administration energy advisor michael mckenna and bob deans from the natural resources defense council talk about the supreme court decision limiting the epa possibility to limit greenhouse emissions. you can join the conversation with your calls, text messages, and tweets. ♪ host: good morning, everyone, on this friday, july one. the supreme court ended its term yesterday with two big opinions on climate change and immigration. those decisions followed rulings on abortions, guns, death penalty, separation of church and state. this morning, we will have you grade the supreme court's term. if you are a democrat, dial in at (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002.

you can also send a grade in a text with your first name, city, and state to (202) 748-8003. or go to facebook.com/c-span and send a sweet --send a tweet with handle @cspanwj. grade supreme court term after many consequential decisions in the 2020-2021 term. the "wall street journal," their front page, supreme court marks a new era of ambitious conservatism. roll call, supreme court conservatives flex in controversial cases. "washington post," the decision to overturn roe v. wade dominated one of the courts most consequential terms. the emboldened 6-3 conservative majority with three nominees

from president donald trump wasted little time expanding rights for gun owners to carry firearms in public, expand the role of religion in public life, and curtail president biden's powers to combat climate change. on the abortion case, justices voted 6-3 20 -- to uphold a restrictive abortion law. john roberts did not join the majority. the right to abortion was established nearly 50 years ago. the outcome was telegraphed, and that means draft opinion. in the second amendment case, from the "washington post," first major second amendment ruling in more than a decade, saying law-abiding americans have a right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense. majority opinion struck down a long-standing new york law requiring a special need to carry a weapon and put at risk

similar laws in maryland, california, new jersey, hawaii, and massachusetts. on that climate change decision yesterday, the court ruled -- rolled back the epa possibility to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, in a blow to the biden administration's plan for combating climate change, putting the u.s. even further off-track than the president's goals of getting to clean energy by 2035. and immigration, the biden administration had the authority to reverse a trump era policy that requires asylum-seekers to remain in mexico while their cases are reviewed in u.s. courts. that is what the majority of the supreme court said yesterday. roberts and brett kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices saying it is executive discretion, so reversing the

trump administration's remain in mexico policy and siding with the biden on administration. we will go to greg in colorado, democratic caller. grade the supreme court, greg. what would you give it? caller: first, thanks. you guys have the best show. hello? host: we are listening. caller: first, you guys have the best show on television. i would give them an f. terrible. first of all, the abortion ruling is unbelievable. the gun ruling in new york is ridiculous. this vote on the epa, unbelievable. who are these people on this court? i am just blown away. i am sure the former president is loving this. and i must say i think it is terrible. host: greg, on this climate

change decision, limiting the epa's authority to enact the clean air act, why do you think it was a bad decision? caller: yes. host: can you tell us why you think it was a bad decision? caller: because right now, our earth is in very bad shape. too many people on this planet, too much pollution, and i cannot believe they are going backwards with all of these rulings. especially roe v. wade, but with the epa, too. climate change is a huge concern to me. obviously, it isn't too the majority of the people in this country because all they want to talk about is the economy and how much money they are paying for gas. ridiculous. host: the president was asked yesterday at the end of his summit in madrid, spain, the nato summit, about the worldview

of the united states, and he brought up the supreme court's decision on abortion. here is what he had to say. [video clip] >> you have come to this summit here and one in germany after the u.s. supreme court overturned constitutional protections for abortion, after the shootings in buffalo and texas, at a time of record inflation, and as new polling this week shows 85% of the u.s. public think the country is going in the wrong direction. how do you explain this to those people who feel the country is going in the wrong direction, including some of the leaders who have been meeting with this week, who think that when you put all of this together, it amounts to an america that is going backwards? pres. biden: they do not think that. you have not found one world leader to say america is going backwards. america is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have

been. we have the strongest economy in the world. inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world. one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the supreme court of the united states in overruling not only roe v. wade but essentially challenging the right to privacy. we have been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights. and it is a mistake, in my view, for the supreme court to do what it did. but i have not seen anyone come up to me, nor have you heard them say anything other than, thank you for america's leadership. you have changed the dynamic of nato and the g7. so i can understand why the american people are frustrated because of what the supreme court did, can understand why the american people are frustrated because of inflation, but inflation is higher in almost every other country. prices at the pump are higher in almost every other country. we are better positioned to deal with this than almost anyone,

but we still have a way to go. the supreme court, we have to change deposition by codifying roe v. wade. >> what further specific executive actions are you considering in the response to the ruling, and would you declare a public health emergency, as several democrats are calling on for you to do? pres. biden: i would be happy to go into detail on that. i am having a meeting with a group of governors when i get home on friday, and i will have announcements to make then. the first and foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was and how much it impacts not just a woman's right to choose, which is a critical, critical piece, but privacy in the general, privacy in general. so i am going to be talking to the governors as to what actions they think i should be taking, as well. but the most important thing, to be clear about this, i believe we have to codify roe v. wade in

the law, and the way to do that is to make sure congress votes to do that. and if they filibuster gets -- host: president biden talking about the supreme court, critical of their decisions, adding that he would push for ending the filibuster because of what the supreme court did. we are asking you to grade the high court through this 2020 -2021 term -- 2021-2022 term. what do you think of the opinions they did? mark in maryland, republican. caller: good morning. the court deserves an "a." there was an article in the "new york times" recently that says a powerful court -- i disagree. i think the abortion decision gives the rights back to the states, correcting a bad ruling.

so how is that making the court powerful? they are not taking power, they are giving it back to the states. the gun decision, we already had the right to bear arms, so they corrected that law. the epa decision took away rights from the bureaucracy, which they never had intended in the constitution. so it basically took power away from the bureaucracy and gave it back to congress, where it should be in the first place. so how is that forming a powerful court? i think they are just being constitutional, so i would give the court an "a," a great job. host: andrew in virginia, independent. what is your grade? caller: i will -- i would give the cord a, i don't know, b, c -- the court a, i don't know, b, c.

are they just randomly reviewing old decisions now? i am trying to figure out, why did they decide to review this decision at this time? do they have a process by which they go back and review old decisions? is it on a certain timeline or do they just do that randomly? host: these cases are brought before them -- are you referring to the roe v. wade? caller: yes, that and possible other ones. i did not hear that this case was being re -- host: what was brought before them was a mississippi abortion law that banned abortions after 15 weeks. when they bring up a new case, it can challenge precedent. roe v. wade was precedent. and so when this mississippi law was brought before them, they argued in defense of roe v.

wade, arguing for precedent, and then those viewed that it was time to overturn roe v. wade, in the oral argument. it was all part of it in this mississippi law debate before the court. if you want, you can listen to the oral argument on our website, c-span.org. next week, we're going to be releasing re-airs of these oral arguments. the audio is what the court provides to the public. and you will be able to hear in its entirety the abortion case, the gun case, and other key cases. but you can find them all on our website, on c-span.org. joe in florida, democratic caller. what is your grade? caller: an f-, because they are

going against the rest of the american people. they want to ban -- they already banned roe v. wade, the environmental protections, and they also have agendas, like to ban same-sex marriage and other stuff. i mean, it is ridiculous. i am a catholic ear and my wife is a christian. but we do not shove up the throats the things people don't want, like roe v. wade. 50 years, it is very popular for most of americans, and you have a handful of people that are going against it. i would like to say that the justices, the conservatives,

they remind me of the spanish inquisition. that is exactly what they are, a spanish inquisition, if you study the history of the spanish inquisition, that is what they are. and i am a catholic. host: doug in san jose, california, a republican. tell us the grade for the supreme court for this term. caller: i am giving them an "a +." they did with the courts always should have done, which is review laws for the constitutionality and then determine whether or not they are constitutional. and if not, vacate the law and get the decisions back to the people. the people can debate abortion now, just like with passed laws, based upon what the people in their state want. congress can certainly pass a law codifying roe v. wade. as far as the second amendment

is concerned, that amendment is very clear people have a right to keep and bear arms. the decision on the epa takes away from the bureaucracy, the ability to make important decisions, and gives it back to the people. in the case of immigration, it affirmed that the president has the right to make decisions about immigration policy. so i think that all of those decisions are consistent with the constitution and give people the right to debate those issues. host: in the last two rulings you mentioned, they came out yesterday, the last day of this supreme court's term. let's look at the front pages of the national newspapers. "washington times," justices back biden's policy on the border. below that, epa overreaches its authority with emissions scheme.

those two decisions from the court. wall street journal featured the epa ruling, high court limits the epa on emissions. and on the front page of the "new york times, justices curb the epa's power over emissions, ruling on the final day of the court's term, subtle thighs a lurch to the right, how they framed it -- solidifies a lurch to the right, how they framed it. and the washington post, ruling curbs epa pulse power on the climate. below that, the court clears the path to end remain in mexico. the president can enforce immigration policy at his discretion. on the one hand, the court says the agencies do not have the power, that much power, under the clean air act, but agencies,

the biden administration, does have the authority when it comes to immigration laws. on the epa decision, from the majority opinion, this is from the chief justice, john roberts. he wrote this, capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible solution to the crisis of the day, but it is not possible that congress gave epa the authority to adapt on its own such a regulatory scheme, a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with congress itself or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body. from justice elena kagan, who dissented in the opinion, whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. and let's say the obvious, the stakes here are high.

yes, the court prevents congressionally authorized agency actions to curb power plants carbon dioxide emissions. the court appoints itself, instead of congress or the expert agencies, the decision-maker on climate policy. i cannot think of many things more frightening. a democratic caller in eugene, oregon. what grade do you give the supreme court? caller: good morning. i would give it an f. i have really been upset the whole week with the decisions coming down. i am really disappointed. i am 82 -- oh, my god. [laughs] i am 73. [laughs] yeah, i have never seen -- let me back up.

your explanation you gave us about how the supreme court takes on a case, re-examines something, they did not do that with epa. there was not a case brought to epa. i am not able to articulate all this because i am still understanding. they went off on their own to decide on this. i have heard people on twitter that biden lost, the democrats lost. but it is our world. we were the leading force behind getting everything cleaned up. and how stupid do we look now to the world? i mean, really. things are out of control in this country, and i have never been so afraid. and i have to tell you, all my

life i have enjoyed -- it started with civics, my very favorite class in school. the teacher was passionate, loved it, and, boy, it did make you hungry to find out how everything ran in the strength and the courage and the beauty of the people that have always -- that we have elected and that have led this democracy. but i will tell you something, before i die, i have a very strong feeling that the oligarchs, the corporations, are going to take over, and they are the ones that are going to be running, and they could care less about the health of the world. all the focus on amazon, google, all of them -- koch brothers, all they care about is money and power. host: i am going to pick up on the point you made about the cpa

decision and try to unpack what you're saying. from "usa today," supreme court rules against epa on powerplant emissions. he writes this, the high court's review of the powerplant emissions regulation was complicated because no rule was formally in place. if the appeals court had struck down the trump administration's repeal but did not reinstate the earlier regulation. the biden argued that the court should have dismissed the appeal as moot. rejections in the obama plan were achieved through the closure of coal plants, driven by economic, not government, forces. west virginia and other states countered that the biden administration has a new rule, and it brought to life a rule, a rule that benefits us.

