the money. next is david. good morning. caller: i would like to join the course of wishing you prosperity and peace and all good thing as you go forward in your life, because i have been with you since the inception of c-span for all these many years. but to get to my comments, look, this guy with his so called conventional wisdom for these governments interfering in the affairs of the world, but in particular the middle east, we bomb iraq. we stabilize the duly elected government of iran.

his conventional wisdom of how to do the empire is coming home to roost now. we cannot do empire and remain in economic, a viable, functioning nation. and we look at the money we squandered on the lies and this conventional wisdom this person is sharing with us today, and it is like they just spew out, put a label on something terrorist. and then they build the whole propaganda around it to justify just these strange intervention in other people's countries. host: david from los angeles. thank you for the call. let me add from a tweet similar

to victor coming in at the same time. he says, how does anyone opine about iran without first beginning with the 1950's. what with the middle east look like if that never happened? you cannot rent more because a country is advancing in science in technology. that is insanity the sanctions have not worked. your thoughts in response. guest: these are good concerns, otherwise -- other than the assassination of nasser. president is the bigger picture. -- the present is the bigger picture. this is like taking a winning football game, the last few games and pointing out a ball that was fumbled, a pass that was intercepted, and opponent scoring two or three touchdowns

during a part of the game and saying, nothing works, look how bad that team is. you have to look -- we are not running an empire. what we are trying to do is preserve order, because we had very bad experiences in the 50 years before 1945, where we got involved in two wars that we worked able to avoid. remember the second one we had a fleet bound on december 2, -- september 7, 1941. that is what happens when you ignore them, they come to you, and september 7 or september 11. -- december 7, 19 41. that is what happens when you ignore them, they come to you. the argument is how you deal with it. you try to deal with it not by running an empire or spending 10% of gdp on defense, we only

spend one third of that, but rather working to build up a system to defend countries against those natural aggressions. sometimes it goes wrong and we have had a few examples of that. since 1945, the world has avoided major war and any of the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and arsenals all over the world that are being exploded. that is not an accident. that has happened because we have been on the ground with partners and allies around the world. i would not want to see the alternative because i have been in country after country that is not gotten this equation right in i've seen hundreds of thousands of people removed from their homes and large numbers killed. host: you just gave away your loyalty to the noon the and patriots. let's go to earl in atlanta. host: turn the volume down.

we will get an echo otherwise and will be able to hear you clearly. caller: i muted it. i agree with the last two callers. they are promoting antiquated ideas. we haven't nuclear apartheid right now in the middle east. they are allowed to have nuclear weapons and nobody else. technology advances, like transistor radios rate everybody is going to have a nuclear weapon at one point. so it doesn't make sense to have the abnormal separation that you want to impose on the middle east for they are all owing to be nuclear someday. you have to deal with them now. host: thank you, earl. james jeffrey? guest: the more countries that have nuclear weapons, particularly on responsible --

not responsible countries like iran, that will encourage more countries to have nuclear weapons and then a nuclear weapon goes off and this was fired and nobody knows where it comes from and the world is thrown into chaos. i agree it would be better in a world without nuclear weapons paired the countries that have them so far have been acting responsibly. -- weapons. the countries that have them so far have been acting responsibly, with the exception of russia in the past. we are in a situation where one of the most important goals of our whole foreign policy is to stop additional countries from gaining nuclear weapons. one way to do that is to work with other countries to try to preserve a general are of peace and stability so countries won't -- aura of peace instability so countries won't want to gain

more nuclear weapons. guest: america doesn't need the saudi or other oil because we have enough here. but the world economy that we are dependent on does the oil from the saudi's. the saudi's is a float back that allows prices to be controlled as demand goes up and down. it is important for that and it is seen as the leader of the islamic world because of the locations of mecca and medina inside saudi arabia. it is an extremely important player. host: should the crown prince be further punished for his involvement in the death of washington post columnist khashoggi? guest: it is still murky. i have had discussions at the highest levels of the saudi

government and i was with the state department. we are still not at the bottom of that. we know the saudi's were responsible but we do not know the details. this does keep a cloud over the relationship, but it is an extremely important relationship and we have troops in saudi arabia today and therefore an important purpose. host: if there is a confirmed connection, can or should the u.s. look beyond that? guest: we have important interests with saudi arabia. we also want to know what happened to khashoggi. there is no doubt that the saudis were involved and people who report to the crown prince were involved in the action that took place in istanbul several years ago. host: allen is joining us from hawaii. caller: steve, i am going to be missing you are you are very good moderator. i am hoping you have a great extension to your career. host: thank you.

caller: i am interested in how we can use the jcpoa mechanism without really bowing to the concessions that biden appears to be making which unfortunately seemed to be painting the wrong picture for the new very conservative administration and iran and the fact that they have been deceiving the u.n. watchdog and will probably continue to do that. we really don't know, other than sources from israel, exactly what type of technology they have been developing. they won't even disclose the videos until the deal is what he much done in vienna. so i would like to hear about those. i appreciate your time. guest: you have everything exactly right. this is why it is a complicated negotiation. iran will cheat whenever it can.

between the intelligence of our friendly partners, our own intelligence, and inspectors on the ground, we have a good idea of what iran is doing in the nuclear field. it is not perfect but one of the better things of the jcpoa nuclear agreement. in terms of the biden concessions, the whole idea is when president trump pulled out in 2018, we then began imposing sanctions that we had agreed to stop as part of the original agreement in 2015. the core of what we are supposed to do and the iranians are supposed to do, because they are violating, is for everybody to set the clock back to mid 2018, irani and do the things or stop doing the things they are not supposed to do and the united states out waves sanctions the question is -- will president biden, because he is under

pressure from the iranians, grant concessions under what the original agreement requires. that is not yet settled. the administration has some sanctions that are legitimate against iran for terrorist activities and those may also be lifted. that would be problematic but we don't know and are watching it closely. host: donald in pennsylvania, you are next. caller: thanks for c-span and for your performance all these years. i have three points. i am not a iran lover or anything like that, but the second point is that iran is sheer muslim and the sunnis, saudi arabia, and iran is protecting the christians in syria which are against the sunnis, and they are protecting

the shieh in the south of iraq against the sunnis in the north. that is one doubt that is never discussed. the second -- the third point i want to make is that biden said he was going to return to the jcpoa he was running for president. his secretary of state when he was being confirmed indicated very clearly at his confirmation hearings that he was going to impose conditions that were going to make it prohibitive for iran to return to the jcpoa. he implied that iran was going to have to return to the nuclear deal before the united states was going to lift the sanctions. iran had negotiated a deal with china in the summer of last year that was going to give an

economic and security 25 year agreement. when iran realized they weren't going to get that from the jcpoa because of the negotiating positions, they signed the treaty this spring with china. this opens up oil sales to china , for china to get oil from iran, iran receiving weaponry from china, it was china into the strait of hormuz, a chokepoint for the persian gulf for all of those air countries and all the oil out of the middle east. we are in the process of losing the middle east oil to china. host: you put a lot on the table and we have just a few minutes left.