jeff in cleveland, tennessee, republican. hi, good morning. caller: i would just like to say -- pardon? yes, i would like to say i would give the supreme court an "a+," but i would give joe biden an f. this supreme court, in my opinion, is getting back to being more godly, which the united states of america was founded on. contrary to popular belief, god is pro-life. that is why the commandments said thou shall not killed. over 63 million babies have been killed since roe v. wade was first enacted in 1973. also, i would like to make the point that the usa stands for united states of america, not the united socialist of america. i think we need to be more concerned about the heart change and not concentrate so much on

the climate change. thank you for taking my call. host: before you go, what do you think of chief justice john roberts? we lost him. kathy in grand rapids, michigan, democratic caller. caller: hi, good morning. background in physics and science, have been really engaged in the climate issue the last few years, for the last decade, and this is appalling. and those republicans calling in saying it is back to the constitution and bureaucracy, those are just talking points that they have been given from fox news. ok? and we have to look at the reality, scientific american has published a scathing editorial over this issue. and the whole issue, like the last caller, with his comments

about god, he needs to read his bible and know that abortion is only talked about in how to achieve one, not to stop them. it is never mentioned. jesus never mentioned it. so we distort, we allow the distortion of the christian religion, which i am no longer part of, but i think i have a better grasp of than so-called christians of america. i do not want to get too upset here, but this climate ruling affects our future, and chief justice roberts, who i have never liked, a complete hack -- it is just ungodly what we're are doing to ourselves. our future generations. i just have no words for these

rulings over the last week. they want to throw the whole immigration thing back into joe biden's lap as a political football. come on, cannot people see these things? they just want to create maximum chaos and then watch us all burn? host: a historical day at the supreme court yesterday. "usa today" mark said with these images on their front page -- marks it with these images on their front page. previous supreme court justices throughout our u.s. history. ketanji brown jackson became the first black woman sworn onto the high court yesterday by the chief justice. there she is at the high court yesterday, with chief justice john roberts. and then she was sworn in, as well. her husband holding the bible for her there.

that is the picture that was captured in the "washington post," as well, this morning. jackson sworn in as the first black woman on the supreme court. and this headline from the "washington times," jackson sworn in as the high court's first black female justice, gives judicial oath for the last day on bench before his retirement, briar. there is this feature in the "usa today," this morning, you can find it with jackson, supreme court is the most diverse in the u.s. history. that is "usa today." grade the supreme court. glennis in glen cove, new york, a republican. go ahead. oh, i have to push the button. are you there? let me try one more time. good morning to you, in glen cove, new york, republican. caller: good morning.

how are you? i would like to give the supreme court an "a." i believe they deserve an "a." if we continue to pack the court based on people for their color or gender instead of qualifications, the grade will slowly decrease. host: bob in new jersey, independent. caller: hello, i am independent, and my view of the court or my rating of the court is my decision. i personally think our gun laws in this country are crazy. but as far as i can tell, the courts's ruling on gun control does not go to law, and i think the supreme court should interpret the constitution. so i think they got it right, and i think somewhere along the line maybe we need to have a constitutional amendment to control the craziness that exists in guns. i made the suggestion to my daughter that the way gun laws in our country exist, somebody

could own a tank, and she pointed out that a friend of hers owned two. our gun laws are crazy and we need to do something about them, but the supremes court -- the supreme court's job is not to legislate, it is to interpret the constitution second amendment really does seem pretty straightforward. question of abortion, i give the court an "a" on that decision. with respect to abortion, roe v. wade, i think the court gets a d. i think roe v. wade was decided correctly, and i think the constitution recognizes not right to abortion but right to life, and i think roe v. wade balanced that adequately. i think the constitution -- i think the right to privacy is enshrined in the constitution, and they abolished that or ignored it. so i think it is more important -- as important as any other rights, and they simply ignored it.

i think the way roe v. wade was decided was brilliant. and i am a catholic, and i believe in life he would but i think the government's role is to protect life, and the life of a mother is as important, or more important, than the life of a fetus that cannot exist without the mother. so i think that was appropriately determined. and the court made a decision that i do not agree with. host: ok, let's go to philadelphia, ricky, democratic caller. caller: yes, ma'am. good morning, and happy independence day. my grade with the supreme court, i give it like a solid b. with the roe v. wade decision, i believe in abortion except for

women -- except for women to get an abortion, in my opinion, if they are sexually assaulted or have a severe medical problem, that is the only way it should happen, and abortion, and the cord should be specific on that -- and the court should be specific on that aspect on abortion with roe v. wade. with the second amendment, i know that is a big issue now with all the gun violence out there, and i believe every citizen should have the right to bear arms. we should have like a stronger gun regulation, like with background checks. and i requirement also, you know. host: ok.

what is to come for the supreme court? "wall street journal," the high court will hear elections law case. it is reported that the supreme court agreed to consider a major election law case that will examine whether state lawmakers have the authority to adopt voting rules in federal elections without oversight by state courts. the court, in brief written order, said it would hear an appeal next term from republican state lawmakers in north carolina who are seeking to reinstate voting map drawn by the gop-controlled state legislature that was expected to give republicans 10 safe seats out of 14 total seats. north carolina supreme court struck down the map, ruling it violated provisions in the state constitution guaranteeing free elections and equal protection. the state republicans argue that north carolina's judiciary is improperly interfering with their authority assigned under

the u.s. constitution to determine the time, places, and manner of congressional elections. to joe in dayton, ohio, republican. you are next. what is your grade for the supreme court? caller: good, a beautiful sunny day in dayton, ohio ohio. i give the supreme court an "a+" and joe biden an f-. epa -- i was born in 1960, and everyday i have been alive, the climate conditions have been better and better and better. we have the lowest hydrocarbons, which no one ever wants to talk about. we had the cleanest water in the united states, that no one wants to talk about. john kerry was quoted in 2001 and said florida was going to sink into the ocean by 2021. aoc says we're all going to die by, what is it, 2030 or 2031,

and she is a bartender or waitress. i would like to know what joe biden is going to do and try to tell russia and north korea and china and india how to render climate, because it -- how to control their climate, because it all goes around in one big circle in the world, and that is never going to happen. you are not going to stop these other countries from polluting. that is never going to happen, and they have hydrocarbons. host: there is a piece in the "new york times," which nations are most responsible for global warming? an international debate brewing over how the world's wealthiest nations, which are disproportionately responsible for global warming today, should compensate poorer nations for damages caused by rising temperatures? rich countries, including the u.s., canada, japan, and much of western europe account for just 12% of the population today, but

are responsible for 50% of the planet warming gases released from fossil fuels over the past 170 years. over that time, the earth has heated up by roughly 1.1 degrees celsius, fueling stronger and deadlier heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. vulnerable countries have asked richer nations to provide more money. the united nations climate summit last november, the chair of the block of 47 nations known as least developed countries, pointed out that his home country of butan bears little responsibility for global warming. there is more carbon dioxide coming from its vast forests than from cars and homes. nonetheless, they face severe risks from rising temperatures. there are already flash floods and mudslides in the himalayas we have contributed the least to this problem, yet we suffer

disproportionately, says the leader. michelle in brooklyn, new york, independent peer what do you say about the supreme court? how did they do this past term? oh, we will go to loretta in cleveland, ohio, democratic caller. caller: good morning, greta. good morning, america. i was trying to figure out how to decide the grade. i am going to have to split the supreme court. i give the conservatives on the court an f. i give the liberals on the court an "a." and i give trump an i, for insurrectionist. i think that the supreme court gave everybody in america something to vote about. the constitution, first of all,

it says that only bone -- only those born alive are considered citizens, not eggs, not embryos, and not fetuses. and i think that all of your republican callers or voters should go to the constitution and look it up. because the supreme court just laid all that junk off that they came with. civil rights would be second. civil rights covers blacks and people of color, as well as women. so all of those people can vote all the republicans out, because they are against civil rights. the epa, which was signed in by nixon, it seems like the conservatives today are undoing the work of the conservatives of yesterday, when i was growing up. the guy that called from ohio, i

am in cleveland. on my 11th birthday, that is when the cuyahoga river caught on fire. i don't know where that guy lives, but the inner cities are just not good. host: on that epa decision, listen to republican senator pat toomey, who was on bloomberg television yesterday. here is what he said about the ramifications of the court's decision. [video clip] >> yeah, so i think there is a very concerted effort by some on the left to try to achieve, through the unelected and therefore unaccountable branches of government, what they can't achieve through legislation, whether it is the court or regulators. we have seen this effort to affect policy. i see it on the banking committee with the sec. sec attempting to impose this whole climate change disclosure regime that is completely divorced from financially material information that has

historically been the guide for what has to be disclosed. and with no authority from congress to do that. there was a major effort to have the federal reserve actually allocate capital away from the fossil fuel industry in order to accelerate a transition to a low carbon economy. so i have been fighting this fight for quite some time, because my argument is should not be about how quickly we should transition our economy, it is about who decides and who is accountable. in a democratic society, it has to be the people who are held accountable by the american people. host: senator pat toomey, republican of pennsylvania, reacting to the supreme court yesterday in one of its final decisions, saying the epa does not have the authority --limits the epa's authority on the clean air act and what the biden administration wants to do on climate change.

on the immigration ruling, another key decision by the supreme court on its final day, they said that the biden administration does have the authority to overturn the trump administration's remain in mexico policy. a democratic congresswoman tweets out, the ruling will allow an end to the cruel remain in mexico policy, step in the right direction. seeking asylum is a human right. this is an opportunity for congress to pursue immigration policy that is more humane and innovative. and then you have more reaction from members of congress on all of these decisions. we can share some of those, as well. but first, your phone calls. cheryl in virginia, republican. what grade do you give the supreme court? caller: i give the supreme court anywhere from an "a-" to a b.

i think they have made correct decisions so far. with the epa, i don't understand how people just don't get it. the epa, they are not elected people. that is the problem i think we are having in this country, the lawmakers forget that they work for us. and then to allow the epa to make policy, they are not elected we never elected them, so who are they to make policy? as far as roe v. wade, it goes back to the states. so the people still have that decision where they can address their lawmakers, whereas if it is a federal law, how do you address the federal government? you can much more effectively address any grievances on your state and local levels. so that makes perfect sense. so i am happy with the supreme court as far as what they are

doing, and the gun rights, we do have the right to keep and bear arms. the problem that i am having is that the elected officials, especially on the left, really believe that they have a right to protect themselves and we have no right to protect ourselves. as far as the immigration goes, this is right for the biden administration to make policy. that is any administration, so that means the president could come in and make decisions on immigration. which is right. you have a lot of people making decisions, and i'm talking about congress now, making decisions that they themselves do not have to live with. their schools, their children probably go to private schools, their grandchildren, and our schools are constantly being affected by illegal immigration and the lies that conservatives

do not want immigration, we just want it done legally. host: on that immigration decision, i found a republican counterpoint, rick allen, singh border patrol faces immense challenges every day. ending the remain in mexico policy will only make it harder for law enforcement to deal with the border prices that this president and administration have created. president biden must reverse this plan. we are asking you to grade the supreme court. daniel in north carolina, independent. good morning to you. caller: hello. host: your turn, daniel. caller: i am actually close to danville. thank you. my children are dual citizens, and i give the supreme court an r+, alpha, bravo, charlie,

delta, r for romeo radio. justice roberts has been doing his best to hold the government to a two framework solution. there was a gentleman on earlier who was from duke. i do not care if your chapel hill or blue devil or nc state, you know that black letter or white letter or whatever color on the paper, we have a supreme court justice who was in the general assembly, working her way up from the senate. you cannot write on a piece of paper and say the ocean is not going to rise. there is science, and people recognize what r+ means. to the gentleman he was talking about aoc, i have seen what is happening with the cues in quebec, she was in international relations and knows what the subway does when it floods.

obviously, she is a senator -- not a senator, she is a congressman right now, but she is doing what everyone does and congress, because that is what the legislative branch does. host: we're going to keep taking your grades for the supreme court from this past term. in other news, i want to share with you from last night and debate in wyoming between congresswoman liz cheney and her primary opponent. let's begin with the trump-endorsed republican, harry hagman, responding to a question about differing views among republicans about what happened on january 6. [video clip] >> last night, and appearance of the presidential library, it was said that both the republican party and american democracy are threatened by too many republicans going to individuals instead of party principal and constitution. she got a standing ovation

there, but in other circles she has become an outcast among republicans, symbolically out of the party in wyoming. you all are running for wyoming 's only seats in the house. but does this divergence of views made for this race, and what does it say about the state of the republican party in wyoming? >> dy for the question. my first response -- thank you for the question. my first responses we are not a democracy, we are a republic. that is an important distinction. our republic is not in danger because of president donald j. trump. president trump was an excellent president for the united states of america and especially for the set of wyoming. the threat from our desk to our republic comes from other sources, including that we have two different systems of justice in this country, one where you have people like hunter biden or hillary clinton or even joe biden who are not held

accountable for the decisions and the bad acts that they undertake. we have a situation what we saw in portland, where you have rioters attacking the federal courthouse and federal agents who have billions of dollars of damage being done to our cities through rioting and the people are not held accountable for those things. yet, you had the conservatives are republicans being punished for expressing a first amendment right, for exercising their first amendment right. i do not believe that they republican party is at some kind of impasse where we are splitting into splinter groups, i think the republican party is actually very united in the fact that the current administration is an absolute disaster. we need to retake the house and senate so we can block his agenda, and we need to further the conservative agenda. host: she is running for the wyoming congressional seat. the income it, at last night's

debate -- the incumbent at last nights debate. here is liz cheney at that same debate, her closing arguments. [video clip] >> it has been the highest honor of my professional life to represent the people of wyoming for the last five-and-a-half years. i am a conservative republican and will work hard to earn the vote. i think it is important for people to know that i believe that the most conservative of conservative principles is fidelity to the constitution. we rise to the brand, our u.s. constitution. so i will ask people for their vote and will work hard to earn it. that people need to know this about me, i will never put party above my duty to country, above my duty to constitution. i swore an oath undergo a -- under god and will abide by that oath. i will not say something i believe is wrong to earn support. that is what the voters of wyoming demand, the kind of respect we owe the voters.