your thoughts? guest: again, your viewers get the facts right. i can only dispute them on the conclusions. let's start with iran protecting the shaia throughout the region. for they started their march throughout the region, sunni and shia lived under relatively good terms. while sit-down was a sunni arab -- while sadaam, -- it was complicated. in the case of iran's justification for what it does and the reason to protect shia, the glass is one third full. it is mainly dominating archer

societies i have seen this in iraq, where the shia population is 50%. it is true in lebanon and yemen as well as the fighting continues. in terms of what tony blinken put on the table, there is no doubt he had a robust set of demands for iran, such as iran had to return to the agreement before we would take any steps. it is clear in the negotiations he has fallen off of that. the administration said it wants iran to agree to further negotiations for a better nuclear agreement sometime in the future, also to negotiate its role in the region, missile programs, and such. this is a nice wish list for the administration is not going to get any of it nor is it going to stand in the way of the return to the nuclear agreement that is

my prediction. the iranians had her own reasons for signing the deal with china you got the details absolutely correct, but the motive wasn't correct. i think there is a good chance the iranians will return to the agreement. blinken will maintain his demands for them to do the other things, the iranians won't do it, and we will find a way to get around that, i'm pretty sure. host: let's go to clifford joining us from new london, connecticut. good morning. caller: thank you for c-span. i am concerned and americans are concerned about the lack of congressional involvement in the war powers act with respect to these wars in the middle east, specifically it sounds like your guest is ready to go to war with iran. what someday to find out we are

in a full-scale war with iran, strictly on joe biden and the secretary of defense without any role from congress and declaring war. we are performing war activities in iran, bombing and assassinations. at what point do we need to declare war on iran. you seem comfortable with the presidential movements like that we had the authorization for use of force in 2001, 2002, that led to the 20 year war in afghanistan and iraq. at what point does congress get involved. i will take my answer off the air. host: clifford, thank you. guest: the answer is, when there is significant, any significant ground engagement of the united states, that is where we are losing a lot of people and when we are actually fighting as most

americans would understand that word. and every case, not in the korean war, but every war since. in afghanistan it was the authorization of military force, 2001, for a rat, authorization use of force passed by both houses of congress, and on and on. the gulf war in 1991 was a resolution by the u.s. congress as well. in every case where we have engaged in serious combat, the administration or whatever administration has turned to congress and i think that will continue. the problem is, i think you have and i can think of hundreds, where the united states has had to react in a fast-moving situation when someone is shooting at our troops and we are using right of defense, article two of the constitution. it was what was used in the most

recent engagement or when we are trying to calm a situation taking a very limited military action. that is a gray zone paired i understand why people aren't comfortable with it. it has not gotten us in a war over hundreds of such incidents. when we have gone to war, even for mistaken reasons, we have done so with one or other approval from congress. host: a work length with a death toll, how does that president maintain his power? guest: with the oilfield is not in his hands. it is neutral by various opposition groups where american troops and turkish troops. he also does not control the air.

he has driven half the population, 12 menu people from their homes, 6 million overseas as refugees, 6 million more into areas he doesn't control. he is using chemical weapons and has hundreds of thousands of people illegally imprisoned or disappeared. it goes on and on and on. this is the worst humanitarian crisis. we have not been successful dealing with this campaign. assad cannot take back his country and cannot win. we are in a stalemate. there is very little fighting right now, which is good, but it is volatile. it is something i urge our leaders to look more closely at. president biden seems to be doing that and he raised it with putin. we will have follow-up conversations this coming week

to see what we can do on initial steps with russia. russia is key to the whole thing. as long as the russians and iranians are there, assad is not going to go away and it was not the policy. what we are trying to convince everybody is to simply accept a compromise political solution the u.n. is trying to negotiate. host: is assad a murderer? guest: he absolutely is a murderer and thousand times more than putin is. host: our next caller, good morning. caller: i am very interested in mr. jeffrey and his portfolio being ambassadors to iraq and turkey. he mentioned that iran has aspirations of connecting themselves with their people all over the middle east and kind of making a big united area. i think turkey wants to do the same thing with azerbaijan.

also with azerbaijan and the oil power, there was a recent conflict between azerbaijan and armenia, and the armenians are not a fan of mr. jeffrey being an ambassador to turkey and being a vietnam vet. his credentials are immoral. host: why do you say that is immoral. caller: i have no respect for him. i will take my answer offline. -- off of the air. guest: it is one thing to disagree on policy. it's another thing to besmirch millions of americans who served in vietnam. i am not going to answer this

question. next question, please. host: turning for policy in the middle challenges for the biden administration paired we talked about the nuclear -- administration p we talked about the nuclear deal and iran, what -- the biden administration paired we talked about the nuclear deal and iran. what policies can they do? guest: we are very politicized in american today and it is similar to the policies the last administrations have followed. it is not to get sizable engaged in the middle east. we learned that lesson quickly in iraq by 2006, but rather to work through parties and allies and build up, use diplomacy, use our economic strength and when necessary, again through partners on the ground, use

military force to defend and to preserve security. that is not a bad model. it is worth more or less keeping the middle east from deteriorating into total chaos. we continue to and we have to -- it's groundhog day and the middle east that every day there is a new dictator and a new expansion of power and you have to go back in and work with partners in the region. it has succeeded good the region has contributed to global growth. it is critical for energy and for other reasons. i believe this policy, all in all, can work. the problem right now is it the biden administration does completely withdraw from afghanistan, which i believe it will, and signs the nuclear agreement with iran, people in the region will wonder, is this the beginning of an american withdraw? that opens the drawer -- the

door to all kinds of nightmares. it is imperative that the biden administration take action to, again not with huge armies but with diplomatic presence, that it will stay engaged in the region and work with partners and friends to preserve stability p that is key. host: -- preserve stability. that is key. host: back to the senate, your thoughts on what congress should or should not do with the reauthorization debate that passed in the house. guest: it is the authorization of use for military force. it is one of the acute ways congress gets around -- for

authorization for war. it is a functional equivalent for a specific conflict. we have two that are active right now. one is the post-9/11. that one will remain in force, because we still have al qaeda and other terrorists we are concerned with, isis and iraq and syria and afghanistan and elsewhere. that campaign will continue. the one that will go away is the 2000 two authorization for the use of military force in iraq. it is obsolete we don't need it to do the things we are required to do to fight against terror in the region. it is pretty clear in the weeks ahead that it will go. host: our guest is james jeffrey, the chair of the middle east program at the wilson center. he began his career as a vietnam veteran serving in the u.s. army.

thank you very much for spending part of your saturday with us. we appreciate it. we want to turn our attention to other issues. i, can is going to join us -- michael mccann is going to join us on the ncaa and the compensation of athletes. and we will have a saturday spotlight on magazines looking at section 230, what is it and what does it mean in terms of the internet? "washington journal" continues. it is saturday, july 3. we will be back in a moment. ♪ >> which presidents rank best to worst? join us live on "washington journal for a conversation about the survey of presidential leadership with our survey advisors giving insight on the newest rankings. we will discuss the results.

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continues. host: joining us is michael mccann who serves as the sports journalist and a sports reporter . guest: it is a sport industry and business publication backed by penske media. host: i want to talk about the ncaa and the recent supreme court ruling and the opinion by justice brett kavanaugh in the majority saying, "nowhere else in america can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that the product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate and under ordinary principles and antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. the ncaa is not above the law." to this ruling and to the issue of college sports in the ncaa, what does all of this mean? guest: it means that the aa is

being treated like other businesses -- the ncaa is being treated like other businesses. the ncaa has argued for years that they are owed deferential preference. the ncaa used language in the opinions to say that we are owed deference to how we relate to student athletes. that is over. that deference ended with this ruling. what it means going forward is that one, in terms of education related benefits come which could include things like laptops, study abroad programs, computer fees, technology fees, the ncaa members can no longer cap what any of them can individually pay college athletes. for years, competing schools join hands through the ncaa to

limit expenses. now schools can decide what they want right it is not the same as paying college athletes. one we of them being paid, that is a separate topic. the ncaa can continue to cap those but not in terms of education. it also means we will see other lawsuits. we will see for instance maybe high school players or college athletes challenge other aspects of ncaa rules or they will say, look, the ruling makes clear your rules have to be fair, reasonable. if they are not, they will be held illegal and in a 9-0 ruling from the supreme court, that sends a message that the justices have a number of ideology perspectives, what you are doing in the ncaa is illegal. that sends a powerful message. host: this is a headline

following the ruling. explain what this means as the ncaa clears students to get name, image, and likeness deals. guest: name, image, and likeness comes up as the same time as the case. it was about antitrust scrutiny, specifically ncaa rules to education related benefits. name, image, and likeness is a related topic but under a different area of law, intellectual property law or the right of publicity. it is basically come as americans, we all have the right to profit from our identity, what makes us who we are. college athlete at that right, but the right has been suppressed by ncaa amateur rules which say that if you are an athlete, you can't be paid for the use of your identity, because that would convert you, the ncaa has argued, into a professional status.

the ncaa has long argued that they don't want to mishmash college sports and pros because they want to be interested in the college sports if they think they are pros. this is about treating college athletes like other college students. if you are a musician, actor, cheerleader, artist, you have long been able to make money through your identity. why is it that college athletes are segregated from that benefit? 12 years ago in former ucla basketball player brought an historic lawsuit against the ncaa, arguing that the use of players in video without their consent or compensation was illegal under antitrust law. it was antitrust because it was all of the schools getting together saying, let's not pay them. he won that case. the last few years, a number of states, beginning in california

with the fair pay to play act, began passing name, image and listing rules that says colleges can no longer punish players from using their name, image, and like. had that right as americans but ncaa rules has suppressed them. these statues say you cannot punish players even if the ncaa membership rules say they have to. so last month, congress -- i testified before the hearing before the senate in which the senate looked at whether or not federal law should help. there would be a federal and il athlete where every player -- federal nil athlete where every player would be treated the same. between states statutes where athletes in states could make money from their name, image, and likeness.

the ncaa said we don't want to have a system where athletes in some states have different rates than others, so they adopted an interim policy that basically lets schools decide what to do. right now, college athletes across the country can sign endorsement deals, sponsorship contracts, they can be paid to influence on social media. they can be paid for their autograph. they can go to a music concert and use their identity as an athlete to benefit them. they can monetize their youtube channel. all of that started july 1. host: this is a tweet from a viewer saying the players need the same set up as the pros. they need strong legal representation. i read that because the headline from the associated press, the supreme court a win for college athletes in the compensation kate. this was a unanimous -- compensation case.

this was unanimous. does that surprise you? guest: i thought it might be 7-2. i remember that justice breyer seem reticent at changing the way things are. he adopted a traditional argument that if the court starts poking holes at ncaa rules, it could collapse. chief justice roberts used the analogy of the game jungle. he said once we start hitting different parts of it, the whole thing could collapse are those two justices seemed reticent. justice sotomayor i thought might rule in favor of the ncaa, but i thought it was clear that certainly justice kavanaugh leading the charge with justice alito, thomas, kagan, beyer, i thought the ncaa would lose. it is important to know it is a

consigned victory. if the case had been about ncaa rules and what people think about ncaa rules that players can't be paid, that is not with the supreme court was ruling on. they were ruling on a piece of that, specifically benefits that schools provide athletes for education, so having a high gpa, doing a study abroad program, getting a laptop inverse meant, things like that, things about the education of student athletes. the supreme court justices all agreed the ncaa can't cap that. but had the case been about whether or not colleges can pay athletes for their athleticism, i don't know what the decision would have been. clearly justice kavanaugh would have gone along to say this whole thing is illegal. this whole thing -- i don't know where the other justices were on that. host: let's go to loretta

joining us from cleveland, ohio. good morning. we will try one more time for beretta -- loretta. we seem to have lost her. what is the next issue that will follow the supreme court ruling? guest: figuring out how name image and likeness will work. the ncaa would like congress to revisit this topic and pass a federal law for president biden to sign into law that would create a uniform statute that would give the ncaa some control over name and image likeness over sponsorships and endorsement deals and create pretty debility. right now is a tough time for a compliance staff by universities because in theory they should be

consulted by student athletes in regards to endorsement dealings, but some of them were announced within seconds of midnight, when it became possible under state law. it does not seem like that consulting is going on. i think what the ncaa most once is a federal statute, and there could be benefits for all if everyone plays by the rules and if it is more predictable. there could be benefits for everyone. it takes congress to act, and with summer coming, it doesn't seem like anything is going to happen. the other big thing coming soon is another federal lawsuit, house versus ncaa. this case is brought in part by sedona prince, who took photos during the match martin's tournament, where the women's gym was way worse than the men's jim, -- gym and there was a

controversy over that. deservedly so. they should not be so different. she has brought a case that could be major because it argues this, for the last five years, college athletes have not been able to sign endorsement deals and sponsorships. what about those athletes that were denied? this case argues they should be compensated for that, for those lost earnings. it is great that as of july 1, college athletes have endorsement deals, but that does not help athletes from years past. it is not just the star quarterback where the player who goes to college for a year or the nba draft, there are many women athletes who stand to benefit from name image and likeness, including men and women who have significant social media following. this case is about the ncaa as a member school denying name image and likeness. if they win that case, we are talking astronomical damages that would be paid to past players. host: this is a statement from

the ncaa and reads in part, "this is an important day for college athletes since they are now able to take advantage of name, image and likeness opportunities with the variety of state laws adopted across the country, we will continue to work with congress to develop a solution that will provide clarity on a national level. the current environment prevents us from providing a more permanent solution and the level of detail for student athletes that they deserve." one of our viewers essays -- one of our viewers says it is time for them to run as the moneymaking entities they are, and their athletes are state employees. we are dividing our phone lines two separate ways. if you support student compensation for athletes, (202)-748-8000. if you oppose, (202)-748-8001. i think we have re-corrected with loretta in cleveland. still with us? caller: yes, i am. good morning. host: go ahead please.