we need to recognize that if we embrace the lies of donald trump, if we tell the people of wyoming something that is not true, we will find ourselves without the structure and the framework of our constitutional republic. if we do not abide by the constitution, than it is politically inconvenient, we will not have the constitution as our shield. we need to defend our first amendment and second amendment rights. i am asking for your vote and asking you to understand that i will never violate my oath of office. if you are looking for someone who will, you need to vote for someone else. i will always put my oath first. host: last nights wyoming congressional debate, courtesy of wyoming pbs. you saw some moments from the debate. back to our question about the supreme court. they just ended their term yesterday, the 2021-2022 term, and we are asking for your

grade. a call from mississippi, democratic caller. caller: i give them a d. i think biden is -- ms. jackson is no more than a clarence thomas. done the same thing with ms. harris. i feel like we, as black people, are being sold out with blackface. these people are not standing up for the people living in the united states in the inner cities. if you want to help them, you should give them reparations. it should be the number one thing. biden is finding money to give to ukraine and all over the world. these people are very in need, and what they need is reparations. i feel like joe biden is just pulling a trick over the black people. if you are not addressing black people problems, just putting a

blackface there is not solving a problem. host: donald in columbus, ohio, independent. your grade for the supreme court? caller: an "a-" with respect to purpose and spirit. the jurisprudence based term has sent a message that congress is not doing their job. it is a legislative branch, and the spirit of america is in danger. they create friction. they write a story. we have a history, american history, where americans did not listen to the supreme court because it was morally wrong. that is where we find ourselves. so i give them an "a-" because they are creating friction to wake up the soul and consciousness of this country, to understand that rights are vindicated by people taking to the street and holding it near and dear to their heart. so understand that the law is

written upon your heart and your mind. f+ because these decisions do hurt. they will have impact. host: rick in randall towne, maryland, a democratic caller. caller: good morning to everyone. listen, let me say this one thing, donald trump accumulated the highest national and trade deficit of any president in the history of the united states -- host: what about the supreme court? caller: i give them a b-, because they have uncle tom clarence thomas there. he does not like black people because i do not agree with him. circuit -- so they got the uncle tom, they can have him. my main concern has always been, do we have people we can trust? liz cheney, i respect her. i know her father is proud of her, he has got to be.

i could live next door to her. i went to howard university. i know everything about d.c. when trump was president -- host: john in aurora, illinois, independent. we are talking about the supreme court. what is your grade? john in aurora, illinois, independent. we are listening. caller: i am not in aurora, illinois. i am in florida. ok, i think the supreme court did an excellent job upholding the constitution, and i agree with the caller from mississippi and the one from ohio. biden needs to fix what is broken here, instead of sending money all the way around the world. host: all right. don in new jersey, independent. caller: migrate is a -- my grade

is a d. the court has become an activist court, to do the things that the minority of the country wants. that is it. host: roger in virginia, democratic caller. what do you say? caller: good morning, everybody. i say they get an f, because they have turned their back on the american people. this clarence thomas here, he should have recused himself a bunch of times, but he says no. he says that the left has destroyed his life since he has been on the court, and now he is returning the favor. i think fox news has a lot to do with this. it has been since donald trump got into the office i have not spoken to my brother. he has destroyed my family. how anybody can support him is beyond belief.

i just can't understand. host: greg in d.c., republican. what do you think about the decision by the court this past term? caller: i would give them a b+, whereas i would agree with most of their decisions. i think it does polarize the country and creates an interesting situation for us. one other comment, i think you all need to censor people using the term uncle tom. i think it is very derogatory. host: eve in grand rapids, michigan. democratic caller. caller: as for the supreme court, if you can call them the supreme court, which is almost laughable right now, i would give them -- and i know something about giving people grades -- i would give them a f+ , because they have screwed up and just turned everything

upside down. it doesn't make any sense. you take away women's rights. the constitution gives people the right. you know, they have the right to bear arms, walking around like the wild, wild west. why can't the women have decisions over their bodies? i have not lived in this land and not been free to do whatever i wanted to do with my body. f+. host: jenny in ohio, democratic caller. turn down that television. mute that. are you listening through your phone? mute your television, please. all right, joe in north plainfield, new jersey. democratic caller. caller: good morning, and thank you for taking my call. to the previous caller, thank you so much per erdogan to say f

-- thank you so much. i want to say f+. there is no reason for clarence thomas to be on the court. he lied. no reason for amy to be on the court, no reason for brett kavanaugh to be on the court. people are trying to return to a part of america that no longer exists, and they are denying our rights. they are completely political. what thomas said about what he wants to do in the future, read that. but this america that you all want no longer exists. host: all right, a call from ohio, republican. what is your grade? caller: i am giving the supreme court an "a" because they are pissing the democrats off, so they have to be doing something right. host: randy in indiana, democratic caller. caller: i give them a b. host: mute your television.

caller: i ain't confused, i lost my words. host: you give them a b because? caller: i give them a b because i am a reagan democrat. and the remaining mexico policy, they done away with that, so i give them a b. but the rest, no good. as far as that man calling for reparations, if he is trying to give reparations to people -- host: ok, let's go to john in virginia, democratic caller. caller: yes, i would give them an f. i would go farther down the alphabet if i could, at least the five conservative judges. i think that when you make law with very little thought, you're going to end up with problems

down the line. i do not think they even understand women's health little. and now that the states are going to be taking over, it is going to be even worse in a lot of the state spirit so i would give them an f. host: you said five conservative justices, left one out. was that on purpose? is there one that you would give a higher grade? caller: i'm sorry, that was a mistake. all six. host: mark in cloverdale, indiana, independent. caller: good morning. i would give the supreme court a n "a" because of the decisions they brought down, returning power to the people in the legislative branches, and with the six that have pretty well

stood together, i am very much pro-life and i praise god that babies are born instead of being thrown into the garbage cans of planned parenthood. i am very, very thankful that president trump kept his word and stood for what is right. host: i will leave it there. we are going to take a short break. when we come back, we will dig deeper into the supreme court's decision on the remain in mexico policy, talking about immigration policy overall with andrew seeley with the migration policy institute. later, warmer trump administration energy advisor michael mckenna and bob deans from the national resources defense council, they will be here together to discuss the supreme court's decisions on limiting the epa possibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions. we will be right back. ♪

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support c-span's nonprofit corporation -- operation. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us this morning is the president of the migration policy institute, andrew seele. let's begin with the supreme court's decision yesterday. they said that the biden administration can reverse the stay in mexico policy. first, explain the policy and history of it, and what this means going forward. guest: this was the policy that was a signature under the trump administration, to have people wait in mexico while they wait for their asylum hearing in the united states. the biden administration tried close this down. a court came in and said, you cannot close it down. this is affecting the state. the supreme court came back, reviewed it, and said, the

federal government does have the ability close this down. it is a foreign policy decision. they have other tools, they send it back to the lower court to take a look at it again. it looks like this is probably the last word on it. if anything, this is a -- that has not been used much in the biden administration. it will not have much effect at the border. what it probably does do, and is good for the biden administration now and the next couple of administrations, is they have limited a little of the activism of the courts weighing in on immigration policy. courts have been weighing in a lot of different issues during the trump administration, during the biden administration. the supreme court seems to be saying that lower courts should limit the injections they do nationally, as they have limited ability to do this, and they have to respect the prerogatives of the federal government. there have been courts that have weighed against both

administrations on this, and will in the future. it probably benefits the executive, it does not benefit the people that are challenging federal policy. host: what is it that the administration says that they want to do the on this policy when it comes to the border? what are they doing? guest: what they want to do, ideally, and he can argue -- we can argue if they are could succeeding -- if they are succeeding. they are planning to create more legal opportunities to come to the united states, above all else, for seasonal work. people are coming anyways, trying to create legal pathways. making sure the asylum process works quickly. people can be returned if they do not have a good case, or if they do, and enforcing the border. that seems to be the policy. i think they are struggling on all fronts, but i think that is

where they are trying to go. host: according to usa today and washington post, we are 239,000 arrests at the southern border in may of 2022. this was the highest total for one month in 22 years or 25% previously tried to cross the border at least want -- once. what is happening at the border? why are we seeing these numbers? guest: this is a complicated question, but we should vote or the tragedy of what happened this week, 53 people died. we are willing to get in a truck with no water that is completely filled with human beings, people are desperate to get to the united states. to get an opportunity. we saw a huge drop in migration after 2007, and now, we are back to levels we saw in the early 2000's. people are not coming just from

mexico, as they did in the early 2000's. they are coming from all over the world. several things are going on, the covid recession is going on in parts of latin america. people are in tough economic straits -- strains. the u.s. economy is heating up with people -- opportunities to work here. we are seeing murders in nicaragua, venezuela, pushing people out. this is happening at the same time. people think there is an opportunity -- we have this happening, real opportunities to work in the u.s., and some circumstances pushing people out of there. host: andrew, let me get you a sip of hot water or tea. i will talk to our viewers about how they can join in on this conversation. andrew seele is the

president of the migration policy institute. you can go on their website to learn more about the organization. here to talk about that supreme court decision, as well as borden -- border and immigration policy questions. if you are a democrat, call in at (202) 748-8000. republican, (202) 748-8001. independent, (202) 748-8002. if you live on the border with -- on the southern border, dial in at (202) 748-8003. we want to hear from you, as well. andrew, the washington post says that cvp is on pace to exceed 2 million detentions during this fiscal year of 2022 ends in september. after tallying a record of 1.7 3 million in 2021.

will this ruling lead to more arrests? what is the detention policy of the biden administration? guest: we do not know, but they are not using this program very much. they had about 70,000 people, and about one point 3 million people have been encountered at the border. this has been a tangential discussion among a longer conversation -- larger conversation about what to do at the border. we saw under the trump administration close to one million people. in 20, covid rot the numbers down. the numbers were going up under obama already in 2015, they went up under trump, there -- they went up under biden. there is something that is driving people away from latin america to the u.s., we have to take that into account.

the trump administration tried to keep a block, it didn't work well. the biden administration has gone the other direction, and are allowing people in. simply, because they do not have the capacity to process people, give them asylum hearings, return them to their countries of origin. what we are seeing is people are seeing that as a signal that it is time to come. i think we are at a moment where there is a lot of chaos at the border. neither democrats or republicans have been able to fix it. the problem is bigger than partisan politics, it needs people thinking across the aisle about what the solutions are. host: andrew, you said the former administration, the trump administration, tried as many migrants out, but that didn't work. what do you mean? guest: when you have people willing to get into a trailer

and risked their lives, it tells you that people are willing to go to a pretty far way to putting their lives at risk to get to the united states, because they think their chances where they are limited, and their chances in the u.s. are better. the u.s. economy is getting better, that number keeps going up. for americans, we do not feel like the economy is getting better. if you look at the help wanted signs out there, there is a lot of jobs out there that not pay well for an american working before covid and lost their job. but, pays well for someone from hunter is torn nicaragua -- doris -- honduras or nicaragua. there is a huge incentive to come. this has been going on for a while, it has gotten much sharper as the economy increased. there is no way to enforce our way out of it alone, there is no way to stop people from coming.