caller: i do agree with the ruling, but i think it should have went a lot further. this is nothing but modern-day slavery, you know, saying that you can play for this amount, and then if you would like, you can work for other plantations, but you still a slave. those little bits and pieces with image likeness and all of that, that does not touch the 106 billion dollars they made last year during the covid-19 pandemic. host: loretta, things for the call. we will get a response from michael mccann. guest: thank you for the question, the retta.

-- loretta. clearly, there are some who support what you said, just as justice kavanaugh's echoing your sentiments that this is unfair to labor, frankly. i would say a couple of things. one is that change, especially with college sports, takes time. there have been cases from 12 years ago and experts over the years to change some of these rules, but they are not going to happen instantaneously. i think what we will see our opportunities for athletes that did not yet exist, and your comment is to say, a, this is way too late, and b, this is not enough. i would say to be patient because we will see more changes ahead. it just does take time. part of it is the ncaa is a membership organization. every school has a certain amount of economy.

there is a bit of a bureaucracy to it that makes it somewhat slow, and that i think creates inertia and it makes it difficult to make change, but what we saw over the last few years and prior to that with litigation and states getting involved is forcing the ncaa to act. maybe we will see more of that, but they do take time to play out, and your comments about the wealth certainly is fair to ask, why does a college coach make $10 million a year when the athletes, until now, they cannot even assign an endorsement deal or get paid for autographs? there are real questions. host: quick follow-up, and i realize this is a tweet that is a broad question with different sports and divisions, but what percentage of college athletes are on athletic scholarships? do you have an answer? guest: i have seen different stats. i would say this, most are not getting full scholarships.

what is typically the case is that an athlete that's a partial scholarship, -- gets a partial scholarship. the interesting with college sports is there are two sports that tend to make or generate the vast majority of revenue. it depends on the stats you use, so i am hesitant to give a number, but men's basketball and football are the two big moneymaking sports, and other sports do not in general generate the kind of revenue. in some of those exports, there are not the same opportunities for full scholarships. host: michael mccann joining in us from nasa to stash joining us from massachusetts, part of the university of new hampshire and rights for sportico.com. joel is on the phone from california. caller: it is riverdale, georgia. host: georgia, sorry. caller: not a problem. i just want to make a point, and i may have missed it earlier

because i have not been washing the show all the time, but you are dealing with basketball and football. mostly with lack athletes generating all that money. shouldn't athletes get a percentage of all the moneys that the ncaa schools bring in? as opposed to just being able to use their likenesses to make money? host: thank you. guest: thank you, joel, for the question. there is a federal bill sponsored by senator cory booker and several other senators, the college athlete bill of rights, that would essentially provide what you suggested, which is revenue-sharing, and also medical trust funds, and the idea is that schools would have to share about half -- the revenue is defined in a certain way, but half goes to the players, and there are some who say that is great, and your

comment bears out the reasoning for it, and others are more reticent. they say that would hurt schools in ways that have profound effects on athletes who are not in those two sports, that schools would be inclined to cut sports do not fall within the two money revenue money generating sports, and that federal nine, which demands gender equity, would protect some of the women sports but not all. there are also arguments that fans might become less interested. i am so persuaded by that, if revenue is shared with them, there are economic consequences that would be borne out. i do not know we would see that anytime soon. it is hard to see if there is enough political support for that, but that is where that stands now. host: david joins us from longview, texas, good morning. caller: good morning. what is to keep the big schools with the big boosters, say you

are a rich guy who owns a car dealership saying to the high school player, i will give you $20,000 to come to oklahoma each month to represent the school? i mean, it is just going to be professional athletes now. they might as well depart the nfl as a minor league team. guest: david, that is still against the rules, what you described, or at least it should be. we will see how vigorously it is an forced, but that remains against the rules. the scenario of the booster saying, here's $20,000 to come to my school, if an athlete does that, he or she would be deemed ineligible to play, and the school could be punished. that is part of the set of rules that accompany name image and likeness, it cannot be used for recruitment, so that remains against the rules, although i will concede, let's see how it conforms. they're going to be scenarios

where there is a gray zone, where an athlete gets compensated at a much higher level than he or she might in the marketplace, and it will -- say it is couched as an endorsement deal, right, but it is at a level that is way higher than what we might think it ought to be. that will lead to hard questions for all involved. host: we will go to doug in california. good morning. caller: i have two questions. first of all, i would like to follow up and read about the sedona prince lawsuit, it is the first i have heard of it. i followed her a while, i think she is a great athlete and she has the charisma that will help her on being successful. and if you could drop a citation or someplace where we could follow that up, and the second thing is, i know congressman anthony gonzalez and emanuel cleaver have been doing work on this in the house.

could you recommend some bills or policies that are going through congress that you think are more attractive, that are not loaded with a bunch of poison bills that would make this kind of a plan effective? host: thank you, doug. guest: thank you, doug. i would say couple of things, in terms of the sedona prince lawsuit, i recently wrote about it for sportico and did a legal analysis. if you go to sportico and google house v. prince sportico, it should come up. the complaint is in the northern district of california. it is before the same judge as the ed o'bannon and austin case, george lopez. in terms of federal bills introduced, you are right, a number of members of congress have been involved. you referenced two, another congresswoman from massachusetts introduced legislation, along

with senator chris murphy. there are a number of republican bills targeted towards name image and likeness, and i would highlight senator roger wicker has a bill that is focused on name and likeness. if you are talking about let's get name image and likeness resolved, senator roger wicker of mississippi proposed a bill that does just that. and there is an argument, and i will admit, in my testimony, i argued this would be a good idea, passed one of the targeted bills, addressed name image and likeness, get a federal statute so every athlete and state plays by the same set of rules so it is a more cohesive, organized approach to the topic. others say, no, we should go further and have revenue-sharing. we should have health care benefits. we should have other aspects of reform that may be very important, that may be