they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get here one way or another. on the other hand, creating incentives in allowing large numbers of people in is probably not helping, either. somewhere in between, we have got to get creative on how we create legal opportunities for people to come. how we process people in a smart way at the border, and make determinations about who has the right to stay and who needs to be returned to their country. we need to be able to do this in relatively, not in real time, because that is impossible. within a shorter period of time than possible, we have lost the ability of making the decision of who needs to come in and come out at this point. we need to be investing in countries to figure out how we stabilize from economic circumstances driving people out. host: john in spring, texas. your question or comment about immigration. caller: the gentleman is bright,

there is basic things like water and food. those people that died in that trailer, i do not see a border agent on duty when that truck was through. they can find that real easy. those people should be fired. those border agents. i know they made arrests of the drivers and stuff, but that border agency, they should be checking these trucks coming through. all they got to do is look under and see 50 people in there, those border agents, i do not have too much respect for them. although, they did come over and shoot that guy in uvalde. host: john, so your question or comment? caller: my one thing, this global warming, it is serious.

i am 67, it is ridiculous that the supreme court is not allowing -- host: we are talking about the immigration question for this hour. we will talk about the epa decision by the supreme court in the last hour. andrew, his comment about the rule of border patrol. what is this supposed to stop? guest: i thought this was going to be one of the most controversial topics of the morning. we've got a lot of controversy going out of this century right now. i think we have to have some respect for the agents at border patrol who are overwhelmed. we put a lot of money into enforcement. we probably put as much money, more money into immigration enforcement at a federal level, than other forms of federal law enforcement. at this point, they are completely overwhelmed. when you talk about 2 million

people coming in a year, it is probably closer to 1 million and a half, but it is a large number of people. their ability to process people, to do checkpoints in a systematic way, to process people in a systematic way, run asylum system, to return people. all the things that are part of order enforcement is quite overwhelmed. this is the place where democrats and republicans need to be talking to each other and people in latin america. this is not a problem you can solve with existing resources, with existing mechanisms. we are going it alone with the country, this has been a bigger set of solutions. one thing, we are no longer at this point. -- has to lame the trump administration and biden administration in different ways. they have ended up with an inability to do regular

processing at the border we have had, the numbers are so great that it is simply hard to take people in and figure out what the process is to follow with them. there is going to have to be measures to get this under control. i think it starts with fixing our asylum system and creating regal pathways. there is going to have to be measures to take control of the numbers, because right now, the agents at the border are overwhelmed and are trying to figure out, what do they knew -- due next to maximize their time in a situation they cannot control? host: let's talk about solutions. if you could give us details of where you silly -- see solutions, our viewers could react to those. guest: people are desperate to come. we need to create legal pathways for people to come. the u.s. economy needs a lot of low-wage workers. we can do a lot of seasonal work in the united states that is lot less controversial than bringing

people permanently. we need to talk about residence between short-term -- term for and permanent work. this is the place where most people are coming from, guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua. now, we are seeing cuba. these are countries where we know there is going to be long term demand. we need to create legal pathways for people to come. we do have from mexico, thousands of people come from mexico as seasonal workers every year. we need to figure out the legal ways people can come. to tell people what line you can kid into -- can get into, that should be our number one priority. number two priority, a system at the border that makes sense. a asylum system that can -- we know people are running for their lives that are under

threat. we need to find out who they are and give them asylum. others, we need to put in removal proceedings and send back to their country. unfortunately, i do not love, but it is the reality. if you do not have a reason, you are not coming under a legal visa, you need to be returned to your country. we need to put resources to doing that in a fair way that people can trust, what can happen in a reasonable time period. we need to do serious investment in the countries the people are coming from. we know there is economic crisis going on in mint -- mexico, central america. we need to work with those countries to make serious investments, fix the law enforcement issues there, and the economic causes driving people out. and, get on the ground. the hurricanes, we saw a huge increase -- those were moments of emergency, make sure we are on the ground so people can get their lives back together. host: seth in woodbridge,

virginia. republican. caller: from pressure ports, i understand that trump put about 70,000 into npp, and biden only put about 600. i understand the mpp applies to only non-mexican migrants. can you confirm that? guest: it is used for people for non-mexicans from spanish-speaking countries, portuguese, brazilians. it requires negotiations from mexico, skeptical about having this number of people waiting in their country. they get up to about 70,000 in the trump administration, the government is not necessarily willing to take everyone back and have them wait in mexico. it is a sovereign country, they have a right not to do that.

under the biden administration, about 10% of what it was under the trump administration. my guess is, mpp is not going to be the measure that works in the long term. it requires too much negotiation with another country, and asking them to do more than they are necessarily willing to do. we need to figure out ways within our own capacity. host: maria in westville, new jersey. independent, we are talking about immigration and border policy. caller: hi, greta. i wish the gentleman would discuss, i think it was 1965, a kennedy bill. it mandated over 90% of legal immigration would come from non-european countries, which i think might be a problem right now. the other thing is, i believe the constitution, the president has a duty to protect our

concert, which includes our border. we are being invaded, so we are starting to bring him up on charges and congress, if they do not do that. my third point is, i think a solution would be to not give any more automatic citizenship to people who are born here. we have tourists coming in and becoming citizens. we have to get out of globalism, and come back to taking care of our country. i would like his comments, thank you. guest: actually, part of the secret sauce that has made the country work is immigration. we want our immigration system to work all, it is part of what drives innovation and entrepreneurship in the united states. we have to have controls over who is coming in. every country should be able to make determinations about who is coming across its border. right now, people are coming across are getting illegal status. people are being returned, they return people or are given a

notice to appear in immigration court, or given patrol which allows them to come in for a certain period of time. people are coming in legally, they are not invading. it is legal, the supreme court affirmed that yesterday. this is being done legally. the question is, how do we get control? for the american public, the vast majority of americans support immigration, but are also worried about the border and the loss of perception that there isn't a way of making strategic decisions about who is coming in the border. people want immigration, and at the same time, they worry we do not have control over the rules of the game. 1965 law was designed to let europeans come into the country, not people from latin america. it was based on people who had

family ties. the hope of the people in the senate and house at the time, were people that put this in the bill was to make sure that those of the european migration. it turned out in the 1960's and 1970's, very few europeans wanted to come from the united states. my mother came from denmark, was one of the last to come from europe from this. one of the few number of europeans who came under the new rules. the reality is, host people wanted to come from other parts -- most people wanted to come from other parts of the world, especially africa and the caribbean. over time, immigration started to shift, not because the law allowed it. the law still imports europeans. because of the demand for people, people were willing to come to the u.s. and work and start their life other were in other parts of the world europe was in a recovery. this is the reality right now, where there are willing --

people willing to come to the u.s. is from other parts of the world. we want that. how do we make sure there are clear rules of the game, and they are respected? that is the question, how do we fix the system to add credibility? host: we go to kentucky, ken is a democratic caller from their. jim, good morning. caller: i agree -- yes, can you hear me? host: yes, you agree with everything he said? caller: hello? almost everything. i used to have an uncle that ran a egg business in dallas. could he address -- it is a

multi-sensitive problem. how about the fact that, could more traditional routes for immigration had been brought, so the ones that are currently trying to emigrate without other reason are going through more dangerous routes? i used to live in texas, too. guest: look, this is the perverse side of when you do enforcement strategy, it is empowered for the smugglers. smugglers take over -- when people come in legally, we have choice over who comes in. we have choice of where the common and how they come. people are able to choose their own way of coming in, the new -- know what the rules of the game are. most people from the united states come through legal channels, most people are coming through legal visas, green

cards, coming through airports and seaports, and sometimes, to the border. what we have at the border is -- the south west border, is a lot of people putting their lives in the hands of smugglers, who are taking them to dangerous routes to get into the united states. you have to deal with it at least with strategy, you have to create more opportunities for people to come legally. we know they are coming anyway. it is the law of supply and demand. people will find their way in sooner rather than later. we have ways of telling who is in danger for their life. we have to do enforcement seriously and develop the capacity to return people who are not coming legally, and do not need asylum, back to their countries of origin. we need to deal with the causes of why people are coming in, if we do not deal with the causes, this is going to be an ongoing issue we are dealing with the next 40 years.

host: jose in daytona beach, florida. independent. jose'in daytona beach. caller: yes. when do we go after those coyotes in countries in the embassy or government, and go after those coyote that started the march down to the borders? just like we go to the -- people from overseas, to the united states. host: let's take that question. guest: i think it is a good idea, there is more discussion to this after what happened in san antonio. it is howard -- it is hard to do. they change their business model frequently.

they are very networked, fluid. it is a lot easier to get lower level people than the higher level people, it is easy to get the folks that cross that are walking people across the desert , or driving the truck. relatively easy, we often do not get them, but relatively easier to get them. those are the people running the show, those are the expendable people from the eyes of the networks that are moving folks. getting the ones that are masterminding this are a lot harder. this -- some of this is small-scale business of moving people, small-town smugglers moving people across short distances, handing them off to others. some of these are big rings run centrally and often cross paths with drug traffickers, they can be controlled by drug traffickers. getting to the people running the big rings, the predatory rings, the ones putting 100

people back -- in the back of a truck without water is hard, but is the kind of thing we can do. we developed a capacity on this with terrorist organizations and drug traffickers. it is imperfect, but if we paid attention to this and put more intelligence into this, we could make some stride and disrupt the system of the smugglers in ways that would make them harder for them to move people. host: stephen, republican. caller: good morning. i agree with the independent caller who called a few minutes ago. the president is in -- of duty to protect our borders. the fentanyl has killed everyone of my friends, i do not have no friends no more. this guy is not doing his job. what happened to 9/11? we will never forget how many

people got into this country that they caught, but how many have a not cot? this guy has got this whole country tore apart with his ego. step down as president. host: can we take a point about fentanyl? guest: drugs are another issue. seems to be mostly separate groups moving them, there is lots of touch ports. the human smugglers need to pay the drug traffickers to get across the border. there are touch points, there are probably some smuggling rings controlled by drug traffickers. they are largely separate that we know. fentanyl is a huge issue, fentanyl is driven by china, originally. this is a synthetic drug that comes from china. some is coming through mexico and brought across, some comes directly from china and is mailed to the united states.

this is a huge issue and is driven by demand. this is a question of the fact that americans developed an appetite for opioids over the past few years. this has gone off the chart. if we go back 10 years, 15 years, opioids were a marginal drug business compared to cocaine. right now, they have become central, starting with synthetic opioids, with things that were legal, like oxycontin, that were abused. people were moving to other forms, and becoming a huge part of addiction in the united states. american's addictions are driving this. we need to be looking both at the demand-side, how we move people away from this, how we get people treatment, as well as how we disrupt the networks moving them across the border. host: cindy in florida.

democratic caller. caller: i believe at the beginning of this administration, when the build back better plan was sent to the senate, that there were provisions in there to address the border situation. we know that the vice president went over and was making contact with various countries to get a feel for what was happening, as well as the stuff that was going on at the border. then, when the senate pushed back on the build back better and started to try to take it apart, now, we are at a point where we are putting pieces together anytime. i believe that, in that package was the various things that are talked about now. the resources, put more people to be able to process.