essential, but i think the challenges it is hard to get a bill passed if legislation includes those other things you are referring to. it may be best to take them one by one. i understand the argument against that, but if you are looking for a bill focused on an il, senator roger wicker. host: nil, his name image and likeness. well over half the country signed into law or laws on governor's desk that would deal with name, image and likeness issues. this is a tweet from francisco lopez who says, "i agree with the rolling because the ncaa and colleges make a lot of money in revenue. it is good for the college student athletes make a little money, especially in today's economy." we will go to portland, oregon, sisi, thank you for waiting. caller: thank you for c-span. my comment is that having students take advantage of name, image and likeness still does not address the fact that the

ncaa, sports, athletics, makes their money off of the labor of the athletes, so telling them they can go outside of the system in which the money that they generate for the university comes out of, to me, that does not make sense. and going back to the slavery analogy, it is effectively like hiring yourself out, and you get to keep that money, but the money you generate from for me in your labor, you cannot keep, ok, that is not make sense to me. if my body and my labor makes money for the ncaa, why can't i get paid from them as opposed to me getting money from somebody else outside of the system in which i generate the money? host: thank you. this is from linda in georgia who says, "right now there is no parity in college sports, unlike the nfl. look at alabama and clemson always winning national football

championships and athletes getting paid will not alter that." michael mccann, a couple of comments from our viewers. guest: thanks, steve, and thanks, cc, for those comments. a couple of things. let me play devil's advocate. it is hard to argue against the principle of what you're are saying, and i won't do that, but what i will say is the counterargument -- and you may not find it persuasive -- is athletes are able to get, in some cases, a full ride to college, they may be able to be accepted into schools that they otherwise would not be able to attend, and many play sports i not generate money that are actually money losers, so there is an argument that for some, it is actually a good service, and that may not be true for the very elite, but there is an argument that this system benefits many of those who participate, and moreover, if we change that and start paying them, then some of those sports

go away, and that will mean fewer opportunities for students who would otherwise be able to attend a particular college, and for some, it is by playing a sport that it is sort of part of their learning process. i teach at a law school, but every year i teach an undergraduate course at the university of new hampshire and i have student athletes who are not going pro or playing sports that make money, but for them, the sport itself is a form of education, and there is a value to that. that doesn't address what you are saying, you are right, there is theft of labor, especially in sports that generate a lot of money. the complexity is if we change the formula, there will be unwanted consequences, including the cutting of sports.

host: in let's go to wayne lake charles, louisiana, saying college sports goes pro, and there will come the same problems. guest: yeah, so the same problems, could you see that question again? host: if college sports goes pro, leaving small schools and lesser-known athletes basically out. guest: i guess i disagree that college sports are going pro. i don't think this is what this is about. the ncaa argued that once you go down this path, it will convert college sports into pro sports, and it will be an inferior form because the athletes are not as good at nba, wnba, and players. name image and likeness isn't that. it is about treating college students, college athletes like other college students. we all have the right of publicity. if you are a cheerleader, actor, e-sports player, you can make

money. to teach acting, it wasn't by leading roles. when john mayer went to the berkeley school of music and signed a recording deal, you did not lose scholarship if you had one. it is only athletes who have been treated differently by virtue of their sport. i disagree with the premise of the question. if we are talking about playing -- paying players as athletes, yet, that gets into the realm of pro sports, and i think that is a more complicated topic and it intersects with federal and state law. generally speaking, college athletes at private universities are governed by federal law, whereas college athletes at public universities, just like others who work at public universities, are governed by state law. that creates a level of complexity where we do not want students at private universities treated differently than public universities. that is more complicated topic. host: our last caller, about one

minute left from virginia, go ahead, joe. caller: mr. mccann, thank you for coming to the program. a couple of items, number one, the athletes today are somewhat compensated because of athletic scholarships, which allows them to attend school tuition free. some take advantage of getting a degree, some do not. second, as you mentioned, if the school takes the revenue that comes in, they should be able to allocate the costs for the programs that do not generate revenue, lacrosse, women's exports, etc., and then maybe it will be distributed to the athletes. and then, third, the ncaa, nc 1 schools make a little money, and and nc 3 schools not get

any money, so there is far more complexity per thank you. host: we have about one minute left. guest: thank you, joe. you are hitting at a lot of key things. to your last point, there are different ncaa divisions, and within them, there are huge differences. there are some schools where sports are not making the money. many help with fundraising, tuitions, and getting alumni to give back to schools, so the math gets fuzzy, but you are right, there is a wide range and maybe it is too wide. maybe they should not all play by the same set of rules. maybe alabama and notre dame football should have a separate set of rules than most other programs that are not the same money revenue generating activities. in terms of scholarships, you are right, like i mentioned to the previous caller, there are opportunities athletes get through scholarships. in many cases they are not full scholarships but partial help. you are bringing up good points

that it isn't just about huge moneymaking things. host: michael mccann, an expert on sports and entertainment law, also a writer for sportico.com, thank you. guest: thanks for having me. host: gilad edelman joins us in a moment, the cover story of "wired" magazine, it created the internet, it ruined the internet, it threatens democracy, it must be preserved, it should be repealed. we will talk about section 230 and the potential on the role of the web. this as "washington journal" continues with a spotlight on "wired" magazine. it is july 3, a holiday weekend. we hope you stay with us. ♪ >> booktv on c-span2 has topic nonfiction books and authors every weekend. tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern on afterwards, the former xerox ceo , the first black female ceo of a fortune 500 company, on

american business in the corporate world. she is interviewed by the amazon senior vice president. sunday, live at noon eastern on in-depth, join our two hour conversation with a pulitzer prize winning author and historian, annette gordon reed, as she talks about american presidents, slavery and emancipation. her books include "hemmings of monticello," and her latest book "on juneteenth." she would take calls, emails, emails, and tweets. you can watch booktv on c-span2 this weekend. ♪ >> american historytv on c-span 3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story, every weekend. today at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the civil war, two university of virginia's now center for civil

war history professors on their book about african-american union soldiers fighting for emancipation, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, a university of california riverside professor on the lives of women during the american revolution and the early republic. sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts, the arrival of the reconstructed friendship at the 18th-century port of yorktown, virginia, designed after the french vessel that brought general lafayette back to the united states in 1780. exploring the american story. watch american historytv this weekend on c-span 3. "washington journal" continues. host: gilad edelman is a writer for "wired". magazine on this saturday, thanks for being with us. guest: thanks for having me. host: it is section 230 of the

decency act, and you write about it on the magazine and available at wired.com. what is it? guest: section 230 is a statute passed in 1996 that, in a nutshell, text online platforms from being held liable for user posts. i want to go briefly into the history to help understand what the law does. in the 1990's, a pair of legal cases created a paradox. in one case -- both cases were about affirmation. -- d formation. when one person -- defmation, when one person says something false and harm someone else. both cases are about people allegedly defaming other people on online messages on bulletin boards, so take yourself back to the mid-90's with no facebook, twitter, etc. in one case, the judge ruled

that the compuserve, the early isp, wasn't liable for something a user posted in a bulletin board or forum because they, unlike a newspaper or television network, they were not publishing that, they were just distributing it and posting it. ok, so that is one case. but in another case against prodigy, another early isp, a judge ruled the other way because prodigy proudly advertised civility to moderate content to create a family-friendly environment. the judge said, well, if you are actually going in there, moderating and making editorial decisions, then you can be sued when your editorial policies failed to prevent something like this. and that created a problem, sometimes referred to as the moderator's dilemma because it meant that if you tried harder to moderate content and screen

out unlawful material, you actually became more legally liable. section 230 was passed to address that paradox, and it does two things. it is a pretty concise piece of legislation. first, it says platforms will not be held liable for their content moderation decisions, so back at sort of the perverse incentive. it didn't stop there. -- so that gets rid of that perverse incentive, but it did not stop there. it says they will not be treated as a public speaker for information provided by other users. so that went further and basically provided blanket immunity for online platforms for stuff that users post. host: you alluded to part of section 230 that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access or the availability of materials that

the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected. guest: exactly. that is the part, to boil it down, it says, do not worry, you are not going to get in trouble just because you try to be a good samaritan and keep bad stuff off of your platform. but it is the other part of the law about no interactive computer service being treated as speaker or publisher of information provided provided by another user -- provider provided by another user. that is the part that is the more sweeping and kind of extreme part of the law that has created some controversial outcomes. host: last month in "wired," there is this, "section 230 may

be more like dumbo's supposedly magic feather, a talisman to the internet that has been clutching for dear life for 25 years, terrified on finding out whether all my discourse should fly without it." guest: for decades, section 230 was obscure. i certainly had not heard of it. it was a law that internet companies valued because it kept legal bills down and a law the average person had not heard of. that started to change the past five years or so. there are two main reasons. one is there was debate -- i mean, the overall reason is that social media platforms have become more controversial along a host of dimensions, all revolving around the stuff they host and amplify. so, a law that protects them from legal liability over that material found itself more in the crosshairs.

and then more specifically, a few years ago, congress passed reforms to the law to address sex trafficking online, and they have been widely panned for being clumsily written and counterproductive. that thrust section 230 into the spotlight a little bit, and then much more importantly, donald trump heard about section 230. he got wind of republican talking point, which is not true, that section 230 is protecting platforms that want to be bias against conservatives. set aside the question of whether they are biased against conservatives, it really has nothing to do with section 230. this is a long way of getting at why the law has emerged into political debates recently. that has terrified the internet industry, particularly social media companies, but not just them, any company posting a form

of content, and there is not just the business community, but a small, legal expert community that views section 230 as something like the first amendment for the internet. there's almost sacred law that establishes fundamental rights to free expression and commerce on the internet, and they warn that if you get in there and muck around at all with this immunity, you are going to have disastrous results. so, the main point that i make in my article is that both of these major characterizations of the law are misleading. it is not this scourge of censorship and bias that donald trump made it out to be on the campaign trail, but nor is it this 10 commandments level

sacred law of the internet that must be held for all time. host: gilad edelman is a writer for "wired magazine." he covers politics. their website is wired.com. our phone lines are open. (202)-748-8000 free democrats. (202)-748-8001 -- (202)-748-8000 for democrats, (202)-748-8001 for republicans. the headline from a steady, why hate thrives on social media, but who should police it? we know there is a lot of hatred on social media, so how do you control it, or should you? guest: so we are just going to do easy questions today? hate is not illegal. in the united states, what is often referred to as hate speech, it is constitutionally protected, and then things you might formally consider hate,

people being mean to each other, that is constitutionally protected. so one challenge in addressing the question is are so many types of online material you might be concerned about. it is hard to talk about, you know, online content out of this one single thing. there are so many aspects of the debate. however, one interesting thing about section 230 is that it does not just protect -- the theory of section 230 is basically the scale of stuff people post online is so huge, voluminous, and instantaneous, that it would be impossible to stop them from slandering each other or doing other illegal things, and any platform held to that legal standard would go under any would not have the internet, and look what you have done. we can take issue with that argument, that there is a bit

more low hanging fruit here, which is that there is a lot of behavior online that is abusive, particularly to women and minorities subject to harassment and invasions of privacy, and intentional, reputational harms, and this can take place on the big trillion dollar platforms, like facebook, but there is also a pretty team and ecosystem of websites that encourage users to do this stuff and they hide behind section 230. one piece of what i would characterize as low hanging fruit would be to think about how to change the law so you can at least not get away with that or the business model that solicits the worst kind of behavior online. host: (202)-748-8000 is our line free democrats. (202)-748-8001 for republicans.

one of our viewers saying, is now a good time to remind people that most of the internet platforms are free to the average user, and there will be any doubts that they can enact the terms of use that they want? guest: i am not sure why it matters that they are free. i would think that their freedom to enacted in terms of service but there ones are independent of the price they charge to users, but i think, sure, let's remind the viewers that these are privately owned companies that generally get to implement the content policy that they want, and that, of course, i assume with the audience member has in mind, is the process stations of clinical bias -- the protests of political bias, -- the protests of political bias. host: this is a tweet from steve that says, "this is how silly

twitter has become in controlling content, blocking my account that voting needs to be done by a deadline so not all votes will be counted." guest: i am not here to defend the content choices that platforms make, so, i will not give my judgment on what happened to steve's twitter account. i am sorry that happened to you, but the basic point is that twitter is entitled to have its rule. there is so much changing in this space, the content space right now that it is bewildering. if you go back a couple of years, none of these social media platforms got involved in fact checking or going after false information. they always had policies against certain kinds of things, like pornography or racism, but -- i

should not say always, but for a long time, but what is much more recent is this elaborate approach to content moderation, and it is all really the past 1.5 years for the most part, largely under political pressure but also from the media. one thing to keep in mind, there is no version -- look, you can have completely on moderate social media, which i don't think many people want at all because it would be gross and unusable, and there are spaces for people who really want that, but if you are going to have some kind of moderated platform, it is 100% inevitable that there will be mistakes. there is no such thing, and never will be such a thing, as perfect enforcement of content rules. the question isn't can i find an example where they screwed up? the question is how are they doing overall? systematically. and what makes that question

hard to answer is the lack of transparency coming from the companies, so i do not want to sound like i am beating up too much on steve because the flip side of his complaint is it is opaque all the decisions are being made and what does success versus error rate is. host: to take that one step further, you write in the magazine, "the most sweeping piece of legislation introduced to date, a bill called estate tech act, would remove protections from specific categories of civil claims, including wrongful death cyber stalking, harassment, and civil rights law violations."we will go to chris, huntsville, alabama. good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. i would like to ask your guest today about section 230 and its relation to the court cases that are allegedly precedent at this time, in particular, one where