it is not that this administration has not put forth an effort to solve some of these issues, it is just that you have a senate that is dead set on stopping anything this administration is doing. the simple fact of trying to gain points, so when the selection comes up, they would be more favorable because they are talking about how terrible things are going on now. i do know there was resources, that is my comment. guest: i think there have been ongoing conversations between democrats and republicans. there is no easy solution. i wish there were, wish there was something to do that would solve everything. what we saw in san antonio tells you the links people are willing to go to get into the united states, which tells you, whatever we need to do to create

laws over this will be difficult to do. creating legal boundaries is complicated. creating private fixings in this country so people do not feel desperate to leave is complicated. all of this is hard, there are people of goodwill on both sides talking about this. we heard this morning that senator tillis republican -- they republican from north carolina, the democrat from illinois are on a trip together. there is a number of other people in the house and senate talking to each other across the aisle. many people from the administration, republicans and democrats in congress, getting together to figure out the different pieces that need to move forward so we do not have more tragedy like we saw in san antonio. and, they people can look at the border and say, i think the country has a people -- has a way of letting people and that makes sense. we are treating people fairly,

humanely, there is an order to how people are coming in. that is where we need to get to. it is going to take goodwill on both sides. i am afraid what happens on this issue is, it becomes a symbolic issue for both sides, so it is easier to try and score points by criticizing the other side. saying, trump or biden created this problem, than trying to fix the nuts and bolts that need to be fixed. host: edward is next, an independent. you are on the air, good morning. edward, good morning in florida. caller: good morning from the free state of florida. good morning. i have a solution for the situation at the border. i served with the first calvary and second infantry division, under dmv in korea. we lost 40 killed in action, and

we lost 120 wounded in action, and another 700 korean troops. if we stationed the second infantry division on our border, that is approximately 25,000 troops plus air force, etc., we could stop the flow of fentanyl, illegal immigrants, terrorists, and the like. there is no reason we should be letting these individuals in. years ago, my generation, my great uncle came from italy. he was drafted by the united states army, and was killed in action. we have to do with the old way. people have to have the sponsor in this country, and come over legally. period. host: what do you make of what he had to say? guest: look, the military is for war.

it is for times of crisis. we consciously restrict the will of the armed forces in civilian life on u.s. territories for a reason. we do not want to use the great u.s. armed forces, which deserve enormous respect. in norma's respect for your sacrifice in this. we do not want to dilute their mission by putting them into situations that are beyond what they legally are supposed to do. fentanyl, mostly do not come from people walking through the border. there are mostly hidden in vehicles. this is a question of technology, as much as it is manpower to fineness. the bad guys need -- to hide things in vehicles, cars, to get it across. it means a lot to lose a

shipment, they are careful about they do -- about what they do and innovate to do steps about what the government -- u.s. government can do. right now, under title 42, we can send some people back to mexico. there is limits because mexico is a sovereign country. mexico will take back mexicans and people from three central american countries. other people, we have to give them due process in the u.s.. one of the questions becomes, how do we speed up due process? how do we speed up an asylum process that is bear, vast, and vital? to give people the chance to say if they are fleeing from danger, make a decision, and let them into the country or return them in a fairly quick order, at least a few months? we have to give people their opportunity to do that.

if they do not ask for asylum, they have the ability to return people back to where they came from. i agree, people should only be coming in on legal doctrine, or getting protection as refuge. those are the only two ways people should be coming in. it is not a question of boots on the ground at the border, it is a question of having the right processes in place. that is something we are -- the administrations are always falling down. the biden administration is trying to do something about this. what is a complicated endeavor, i wish they were moving faster. host: arizona, danny is watching. good morning. caller: good morning, greta. what i have to say is, all of the democrats and politicians have come down here. everybody should come down here and see what joe and harris has enabled.

joe and harris have not come down here to see what they have done. greta, in my community, last month, there were at least 50 or 60 immigrants that work walking around. the police and border patrol had to come and take them away. retta, i have empathy for these people. i feel so bad for what happened for those people in that truck. that should have never happened. again, i feel bad, but here in yuma, i have a next-door neighbor who is a border patrol agent. he and his partner patrol 50 miles of open desert. how in the heck can you patrol 50 miles of open desert with two people? it just ain't happening.

the cartels are running this down here, you cannot tell me they are not. that is bullcrap if you tell me they are not. they are running the border. they are making so much money on these people, and what they do is, they let these people come through. the other side is open, so that is how the drugs come in. host: i will have andrew spohn. final thoughts. guest: let me ask one other -- add one piece of the puzzle. yuma has become the place where people that cannot be deported are coming through. cubans, venezuelans, nicaraguans. three countries we do not have return of reason with, they will not take back people we want to deport. it is particularly complex, people are riding there. cartels control who come across

where, they do not necessarily smuggle people everywhere, but they control the entry points to the u.s. people smugglers need to pay the cartels to get across. the cartel has the final say of who gets across. yuma may become the place where that traffic is going on the most, where people who cannot be returned are coming through. this is a huge issue for the u.s., once people get to the border, if they can put a foot in the united states, mexico will not take them back. they are not subject to the agreement we have with mexico, which was negotiated in the previous administration. they are not object to be returned to their countries because their governments will not take them back. that is a huge issue we have seen, host to 40,000 cubans come through since october 1. things are bad in cuba. the economy is in bad shape. it is also because they can get into nicaragua visa free.

it is a huge issue, nicaraguans have been fleeing a murderous regime. they do not think they can make it to the order, they cannot be returned to nicaragua. i cannot blame people for making those decisions. the right thing is, we understand why people would do this. at the same time, it is not fair to communities on the u.s. side who are seeing people come in. that is a complicated part to the puzzle. host: andrew seele is the president of the migration policy institute. thank you. guest: thanks for having me on today. host: we will take a break. when we come back, we return to open phones. any public policy issue on your mind, migration, etc. we take those calls until the

top of the hour. then, michael mckenna joins us, as well as bob deans to discuss the supreme court's decision to limit the epa's decision to curb greenhouse gas emissions. we will be right back. ♪ >> live sunday on in-depth. emory professor carol anderson will talk about race in america, voting rights, and gun regulation. she is the author of several books, including "white rage" and "the second." about the history and impact of the second amendment. join in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, text and tweets. in-depth sunday with carol anderson live at noon eastern on book tv on c-span two.

♪ >> there are a lot of places to get political information. only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here, or here, or here, or anywhere that matters. america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. ♪ >> "washington journal" continues. host: welcome back. we are approaching the last hour of today's "washington journal." we are in open form, public policy issue that is on your mind. we go to andrew in new york, a democratic caller. you are first.

caller: yes, i would like to talk about clarence thomas. clarence thomas precludes himself from anything that comes up because of his wife. host: ok, because of the january 6 attack on the capital? caller: that is correct. his wife is involved with the oath keepers and proud boys, he should recuse himself. he should not be on the courts. host: marietta in maryland, democratic caller. what is on your mind? caller: i want to talk about the birth control situation. i do not believe they will do away with birth control, because there are so many forms of birth control, including tubal or ligation -- tublar ligation.

if they consider the woman, there is also a male contraceptive. i do not think the men one to see those condoms pulled off the store shelves, because using a condom is a form of birth control. thank you. host: carolyn, baltimore, democratic caller. caller: good morning, i want to talk about emigration. there is a saying, do not hate the player, hate the game. with immigration, the people who are hiring the legal immigrants are the ones who should be going after. people are coming over the border because they have jobs and opportunities, but they do not have at home. if they can get us focused on the illegal immigrants, they can keep hiring them and paying them low wages. there playing us against each other, when if they wanted to solve the problem, they would go after the businesses that are hiring them. everywhere you go, you see

people and illegal immigrants and see them getting hired because we do not have to pay them the wages that you have to pay regular people. that is my thought. host: carolyn on immigration, we are in open form. ron is a republican in actsing 10, kentucky. what is the public policy you want to talk about? caller: two things, the january 6, that is a -- any good attorney knows you could get a ham sandwich out of murder out of a grand jury. the second thing, emigration. there are so many aspects to emigration, illegal immigration. most all of this is bad. poor people's children are is to the family, is there treasure.

when these older people, these other countries get older and have no one to take care of them, they do not have the social programs like we do here. it is a crying shame what we do to these people. we pay the governments in these other countries. we purchase these people, just like we are trading slaves. it is true, look it up. it is what donald trump said, they are sending us the worst. they did that at the beginning. we got the worst, all the criminals. they send people. now, we are probably getting a little better people. the other thing is, aiding and abetting these criminals coming in, these illegal immigrants. the in ceo's -- nco's is the worst you have ever seen. they are stealing your money, buying these people that come into their church and fill their

coffins with money. it is crazy, this stuff is amazing and unspoken. host: all right. for those who missed it earlier, we showed you from last night in wyoming, the congressional debate between incumbent liz cheney and republican challengers. if you missed it, show you a couple moments from last night. we will start with the candidate endorsed by former president donald trump, harriet hagman. the question and answer to her about the differing views among republicans on what happened on january 6. [video clip] >> last night, cheney said the republican party and american democracy are threatened by too many republicans -- two a individual instead of a party and constitution. she got a standing ovation, but

in other circles, she has become an outcast among republicans, being symbolically thrown out of the party in wyoming. you are running for wyoming's only seat in the house, what does this divergence of you mean for this race and what does this say about the republican party in -- the state of the republican party in wyoming? >> my responses, we are not a democracy. we are a republic. that is a important distinction, one that is missed by the statements made last night. our republican -- republican -- republic is not in danger because of president donald j. trump. the threat to our republic comes from other sources, including the fact that right now, we are seeing two different systems of justice in this country. we have one system of justice where you have people like hunter biden, or hillary clinton, or joe biden, who are

not held accountable for the decisions and bad acts they undertake. we have a situation and what we saw in portland, you have rioters attacking the federal courthouse. you have billions of dollars of damage being done to our cities through rioting and people are not held accountable. you have the conservatives, republicans being punished for expressing a first amendment right, exercising their first amendment right. i do not believe the republican party is at a path where we are splitting into splitter groups. i think the republican party is very united. the fact that the current administration is an absolute disaster, we need to retake the house and senate so we can block his agenda and further the conservative agenda. host: courtesy of wyoming pbs, a congressional debate last night. i want to show you the incumbent, liz cheney.

here she is defending her criticism of the former president. [video clip] >> it has been a tremendous honor to represent the people of wyoming the last five and a half years. i am a conservative republican, i am going to work hard to earn the vote of every wyoming night -- wyomingite. i believe the most conservative of concern in all -- conservative principles is the constitution. i am going to ask the people for their vote, people need to know something about me. i will never put party above my duty to the country. i will never put party above my duty to the constitution. i swore an oath under god, i will abide by that both. i will not say something i know is wrong to earn the votes of people to earn political support. that is what the voters of wyoming deserve and demand, that is the respect we owe the voters of this great state. we need to recognize that if we are not a full to the constitution, if we embrace lies

and the lives of donald trump, if we tell the people of wyoming something that is not true, we will find ourselves without the structure and basis and framework of our constitutional republic. if we do not abide by the constitution when it is politically inconvenient, we will not have the constitution as our shield when we need to defend our first amendment and second amendment rights. i am asking for your votes and asking you to understand i will never violate my oath of office. if you are looking for someone who will, i will not. i will always put my both first. host: liz cheney, courtesy of wyoming pbs. we are in open forum, you can talk about any public policy issues. iris in tampa, florida. democratic caller. caller: i wanted to quickly talk about two issues. one is abortion, the other is the border. host: iris, you have got to mute

the television. caller: hold on. host: ok. now, tell us about those issues. caller: ok. i am 74 years old. i have had pregnancies, i thought -- i lost the third one. the doctor said it was not viable. i had a spontaneous, natural abortion. that has struck fear in me, because of the policy of the republicans. it is way over the top, i am afraid for any woman, including my two daughters, who may have a similar, nonviable pregnancy. that they may hold criminally liable. that is a big flaw i see in the

thinking of the republicans and the supreme court. the second issue with the borders is, i believe in legal immigration. i think -- the only thing i agree with president trump is, the law according to, they should be detained. i think mexico is responsible for this flow of illegal immigrants. they are probably benefiting financially from it. i think it should be passed to keep it down. i believe in legal immigration, but not -- thank you. host: ellen, d.c., independent. caller: yes, are you talking to me? host: yes, and we are listening. caller: thank you.

god bless liz cheney, wyoming, ought to be proud of their native daughter. i vote for her for president. i am calling in reference to the illegal immigration problem. i do not understand what it is about, no freshwater that people do not understand. we are watching the western half of our country turn into a desert. the projections for this to continue are everywhere. yet, we keep taking more and more people in. god knows we are a compassionate, bighearted country. at this point, where will all these people go when there is no water at all left in the west? and, when climate change starts eating up our shorelines?