they discussed president trump's ability not to block people who disagree with him, and in that case, i believe twitter's argument was that although they are a publisher, editor, and content maker, and that nobody owns the rights to anything that is published on their twitter account. host: we will get a response. guest: thanks for calling, chris. right, so this case was actually -- i could be mistaken, i believe this was a first amendment case, and it was a question about whether president trump in his capacity as an elected official could block users on his twitter account, so it was a case brought against president trump rather than twitter, but the question gets at a source of controversy and

confusion about section 230. there is this question, our social media companies, are they publishers or just distributors? one thing that you hear sometimes is, well, if they cross the line into publishing, then they should not be or they are not protected by section 230. this distinction does not exist in the law, so section 230 does not say, well, you have to treat publishers one way and non-publishers another way. what it says is if we are talking about user generated content, you cannot be held legally as a publisher. you cannot be subject to the legal responsibilities of a traditional publisher, so it is not set up a difference between actual publishers and other entities. it sets up a decision between

hosting user generated content and other forms of publishing. he could stipulate that twitter is a publisher, perfectly reasonable to say, that doesn't change the fact that it is protected by section 230. host: gilad edelman is a politics writer, his work available at wired.com. curtis is joining us from wiggins, mississippi, good morning. caller: good morning. my question is, if every time you see something on television that is not against trump, you only see that one time. this is what i am getting at, on the sixth, everybody went to the capitol building, about one hour before they went to the building, nancy pelosi's son-in-law was having a big conversation with some antifa guy, and i asked her a question

about it on the same channel about a month ago, and nobody wants to even talk about that. they all want to blame it on trump. trump tried to give them all the help they needed for security, and they turned it down. nobody talks about that, so the media is getting a pass on not letting the public know what is really going on. i want to know what her son-in-law was doing talking to that guy who led everybody into the capitol building. before trump even stopped talking, the crowd of people he had, a mile away. host: thanks for the call. there are a of issues there.

i am not sure if you would like to take a deep dive or your general thoughts. guest: thank you for calling, curtis. you are right about one thing, i really do not care about what nancy pelosi son-in-law was doing that day. host: we will go to california, good morning. hello, lisa, you are next. caller: oh, hi, yeah, thanks. please let me finish. there was somebody from massachusetts who called yesterday who explained exactly what the obstruction of justice was between nancy pelosi and the capitol police, and you did not show on c-span what was happening in the capitol but what was outside, and he put it into words for what really happened because people have websites where they can go and see what really happened inside the capitol that day, and they actually stopped the constitutional process from occurring.

if you do not like that, mr. edelman, there is something wrong with you, and there is clearly something wrong with c-span that you do not want this message to get out, and you went the obstruction of justice to get left there, and all of us, we, the people, are getting screwed. and now the best person on "washington journal" is going because the other ones are much worse, believe me, and it is just not even fair to us. host: lisa, i would disagree. you made your point, this is an open forum, and we were inside the capitol. we share those cool cameras with other news organizations, so some about use on the capitol came from c-span cameras. we certainly cover what happened in the house, the senate, and outside. the good news is all of it is on her website at c-span.org. you can check it out and see

what happened during the events of january 6. two callers on the events that happened that day. i am wondering, based on your writing for "wired magazine," the role of social media in what we saw in january 6. guest: great point here, the comments that we are getting from callers shows what, i guess, reflect what a difficult information environment we are living in it now, where different people living in the same country can have sharply divergent interpretations of values and fact, even that highly publicized event, the 5.5 months in the past, and the information you're getting from different sources, as for the role of social media and leading

to the january 6 violence, it is hard to know what the role is. it is clear that it played some role. for example, the crowd that came to washington to protest the certification, then president trump broadcasted that this rally on twitter, so that is one way he amplified this message, and he said, come on january 6, it is going to be wild, that is one tweet, and there was going to be a lot of instigation on facebook, urging people to stop the deal, and what gets complicated is people are allowed to come to washington to protest. i am not here to say that it is somehow wrong for people to communicate with each other and organize political protests, and talk about their view of

politics on social media platforms. the question that is hard to answer is to the extent it tiptoe over to planning and coordinating violence, and there is some evidence that that is what is happening. what is interesting specifically, this is getting away from the section 230 thing, but that is fine. i would have told you last year that if twitter and facebook, especially twitter, deactivated trump's account, it would not make a difference because he is one of the most famous people in the world, certainly the most influential person in the united states, he would find other ways to get his message out to his audience. i was very wrong about that. it is clear that since his twitter account were set down, it has become much more difficult for president trump -- i keep calling him president trump but he is not president anymore -- it would become more

difficult for donald trump to get attention, to get people to pay attention after he says things, and that is in part because social media is designed to engage people's attention. it is an incredibly potent tool for doing that. when you have access to that tool, it is hard but it reflects to other things, one, the lack of competition in the social media space, there is a small number, of very dominant and influential platforms with a lot of users, so when you lose access to them, it is hard to find a viable alternative. the third thing is it shows the relationship between traditional and social media. one thing we saw so much of during the trump administration was everything that he t weeted was likely to make news, so there was a few back loop of what happened on social and

traditional media, and when you cut off one part of that, you lose the whole loop. host: in case our audience is interested, this is from "the associated press," speaker pelosi' son-in-law was a dutch american journalist, reporting on the capitol riot. that is available at apnews.com. let's go to john in maryland, good morning. caller: how are you doing? host: fine, thank you. sounds like you are listening on c-span radio, go ahead. caller: i only heard the last two callers, they sounded like you running supporters -- like q'anon supporters, but my pretenses how is donald trump's social media affected and how has his account affected social media? host: any thoughts? guest: the question is how has donald trump affected social media? i think you could write a book about that. it is such an interesting

question because as i mentioned before, we are living through a moment where social media platforms are changing a lot. not every social media platform, but facebook, twitter, youtube kind of lags behind in terms of making changes to content policies. facebook is the most front and center. we are seeing a lot of changes. so many of these changes are largely attributable to donald trump and the institute in a variety of factors. one is that he really puts a ton of pressure on how these companies want to operate. nobody wants to have ban the president of the united states or take down a post from the president of the united states. that is in part because they do not want to deal with the headache, also because it is the president. people are entitled to hear from elected leaders, but when you have a world leader who sometimes purely violates the stated rules of the platform, it

poses a difficult problem, and, so, a lot of the grappling with how the content policies should work, and users get suspended, and how should we deal with false material, and what kinds of false material, these decisions have been made with the immense pressure of one of the most high-profile offenders being the president of the united states. that makes it challenging because you want to come up with rules that work well all the time. there is a saying in the legal profession, hard cases make bad law. you can see a little of that pressure in the social media context. trump was a really hard case. there is some question whether that led to bad, not literally law, but policymaking. host: gilad edelman, a writer for "wired magazine."

john joins us from fayetteville, north carolina, good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to ask a question about what a publisher really is. generally, a publisher does some background checks and publishes a good story. why should the internet not have that same rule? guest: john, great question. let's do a little eagle history detour here. the word publisher is important for section 230 and legal immunities and spots ability online. traditionally, within defamation law, when you say something that is false that can harm someone else's reputation, defamation law has something called the republication role. if you tell me something that, well, you would not do this, but let's say you have an enemy, and they tell me something that is

false and hurts your reputation. that's a they tell me you are a criminal. and i write that in "wired," and "wired" publishes it, you could sue the person who's for that rumor, but you could also sue "wired." that is called the re-publication role, and now i am legally liable. that means traditional publishers, whether "wired," c-span, "new york times," or whatever, we have to be careful. we have lawyers. we cannot say damaging things about people or institutions without making sure we have our facts straight. if we do, we can get in a lot of trouble. although, in the united states, if you are talking about a public figure, there is a lot of leeway, a lot more leeway for first amendment reasons. basically, the idea is, as you said, publishers have some responsibility to make sure they get it right, and if they don't, they could be in trouble.

host: you write, "it was the ultimate, perverse incentive at the platform try to protect its users from things like harassment or sanity, the greater its risk of losing a lawsuit." guest: if you go back to the 1990's, the question is, ok, does the republication rule apply online? in its strictest form, it would be a disaster if it applied online. let's think about it. if facebook, instagram or twitter had the exact same legal liability as a magazine like "wired," that would be kind of an impossible burden because we are talking about billions of user posts a day. something is going to slip through, unless you want social media to stink and everything be pre-screened and nothing be allowed. now, the more interesting question to me is, what if there is something in between?

what if there is something in between because the way it works for a traditional publisher, if we publish something defamatory, we are liable, period. it does not matter if we issue a correction. that might keep us from getting sued because the person was left mad at us, but we are legally liable from the moment we publish it. that would not work online, but right now the legal alternative is no liability at all. the question i raised in my article is, well, surely there has got to be something in between that really strict standard that goes back centuries for traditional publishers, and a total free-for-all when you are online. host: this is what the article looks like in the hardcover edition of "wired magazine." section 230, details on the communications decency act and its role today. marsha joins us from aden, north carolina, thank you for waiting. go ahead with your comment or question. caller: yes sir, and happy fourth.

i would like to ask about 230, could that be changed for the government coming together to form a different law to where you cannot bar the president of the united states and allow iran, china, the other people that degrade our president? that is completely wrong. i do not agree with the way it has been done. host: thank you, marsha. we will get a response. guest: thank you, marcia. well, the state of florida just try doing something that i would say is similar to this. the florida legislature recently passed a law that does a bunch of things. it makes large social media platforms -- it imposes

political neutrality on content decisions, and it says they are not allowed to ban any candidate from office. for example, laura luma was a candidate in florida last year, who described herself as a proud islamophobia made a reputation of saying, you know, overtly racist things, and all social media platforms have policies against racism. this law would have forced them to carry her account. as a road at the time the law was passed, i do not think this had a chance of surviving in court, and i was right. it was struck down this week by a judge. the reason is pretty simple. there are two reasons, one is section 230. your question is, could you change section 230 so that a social media platform would not be allowed to suspend donald trump? the answer is, probably no. the reason is the first amendment. the first amendment protects

your ability to speak freely, but it also protects publishers and platforms who want to host and publish other people's speech. for example, you could say, we should force "wired" to publish -- and anybody who wants to publish in "wired" has an equal rights to, and that is and how it works. nobody would want to read that magazine. the same principle applies to social media. under current understandings of first amendment doctrine, you cannot force companies to host everybody's speech and not have any control over their content policies because that violates their own first amendment free-speech rights on what material to host. host: this is from mike in south dakota, he wants to know what role does the big social media companies artifact or monopolies, what role does that play in all of this? guest: yes, great question.

that is sort of an idea that hans every discussion about what we should do about the internet and social media platform and tech policy in general. the fact that these companies have so much monopoly power warps the discussions because on one level you are talking about, ok, what should legal liability look like an content policy look like? on the other hand, there are only a couple of companies it applies to. we really want them to have the power to set these policies? it is a really difficult set of ideas to unwind. i think on the one hand, it is hard to argue it would be better to have more consumer choice. it would be good if people had more alternatives so that if they were shut out of one online space, there were others they could turn to that felt like a good substitute.

however, i do not think there is any world in which breaking up social media monopolies or introducing more competition are whatever is going to make these questions go away for a couple of reasons. one, the nature of social networking leans towards a concentrated market because there is a value of being a place where everyone else's, called the network effect. so i don't think we will get to a place where there are 20, a viable social media networks, maybe 6, 7 or eight. the other issue is if you have the competition, the platforms will still be big. even if you broke up facebook and got rid of instagram and whatsapp, there are still some 2 billion or 3 billion users, so these platforms are still going to be big and potentially influential. they're always going to have to develop rules. and those rules, there are limits to how much they can be compelled by government because of the first amendment.

as frustrating as it is for these roles to be crafted -- rules to be important it doesn't happen. the journalism industry is mostly privately owned, and we kind of depend on it to have professional norms and values around truth and objectivity and respecting privacy and fairness. we rely on a professional media industry to have democracy, but those values are mostly not compelled by the law. they're just a body of norms that arose in this profession. so we kind of have to hope that something similar happens in the social media industry. these are young companies. they got starting wanting to just beat free-for-all, hands-off, most people aren't

happy with that. it is important that what comes next is really thought out and mature and is treated as a serious set of professional obligations. host: the title of wired magazine, it created the internet, it's raining the internet, it threatens democracy, it must be served, should be repealed. thanks -- it must be preserved, it should be repealed. thank you for joining us. on a personal note, this individual -- this network is never about one individual. i simply want to say thank you. for the last 30 years i have had the chance to interact with so many of you with your questions, calls, comments, chance for u.s. citizens to participate. we should point out the vision of brian lamb which created america's town hall.

brian is a true national treasure. for me, eight residents are campaigns later, a chance to be a part of this process, you have made this a pure joy. i am reminded of what my parents said many years ago, if they could go back and do it all over again, they sure would, and so what i. life is about growing and learning and changing and i will do that and for the great work of the 200 people who put this on, giving you a front row seat to democracy and the political process, all that continues. it continues tomorrow with c-span's "washington journal." a look at presidential survey. four historians will be joining us. all of our coverage available online on c-span.org. wishing you a safe and wonderful july 4 weekend. once again, thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]