people have got to start thinking ahead. it has nothing to do with fear of the browning of america. i love these people prayed i love legal immigration. the illegal immigration is ruining our country. people are not looking out where this is going to lead in the future. host: i will go to david in massachusetts, republican. david. caller: i do not know why they put me as republican. i am an independent. i have two issues, every time i see postings of a woman about abortion, not all woman, it is like, you are a man. you have no say in this. i'm like, what about the supreme court justices in 1972, who decided on roe v. wade? they were all men. number two, if you are a woman and believe in abortion, you realize you are killing future

female babies. just like in china, they have selective abortion. if you found out you had a girl instead of a boy, you could have it destroyed. women's lives were not considered that important. we know that is not true. do women not have a problem with killing females? i am not sure. being a gay person, i believe that future gay children are being destroyed. who knows who is gay? i believe i was born gay. those people are being destroyed. it bothers me, the hypocrisy of a woman saying a man has nothing to say about it. well, we do. also, one last point. there are a lot of women in this country, somebody keeps on saying republicans are against it, that are against abortion. totally against abortion. that is my point. thank you. host: all right.

we will hear from anne in pennsylvania. caller: this is anne. my issue is the role of mexico, i wonder if c-span has ever done a study or show on this. mexico is incredibly wealthy. hard-working people, oil, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, a wonderful climate. yet, their president is overseeing the killings of presidents and judges on the cartel. is he retyping the cartel? why is there not a betteri was e mexican in that trailer. it is very sad for them though they had to leave the wonderful country to come here in an overheated trailer. thank you, greta. host: we will take a short break

and when we come back, we turn our attention to climate change and what the supreme court decided on epa's authority. we will talk with the former administration advisor michael mckenna and bob dean from the natural resources defense council. we will be right back. ♪ >> american history tv saturday on c-span two, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 2:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, and honor nancy reagan's birthday, we look at the first lady's legacy, her year in the white house through -- years in the white house, and

a new postage stamp honoring misses is reagan given eastern, author through threads they'll, winner of this year's george washington book rise. mr. ragsdale one for his book washington at the plow, the founding farmer and the question of slavery. we american story, watch american history tv on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online any time at c-span.org/history. since the summer of 2020, roughly 214 public monuments have been taken down --

>> c-span has unfiltered coverage of the house january 6 committee hearing. going to c-span.org/january 6, our web page to watch the hearings, briefings, and

coverage on the attack and subsequent investigation since january 6, 2021. we will also have reaction from members of congress and the white house as well as journalists and authors talking about the investigation. go to c-span.org/january6 for a fast and easy way to watch when you cannot see alive. >> "washington journal" continues. host: welcome back to our conversation about climate change, the environment, and what the supreme court ruled yesterday. we have two guests with us, michael mckenna, the former deputy assistant to the president of office legislative affairs of the trump administration and a washington times columnist and energy lobbyist as well over time and bob dean, the strategic engagement director for the national resources defense council. thank you both for being here. mr. mckenna, your reaction to what the supreme court ruled yesterday on the epa's authority

under the clean air act? guest: i thought it was expected. it was about the middle of the fairway on the epa overreaching and the courts slapped them down the little bit. i think the over -- the important part is it will complicate the bite in the ministrations attempt to regulate on climate in places that are not epa like the securities exchange commission, cftc, consumer financial protection board, places like that. they are thinking about what they need to do because they will not do what they had planned to do. host: what were the epa trying to do? guest: they wanted to expand the definition of a section of the clean air act, 111 d, specifically the word system, to include things other than the power plants. a defensible position obviously, the defense from the justice ran 33 pages so it was a defensible position but the court said in matters of significance, national, political, economical,

social significance, congress has to give the agency clear authorization to do what they want to do. in this case, the 1990 clean air act amendments, and 33 years no one try to do this so the court said you cannot do it. host: your reaction? guest: the wrong direction at the worst possible time. what the court did was say the epa may still impose limits on the carbon pollution from power plants but it narrowed the options the epa has for doing so. it cap the apa and the climate -- epa in the climate fight but makes it harder to win it. that is not where we need to be. it is not the time to hamstring the nation's environmental guardian and the environmental fight of our time. host: what tools does the epa want to use and what tools do they have left? guest: that will be subject to interpretation, but what the chief justice said is the epa may not write a limit on carbon

pollution from power plants that forces a national transition away from coal. here is the real world problem, power plants that burn coal and natural gas account for 30% of our carbon footprint. we've got to clean that up. host: what tools do they have left, the epa? guest: they have the ability to write a standard that tells me my powerplant is too dirty and i've gotta fix it. i can install equipment that captures carbon and locks it away safely in underground, i may burn gas along with coal to reduce the carbon footprint, but one way or another i've got to comply with that ruling. that is the law of the land. that is also what people want. eight in 10 americans expect the epa to limit this carbon pollution from our power plants, our single largest industrial source. and we need to act. host: michael mckenna, do you agree with that analysis of what

the epa is allowed to do under this ruling? guest: yeah, the administrator of the epa said yesterday that he saw had plenty of tools in the toolbox to regulate carbon. i agree with him. there are plenty of additional things, it is just the court ruled this specific thing out. host: where is the industry headed anyway? before this ruling. guest: bottom line is the industry, most of the carbon dioxide emission reductions have happened in the industry have happens because coal plants have switched to natural gas. that is partially because of market forces, partially because of regulatory forces. in the industry, they have in some segments of the industry committed to net zero by 2035 or 2050 or however they structure it. it is sort of where the utility industry is going anyway. host: what are the market forces? guest: market forces are hydraulic fracturing, precision drilling that allowed the great

big giant surge in natural gas production in the last 15 years happened, natural gas very cheap, easy to replace coal plants, natural gas plants more efficient, easier to run in the system, much different. guest: i could add a couple facts to that. wind and solar account for 12% of our electricity nationwide. that has grown fourfold in the past decade. as the cost of these technologies plummeted by on average about 80%. in much of the country now, it is cheaper to go with clean, renewable power than dirty fossil fuels. that is driving a lot of this as well. we know this because the industry itself, all of the investor-owned utilities around the country filed in favor of epa authority in this case and so that transition is well underway but we need to speeded up. we are not going fast enough. we have got to cut our carbon footprint in half by 2030, stop

adding this pollution to the atmosphere altogether by 2050, we will have a prayer holding back catastrophic climate change. host: real quickly, following up on that, who is it cheaper for? is it cheaper for the companies, for the consumer? who is driving this? guest: both because the cost that utilities occur goes into the rate based on public services. consumers are saving money from this energy and we know that because just in texas, just two weeks ago, when texas saw triple degree heat and record electricity consumption, wind and solar power provided a third of the electricity texas wide. that is what is happening. guest: i would just say i have one other caution or one note of color or context. utilities, powerplant owners generally have a vested interest in putting things in rate base. they know all of the costs, they will occur them and pass them along to consumers. the reason they got the case was

because they already had a bunch of rate cases, power plants they wanted to preserve. it is more complicated than it looks at the gate. guest: i would say we are not indifferent because. we understand people are hurting with their energy costs and clean, renewable power produced here in this country is one of the best things we can do to keep costs down. host: we want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation. we divided the lines by support or oppose. you can find the lines on your screen, dial in, and texas were same city and state. (202) 748-8003. you can also post on facebook.com/c-span and send a tweet at the handle @cspanwj. what does this mean for other countries on climate change? guest: a critical question.

it does not change the goal. president biden has cut carbon pollution in this country and all of our greenhouse gases 50 to 50 -- 50% to 52% by 2030. right now, that includes strong rules from the epa. we want the epa to bring stakeholders together immediately and propose rules before this year is out. number two, congress needs to pass the reconciliation package in the senate. it will help make our cars and homes more efficient and help us build more clean, renewable wind and solar power and a modern grid system needs to happen as well. states and local governments need to continue moving ahead with their own safeguard standards and measures to promote the clean energy transition. we know it will create jobs and make this country more equitable and make our country more secure. host: do you agree with that agenda? guest: that's a lot of stuff

and most of it will not happen so i won't worry about specifics. what happened yesterday in the decision will setback the biden administration's timetable. the new york times said this morning that the court does not care about climate change. that's right. it is not, it cares about make each of the constitution and federal statutes and state statutes are interpreted correctly. you need to be wary of turning this thing into a question about what the court thinks or does not think about an issue but the material fact as the biden administration took a bat yesterday. it will take them a while to recover. host: oil and gas industry, i will stay with you, michael, what is happening with the industry? what direction is this headed? we had conversations on the show about the drilling, futures market, and people are seeing a direction toward renewables so what are these companies doing? what are they saying?

guest: the oil and gas industry, there -- they are companies responding to what they interpret as market signals. these are regulators, the united states government is making it clear we go net zero by 2035 or 2050 so oil and gas companies are retrenching investment and have been for the past four to five years. if the biden administration wanted to do something about gasoline prices, or natural gas prices for that matter, they would stop talking about this because there is no way you can invest in something that has a 10 to 15 year payout if you do not think you will be around in 10 to 15 years. oil and gas companies are rational, economic actors. there acting rationally. it is the administration having trouble figuring that out. host: bob beans, is high gas prices good for the climate change agenda? guest: what we are looking at is the worst drought in 1200 years in the southwest right now.

lake mead, lake powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country are drying up. they are.org court or tingle water. colorado river is drying up, wildfires that torched enough land to cover massachusetts last year alone, we are running at more than two times that rate this year. that is not something to talk about. that will not make it go and neither will this court order. in the first quarter of this year, americans were suffering at the pump and oil companies made $93 billion in profit. nearly 100 billion dollars while our families were suffering at the pump. talking about investing, there's ample opportunity for investment in this company -- country but they are choosing to payout shareholders and buy back stock and that is what they're doing about profits. guest: yes they made money, much less than the tech companies that support the democratic parties. it is a pick and choose your enemy kind of thing.

it is wrongheaded and wrong to assume you can talk down any industry for years and years and then wake up one morning and decide you need them. president biden was as clear as a bell during his campaign, saying he would stop the fossil fuels. cap he any clearer than that. the high gasoline prices, they are a feature, not a bug. they are a feature of this operation. host: jared in georgia, good morning to you. go ahead. caller: everything that breathes on this planet produces greenhouse gases. i'm talking about lizards to elephants. nasa put up two satellites and said part of the problem with the earth was it was tilting more and more towards the sun and the desert would be in chicago if something was not done about that. this greenhouse gas is just a

greenhouse tax. the press will take all of our money and then fix our problems. guest: i would love to respond. i think lizards and elephants are not responsible for this, which is in the past 40 years alone, we have burned more coal, gas, and oil globally than in all of human history before that. just in the past 40 years, we have raised the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 24%. to its highest level in at least 4 million years. those are the facts coming from the national atmospheric administration, the gold standard for this kind of information. we see the impacts around us. it is not just a computer model and not just in the lab, it is right outside our kitchen window. we have to do something about this. host: do you agree with the numbers? guest: i am a little -- always a little concerned about when we talk about the threat level because the bottom line is not

an existential threat. these are governmental panel on climate change has not characterized it as an existential threat. they characterize it as a modest problem and i think that is what it is, a problem that is fixable . let me take one bounce off of the callers thought, we do have a bill in the united states senate introduced by senator whitehouse to impose a carbon tax, energy tax, on folks. $55 a time, which would be the equivalent of increasing gasoline prices 50%. that is $.50 per gallon. if you're serious about climate change, you should be serious about that legislation. we should have a vote on that. guest: we think the best way to approach this is to invest in the clean energy future that we need which is as we talked about efficiency, renewable power, modern grid system. we need to invest in that and

the reconciliation package before the senate now will do that. host: what is in it? what are you referring to? guest: anywhere between 300 and 500 -- $300 billion and $500 billion over the next 10 years. which would help us invest. one of the things it would do is help put electric cars within reach for low income and middle income americans. that is important. electric and hybrid cars, about 10% of the market and rapidly rising. if we could put those cars in reach for working families, that would make a big difference. host: louis in new jersey. you support what the supreme court did yesterday limiting the power of the epa. go ahead. guest: i do. i once sang your camp before you pulled up the prophet about how much money oil companies were making. you always throw that in there. i do agree because as always unelected officials are dictating policy and that is all

i've got to say. host: bob beans, why don't you take that one. guest: our constitution, congress writes the laws and the executive branch implements them. they do with through agencies that house the expertise, legal, scientific, economic, and other expertise needed to write the detailed rules and standards to implement laws to address emerging threats under our complex society. what the court did yesterday was to use a legal talking point about major questions to impose an artificial barrier that put as one analyst put it a straitjacket around the epa's ability to protect our health environment. that is nothing democratic about it. it era gets responsibility and authority the constitution gives to congress and the administration elected organizations, it era gates that authority to unelected judges sitting on a court. that is our problem.

host: michael mckenna, i give you sandra in savannah, tennessee and opposes with the supreme court in. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. host: go ahead. caller: my question is to the solar energy, what are they going to do with the batteries when they are supposed to be disposed? they will have to bury them in the earth. the solar panels, if you ever looked at the fields, the grass that grows under them burnt, and the windmills that is killing a lot of our birds. if they want to go back to the true green energy like the elders did, they would ride horses and do away with our cars but they do not have that logic and they don't go really how this middle america lives.

we cannot do electric cars and try to work and survive. we do not have enough power stations and a lot of times our power grid cannot even hold the power during the hottest part of the summer. host: michael mckenna. guest: that brings up an interesting, correct point. no matter how you structure the next transition in energy, you will have a law of toxic materials in batteries, solar panels, that will have to go somewhere. we are creating ourselves a series, the necessity of having a significant increase in hazardous waste. we will have to dispose of. it is a problem, nobody talks about it, nobody talks about the front end of the supply chain either whether it is child mining in the democratic republic of congo or whether it is slave labor in china helps build the batteries, solar panels, and it is past time folks were in favor of that and

have some reckoning and talk about this seriously. guest: quickly i would say the issue with batteries as we can recycle these batteries, they do not just go into the ground. we can get the special minerals that we need out of them. as far as wind and solar, i winds noah little bit about this. i wins are getting more than half of its electricity from wind turbines helping to keep the family ranch and farm intact . so far as birds and wildlife go, you want to reduce the threats and that is happening, but the real threat is climate change that is foundational to having put a million species on the brink of extinction in the coming decades. that is a serious problem. host: we go to kathy in wisconsin, good morning to you. caller: good morning. i have a question for both of your guests. i would like to talk about the electric vehicle batteries, disposable, and how we segregate

and where are they now? are they being recycled? i know there is a senate bill 4057 on the disposal. where are they right now? host: bob beans, do you want to take that? guest: he phrased a very important issue here. we are not recycling as much as we need to. we need to increase recycling and improve the entire process of how these batteries are made and disposed of and recycled. meanwhile, let's recognize we are dealing with a problem that is emerging now just in the past for years. we will find solutions. there is technology there, innovations, waves, practices we can do to innovate let's learn what we learned with 100 years of dealing with fossil fuel problems and move on from there with renewable -- renewables. guest: technical problems have solutions. back to my other point, problems with countries that have no

respect for human rights i communist china and the drc, those do not have immediately available solutions. the electric vehicle revolution in the united states if you will is being built on the back of child and slave labor. we need to be clear about that because it is important. host: michael mckenna, here's a tweet from a viewer that says come on the environment and climate change, we must be one nation, not 50 sovereign states. there must be an epa. if you have something to harm nevada, should nevada interpret that as an act of war and invade to stop the harm? guest: i agree, the epa is an important part of the united states federal government and should be and there are lots of provisions that are not relying on organic statues and good neighbor policies. what the court did yesterday was literally interpret one section differently than epa and say epa may not do this thing they want

to do. no more complicated than that. host: is that true? guest: it's not. in a certain sense i would add something to it. i'm not implying michael is misleading us here but i want to add something important, when you start to say federal agencies ability to do their constitutionally mandated job on behalf of american people is somehow constrained by artificial question around major questions, you have invited lower court judges to interfere with the federal rulemaking process by making up their own minds as to what is or is not a major question. how does that go? when the federal and -- federal aviation administration rights rule requiring safety commission and a cockpit, is a federal judge somewhere going to say that is a major question, we cannot take it up? will that then go to a federal supreme court where five conservative justices are going

to strike it down? is that going to go on for years while passengers are at risk? where is this taking us? it is not a workable situation. guest: i just want to say a thing about that. agreed, we will definitely be in the litigation cycle for the next 10 years while we figure out what is a major question and what is not. number two, there is a simple fix. the united states congress can do his job and all of the sources say they will pass legislation and explained what we want you guys to do. super simple and super easy. host: 60 votes there? guest: i would only add to that that is exactly what congress did passing the clean air act and it explicitly mentions climate as part of protecting the general where will fair that it assigned the epa to do when it said to reduce the pollution threatening us. host: wasn't there a previous supreme court decision that said cpa has the authority under the clean air act? what happened? >> there were three and the

court conceded that in its ruling yesterday. the court conceded the epa does have a role to play. the epa may issue rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants, from automobiles, from other sources. the epa needs to move forward and exercise that authority with the dispatch. host: jerry in kentucky. caller: i don't know if this matters but when we were speaking most about georgia, it took smog from an airplane in georgia and it does not stay in georgia. this is why need the epa to keep this down smothering the rest of the states to death. as far as batteries, i think everybody needs a little bit of what they call a forever battery and i will leave it to one gentleman who seems to know what he's talking about. host: can we talk about industry, coal, and the

omissions, sort of what solutions are these industries coming up with? what do they prefer for trying to capture the emissions admitted the echo guest: there is 50 -- admitted? guest: there's 50 years of coal plants and they are much cleaner than they were 50 years ago because of the scrubbers and systems and all that stuff. like i say, natural gas, the same, not the scrubbers because there is not the same cobe at the same removal systems. if you drive past a modern power plant, natural gas, you would be hard to -- hard-pressed to identify. guest: i want to thank the caller and also for your service. i know this is dangerous work and has contributed over generations to the foundation of our economy. as the economy is changing, power companies or by have as much coal as they were a decade

ago. coal is producing 22% of our electricity nationally, down from 42% a decade ago. so as the people who produce this resource are impacted, we need to transition to make sure they have pathways to new careers that reward them for their work and along the eastern plateau, west virginia, kentucky, all that is right for wind, there's a lot of new wind technology, advanced manner factoring techniques, these other kinds of things we can provide jobs, careers, to open up a pathway to the clean energy economy for these people who have been working so hard for fossil fuels for this time. host: marietta, georgia, good morning. mia, did i say your name right? caller: yes. i have a question that always puzzles me. the earth is estimated between 4 billion to 5 billion years old. my question is that what caused

the saharan desert from going from a green lush to a desert? and what caused the three ice ages? if any of that was anything human or did any human footprint because any of that change and another thing i had to ask, if we looked at the time of the earth's life compared to time that we have been so contracting climate, it is not measurable. more time has been on the life of the earth then we even know what cycles have gone to the earth, whether climate has gone through, so i think that we need -- we're thinking too much about --, it is not a good measurement. we do not know the cycles the earth has gone through since the life of the earth. guest: great question. the issues you're talking about with the sahara desert in the ice ages and so forth, you are talking about global changes

that unfolded over scores of tens of 20's of thousands of years, some cases hundreds of millions of years. what we are concerned about now is what has happened over the past decade and we have increase our fossil fuel use globally so much now that we have literally warmed the planet by about 1.1 degrees centigrade and if we get it to 1.5 degrees centigrade, we are in for catastrophic climate change and what we are talking about our changes we cannot reverse. gulfstream is slowing down, the great barrier reef is dying, right in georgia, the kinds of floods and storms and drought you are experiencing down in georgia are unprecedented. we are talking about the rapidity of concentrated change that has been forced by our use of coal, gas, and oil. that is what needs to change. host: do you agree? guest: records are like this, it has been hotter on this planet in the past, it has been colder in the past.

concentrations of co2 have been higher and they have been lower. the planet goes on. host: we will go to bob in ohio. good morning. caller: hello? host: yes, question or comment for our guest. caller: did donald trump succeed in putting gorsuch mother back on the supreme court? she was in the epa during the 1980's and tried to bust out the supreme court then and i think donald trump got to put her back on the supreme court by -- host: we will go to sean in california, good morning. caller: good morning. my question, during the obama administration, we spent $880 billion on green energy. just about every one the green energy companies, we wanted to them to go bankrupt. what have we changed to make it more efficient for our uses, the

companies -- so the companies will go bankrupt, and what have we done different since the obama administration? how come we have knocked on together and had people on both side that brought fossil fuels and bringing energy together and working better instead of doing the atrocity of what biden has done by stopping what we call alaska drilling, offshore drilling, mexico onshore drilling, getting rid of federal, getting rid of the situation. host: michael mckenna, you have a pen that works now but i will have you both respond. go ahead. guest: i'm not sure what i'm responding to solo me try real quick. the last point is the most important. sometimes we talk past each other in these conversations and we need to talk to each other and need to come across a regular baseline of facts. i would say the color is right

that team obama spent 900 billion dollars or some number close to that in terms of green energy. i will say the caller is not right, most companies they invested in did not go bankrupt. some did and most did not. it is important to have the fact baseline. guest: the $880 billion was an economic plan to bring the country out of the ruin the george w. bush administration left us in. it was $90 billion in debt that went to support clean energy and here is the result, more than thrilled me -- more than 3 million americans will suit up today and go to work helping to make our homes and workplaces more efficient, helping to make more power and build the clean grid we are talking about and build the best electric cars anywhere in the world. that is what happened to that. to your other point, the oil and gas industry has access to

public lands and federal ocean waters, enough to cover the state of iowa. there is no shortage out there of that. the industry is sitting on 9000 drilling permits it could use today. the biden administration approved 3500 drilling permits just for federal lands and just his first year in office which was 25% more than his predecessor. just wanted to make sure we are clear on that. host: we will go to silver spring maryland, michael, good morning. caller: good morning. i grew up during the 1970's and china had -- still has, over one billion people. back then, it was rickshaws, the mode of transportation. now the advancement of china plus the advancement of another billion population, india, which is now driving on 12 lane

freeways all across. there is 2 billion people who were moved into the mechanized combustible engine, power plants, all kinds of stuff and we destroyed the lungs of the planet down in the amazon and hear god provided the two greatest sources of energy, wind and sun, which are the cleanest. they are inevitable. to hear that it happened before and one million years ago -- that is a crock that humanity isn't a part of this issue of putting on this carbon in and

the advancement of our solar. that is providing jobs, could provide jobs in appalachia. it is incredible to hear the conflict on this issue. host: michael, i will jump in. let's take what he said at the beginning. india and china and the role they play, we could do everything we want to do by 2030 but that -- but if they are not participating, what happens? guest: this is a global problem and we need global solutions. i was in china in 1980 when people were writing on bicycles and such. what china has done is move more people from abject poverty into the global middle class. hundreds of millions in a single generation. no country in the history of the world has done that. it takes a lot of energy. china burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. that is a problem and we know it is a problem. china acknowledges it is a problem. china is also spending more than

the rest of the world combined unclean energy. china has become the global leader in wind and solar power. fast trains, electric trains, electric cars, china is leading the world with electric vehicles. it is a mixed bag but when you got that many people and the global economy depends on china as much as it does, mistakes -- the stakes are high. india is in a similar situation but it is a much smarter -- smaller part of the problem that china is because of the stage of india's development. guest: china admits about 15 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year. the united states admits about 7 billion and europe admits about 7 billion and they show no sign of slowing down unlike the americans and europeans. the curve has flattened out. the communist chinese curve has gone straight up. it is a big problem.

if you interpret climate change as a serious catastrophic problem, trying to deal with it without involving the chinese is not possible. host: dave in michigan, good morning. caller: good morning. good morning, bob and michael. there's something summit he told me years ago something about the laws were written to be broken. i noticed the moral of what the policies and so forth written, when they start breaking it down into word by word, it seems it is all controversial so it gets mixed up. that is my first point. my second point is i used to be a mechanic, and years ago, all i see is our competition, if we could take a racecar -- rolling chassis like racecars do and muck it up, we would be

satisfied with all the safety and cabin and my body on my vehicle. if we take the body off in the car companies could take it off and put a rolling electric chassis under it, we are good to go. i do not want to buy and pay for the extra chassis on a whole new vehicle. i'm still driving an old vehicle , getting a new vehicle with a rolling chassis. i would hear what you got to say. thank you. host: michael mckenna. guest: the tricky thing about electric vehicles, they are not internal conduct -- internal combustion vehicles. the big difference is the power plant. the battery is big and needs to be spread out because it is heavy. it is a little more complicated than just changing out the engine in a chassis situation. thing to see your point about every word being contested. this country has on a godly number -- an ungodly number of lawyers and that is what they

do, it will be that. guest: two things, first it is great to hear somebody from michigan talking about electric cars. electric cars are employing roughly a third of the employees between the industry of the batteries and electric cars. we know the industry worldwide is investing half $1 trillion in the coming decade to build electric cars. that is the future so glad to hear that out of michigan. one of the parts of magic is this, the internal combustion engine has 120 to 130 moving parts. that produces a lot of heat and a lot of inefficiency. an electric motor has two moving parts, bearings on each end of the shaft. an electric car, maybe 16 moving parts. this needs -- means lower maintenance, lower-cost cost, lower efficiency. i close with this. the whole purpose of the laws in this country is simply to enshrine the values and interest and aspirations we share as a people. that is what the rule of law is

about. that is exactly what the epa is doing, interpreting those laws, implementing those laws on the ground in a way to protect the environment of public health. guest: and the supreme court is doing his job to interpret those laws and not allow epa to overstep. if you believe in the constitution, if you took an oath to uphold it like i have four times, it is what it is. host: let's go to ohio, bob, good morning. caller: good morning. just one question. i believe in going into efficient, green vehicles. i do not want to totally get rid of the combustion engine but i don't hear a lot of talk about developing monorail systems between cities in ohio and between the suburbs and electric rail systems. would you comment on that?

guest: the biden administration is working to advance that. resident biden is a big fan of rail travel and there are billions of dollars in the bipartisan infrastructure package that is moving forward to try to improve that but it is any issue in this country. let's go back to china. china has a fast rail system that connects most of its major cities now, built in something like a decade. you can get on a train in beijing and have breakfast on the train and have lunch in chang high. that is the distance between washington and chicago. imagine how that would change life in this country if we could do that here. host: michael mckenna. guest: i think it was $40 billion for amtrak, $60 billion. a lot of money for amtrak. the bottom line is it is tough to build railing in the united states if people don't take the railroads. even in california that is trying to build something in san

francisco, it is $10 billion, just a failure, a disaster. tough to build things and tough to get folks to ride it. host: jim is in missouri. welcome to the conversation. caller: good morning. i sit -- i oppose the supreme court's decision. one of the speakers mentioned lawyers interpretation of semantics. i would be more impressed by a supreme court that was concerned about right and wrong and what is good and what will help the people. rather than partisan bickering over one word or another. one thing that sticks out in my mind, tornado season. a used to be in kansas around august, june, july. now tornadoes have been 12 months a year, not just in

kansas but southeast coast, northeast. whoever heard in pennsylvania tornadoes in december? electric cars are a thing of the future. unfortunately, our technology is lagging behind our need for the next breakthrough. host: i will pick up on what jim said for electric cars and go to bob dean's about that and what the previous color is saying, living in middle america saying we cannot afford an electric car. guest: affordability is any issue. i will say the chevy volt, a great car, 250 miles on a single charge, motor trend loves that car. the $2000 base price. not many people can afford that. that is why the senate passes

this package which includes money that will really help make the cars affordable for middle income and low income americans. there is not much going to wealthy folks, it is middle income and low income americans. we are in the embryonic stage if you will. we're just getting started but we are going to have to have more than 100 miles of electric cars to choose from in this country at 2025. the industry is moving forward at rapid pace on this. i do not know if you have seen the new chevy electric blazer that will be unveiled in a couple weeks, that is a gorgeous car. take a look at it and see what you think but we are making a norma -- making in norma's progress. we can do that speeding up this package. guest: kelly blue book, the industry gold standard on this, identifies $64,000 as the average price of a transaction involving electric vehicle. whatever the senate does, even

if they give people $7,500 per vehicle, it will not change the numbers on that much. folks need to make the decision on the economics and they will. guest: there is a theme here which is it is hard if there's a problem if there's impediment we cannot do it. we do tough things in this country every day and have done tough things for generations. we can fix this. solutions are at hand. host: cumberland, maryland, william, good morning. caller: yes, good morning. i have more of a question or solution than anything. my mother is 94 years old and lives in a middle income home. the oil companies have informed her that this year will be $2500. that is january through february in this area.

she is looking at approximately $4500 to keep her home and 94 years old. what is a senior citizen supposed to do? host: michael mckenna. guest: first off, that is tough, i'm sorry. that is the real problem here. gasoline prices and the prices of heat and oil, does not matter people with cash and money, matters to folks up against it. there is no good answer. the united states could be the swing producer, we could be producing more, but no one will do it as long as the administration is hostile. that is the terrible truth of it. no one is going to increase refining capacity as long as the administration is hostile. and that is the bottom line as well. i don't know what to tell you. host: go ahead. i thought you were done. guest: the only thing i want to

point out is fundamentals have not changed. the presidency is the thing that has changed, the fundamentals of the market place have not changed. guest: there is a solution. this 92-year-old woman is paying the price for our failure as a country to break our dependence on oil which holds our families and businesses hostage to global price spikes we cannot control or predict. right now, while this industry is making $100 billion every quarter, it is exporting 9 million barrels a day of crude oil and refined products, shipping it out of this country. that is three times as much as we were exporting a decade ago. it's enough to cover half of our needs. this is not about energy security. the oil is exported because that is how oil companies make money. if this were about energy security, that fuel would be loaded on the truck and headed your local gas station and prices would be falling like a rock and you would not have to

skip a boat payment to skip a tank. that is not what this is about. as long as this is about profits, oil companies cannot make $100 billion selling cheap gas. the way you make that money is when prices are sky high. folks should think about that. host: what is the challenges for people who live in these colder states like maine and are using heating oil every winter? what are the challenges to switching how they heat their homes and what are their options? guest: the challenges are immense. i had a heat pump installed in my house and i know it is expensive. i had to tap into savings for it. not everybody has that access. there are government programs that we have that can help low income families weatherize their homes, make them more efficient. there are utility programs that can help people pay the costs of more efficient heating equipment but the problem is as mike said is supply and demand. until we get the demand down, these prices will stay up and as long as we are dependent on oil,

we will be whipsawed by these global prices and supply shocks. what we need to do is reduce demand. we have been talking about electric cars. 10% of the sales are now. one out of every five cars on the road will be electric five years from now. when you cut gasoline demand 20%, you will see prices come down. for heating, oil, and gasoline. host: craig in california. caller: good morning. i have a question for both of you and i know we have been working on it, the world has, for 30 plus years. wouldn't it be great if a community like california or a county in illinois would have their own fusion reactor which could provide all of the power you need. how far away are we truly from that? i think that will solve all of our problems. i will hang up and listen to you guys. host: michael mckenna, are you aware? guest: very much so.

i worked at the department of energy 35 years ago now. we were working on fusion and it was just around the corner, and 35 years later, we are still working on fusion and it is right around the corner. it has potential but very difficult to figure out how to make it work. guest: what the department of energy told us is we can get 80% clean electricity in this country with technologies here right now. that means wind and solar, efficiency, a better grade. that is what we need to be doing, that is where we need to focus. the promise and potential of some of these technologies that have been somehow over the horizon for the past 40 years, we are all for it, but now we have the solutions. that is where we need to invest. host: clark in new jersey. we go to you. caller: hi. not only us but the whole world is geared for liquid fuel.

not any other kind but liquid fuel. so the common sense solution to this would be a flex fuel vehicle. that would solve everybody's -- that's a -- that should solve everybody's problem. i do not know why it does not. donald trump was the only when i heard trying to go towards ethanol. that is the solution. i see these guys going on the parkway where i live, the guys with the electric cars are being charged. all these other guys are gassing up and leaving. there are other problems with these electric vehicles. host: michael mckenna, talk about the ethanol industry, history of it, and he is saying this is a promising -- guest: core best ethanol was

created in 2003 and again in 2007. mandated as certain amounts of ethanol are blended into the gasoline supply. it is suboptimal for energy, sub optimal for environmental regions, sub optimal for farming and land regions. and a significant chunk of the environmental community thinks so as well. ethanol is not a good idea. i think what clark might have been talking about was hybrid vehicles, where they run on gas and electric. there are plenty of those in the marketplace, 20 odd models or something like that. so it is not an unknown thing. host: bob deans? guest: mike is right. in this country, people don't realize 40% of our corn is going to produce ethanol. there is a global food shortage as a consequence of russia's invasion of ukraine. there are more than 40 million people that have been pushed to the brink of starvation

worldwide on shortages of wheat, corn, fertilizer, sunflower oil. we do not think this is the time to turn food into fuel. host: david in illinois. caller: hi. this is a great conversation, one of the best i've heard on the subject so i appreciate it. my question is for both of you guys, what is your feeling on the capacity of refining oil into gas? have we reached a limit on the capacity of that? it takes a long time to build a refinery. they are not simple machines. you. >> they are among the most complicated machines devised by the mind of man. that said, the only limit to expanding refineries is money, time, and a belief you are going to get the money back at some point that you will make your money back at some point. we are about one million barrels

a day under our peak. there is erosion. these plants age and we have not built a new one years. the administration itself realizes this problem and have been playing footsie with the idea of trying to figure out a way to support and build expansions or new refineries. looking forward to that conversation. guest: as a general theme, we do not need to be locking our future generations into decades of reliance on fuels cooking the planet. we need to be phasing out our use of fossil fuels and the last thing we need to do is double down and make infrastructure decisions that we will have to live with for 40 years. that is our view on that. host: what are you watching for next. michael, i will go to you first. what are you watching for after the supreme court decision by the advise -- by the biden administration?

guest: the securities and exchange commission has something they are calling a climate disclosure rule that they have a draft out for comments. i imagine that will get real back in and reworked. i am looking for that next. and i'm looking for the administration to get serious or stop talking about expanding refinery capacity in the united states. host: why do you bring that up? guest: because they have talked about it previously and in the last couple weeks they have been more openly talking about it with folks in the business. host: what does that mean for them? what other folks in the business saying? guest: that it's complicated and we are sure the administration and the industry is not sure the administration is serious. with some justification. host: could those industry folks get the investors they need to back them up? >> investments are flat in the oil and gas industry for six to seven years now and that will not change. not until there is some change

in the united states akin to a change we have seen in europe on the front of the revolution. europeans are keeping their plants open, keeping their coal plants open, stashing their gas, natural gas and storage. the europeans are starting to come back to the centerline and eventually america will too. guest: investors are looking to the future. what they are seeing is $30 trillion in clean energy investment over the coming decade. this is the economic play of our lifetime. that is why investors are looking to the clean renewable sources of energy and away from dirty fossil fuels of the past. to that point, michael mentioned the securities and exchange commission talking about the climate risk disclosure rules. it's a funny thing about investors, they want to know where their money is going. they particularly want to know where it is going at risk. they have a right to understand when companies are facing risk from drought, storms, withering heat, blistering -- heat waves

that are lethal. they have a right to know that. we hope the securities and exchange commission will stand strong and require the kind of climate risk disclosure rules that promote the lifeblood of free markets which is the free flow of information. host: what do you think about the work john kerry is doing? can you tell us quickly because the house is about to come in for a pro forma session? guest: john kerry has been leading our global diplomacy around climate. it's important the united states be a leader. we have seen in so many areas where the united states does not lead the rest of the world does not move as it should. so we have climate talks coming up november in egypt, the united states needs to be in a position to lead to. the best way to do that is for joe biden to go there and say we have this reconciliation package passed through the senate and we are not stuck with coal,host: tg

together and taking questions from our viewers and having the conversation with the. thanks so much. the house is gaveling it for a pro forma session. they are not in washington this week. we will take you to the floor. live coverage on c-span. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., july 1, 2022. i hereby appoint the honorable rosa l. delauro to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of