executive director mark krikorian will talk about trump's deportation practices and immigration policy. gregory korte will talk about elon musk's actions with the government of efficiency and julie johnson, democratic freshman class president will talk about her legislative priorities and the democrats' approach to the trump administration and republican congress. c-span's "washington journal" join in the conversation live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning on c-span, c-span now or online at c-span.org. ♪ >> in his latest book entitled "wasteland" author robert kaplan focuses on the importance of technology in determining the world's future. kaplan, author of 24 books holds a chair in geopolitics at the foreign policy institute. in the chapter 3 in his 177-page

book, kaplan claims, quote, civilization is now in flux. the ongoing decay of the west is manifested not only in racial tensions coupled with new barriers of free speech but in the deterioration of dress codes, the erosion of grammar, the decline in sales of serious books, and classical music and so on, all of which has traditionally been signs of civilization. >> author robert kaplan talks about his book "wasteland, a world in permanent crisis" on book notes plus available on on the c-span free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. host: casey joins us now, author of the new book "we hold these truths." the subtitle, "how to spot the myths holding america back." what are some of the truths you believe are myths or even outright lies?

what are mixed or even outright lies? guest: where do we begin? i appreciate the emphasis on the close. there are a lot of myths we fall for on accident, and sometimes they are put on is on purpose by politicians, the lobbyists, they all matter. so the myths are premeeting our systems from the courts, campaign finance, what members of congress dukem of the filibuster term limits come as a wide list. where do you want to start? we will jump in. host: give us an example of one of the myths. guest: term limits, to kick out members of congress after a certain period of time, just will empower the wrong people, right? if you are frustrated that the president is to power, lobbyists are to power, term limits will exacerbate that power dynamic and polarization all at the same time, so stop wanting it. host: another myth you talk

about in this book that members of congress don't do anything. guest: it's true. i often hear from people back home, members of congress are always on recess, and this picture on the playground playing to freeze tag. but that is not it. when members of congress go back home, they are often working more hours than they do in d.c., and when they are in d.c., their blocks of scheduling are 15 minutes at a time. they are constantly raising from hearings, subcommittee meetings, back to meet with constituents. this is a really demanding job, so to undermine it by saying they are not doing anything just because they are not doing what you want them to do is a really an effective way to think about congress. it matters because it makes us distrust kit and think it is not working the way it should. there are reasons that is not working come it is not that one. host: how about this one, "bipartisanship is dead," something we hear from callers. guest: i hear this from my drunk uncle, too.

we need to work together. there are commonsense solutions, and they choose not to work together. that is sometimes true, but if you get a lot, like we are about ready to have another government shutdown fights here, and republicans are going to need democratic support. if you get a lot, you are going to need bipartisan support, right? even with unified government, with republicans in the house, the senate, and donald trump in the white house, often these big bills that have meaningful differences in people's lives, they're going to be democratic support to get it done. when you look at the data, the bills that become laws on the ones that you have that bipartisan support. which means when members of congress are trying to go it alone, when they are trying to only go with her own party, they are not going to get the lock. they want the issue, they want to fight, and we should be able to spot the difference. host: there are another dozen or so myths that casey burgat talks about in his book, "we hold these 'truths'." why did you feel like you needed

to write this book now? guest: to be honest with you, it needed to be written a long time ago. we turn on the news, and all of a sudden the things we took for granted for so long, like congress appropriate the money, congress has the power of the purse, any news channel you flip on is talking about donald trump taking over. the power of the purse there's a whole lack of civic education in this country were almost one quarter of our citizens could not name the three branches of government. that's bad! that a good. all of that is bad for institutions come as bad for trust in government, and we need to increase trust more than we do have these partisan fights. host: who did you work with to write this book? guest: almost everybody. the fun part was going to find practitioners. we can write this book on our own, i could write a book on my own, but i did not want to do that. i wanted to get people who live these jobs, including former members of congress, academics,

president trump's former white house communications director, to not only point out the bipartisanship of these m yths, but also that people tell their stories, and some of them are saying yeah my take advantage of this, people not knowing the truth of this. campaign finance is one of those examples. i went and got an all-star team of former representatives, the smartest and, most accessible academics out there, and then some really good practitioners that live and work these jobs each day. host: who is steve braddock, and why do people believe it is a myth that the supreme court has become politicized? guest: steve braddock is one of the main voices on supreme court decisions. he has an incredibly popular book called "the shadow docket." if you have not read it, go check it out. he explains the power of the supreme court. breaking down the idea that the supreme court has ever not been politicized. as the nominees are put forth by

political actors, and then they decided political questions. if you are frustrated about the supreme court come and you should be. there's a lot of reasons to be frustrated about how it works, how it conducts its business, how nontransparent it is, then the only branch of government that can actually change it, whether it is the number of open supreme court hearings, the number of justices on the supreme court, is congress. so you will need political actors to get into the politics -- involved in the politics of the supreme court. even if you like to think of it as a neutral arbiter, it never has been. host: who is matt fuller, and why does he think the myth that the media wants to polarize us? guest: matt fuller is the washington editor for not notice, where he is the long-time capitol hill beat reporter. he has an interesting connection with a lot of tea party members. members of congress look from that and had a good, honest

conversation. his chapter is about the myth of media polarization. the media is an easy scapegoat. you cannot have the presidential campaign: the media the enemy of the people. that good. that is reminiscent of the nixon days, to foster distrust of those who are meant to give you the news. we kind of get what we want, right? this is the netflix generation. you don't just get in your feed random bits of news organizations. we select it, and algorithm to make it more and more doubt into exactly what we want it so the myth that one, the media, is this all-encompassing being that goes from "the new york times" to some teenager with a phone in his basement, that ain't the media. there are different standards about what they are able to report on, the levels of fact checking i going to come up media source are subject to libel laws, where a lot of things in social media are not subject to get and the want to

polarize us. the people i don't media want to tell you the truth, they want to tell you the story. they don't want to tell you only good news. that is a misconception, but they want to tell you what is happening behind the scenes come and i am glad that they are there as a watchdog of american government. host: funny you say the words "dialed in." let me give you the phone numbers come as usual split by political party, republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. casey burgat with us until the top of the hour, taking your phone calls this morning. for viewers who don't know your background, though you've been on c-span plenty of times, how have you been around this institution? how long and where have you worked? guest: i love c-span. you guys are my favorite nerds out there. before, i was in the government with a focus on government. while it was finishing that up, i worked at the congressional research service, which is

congress' private, nonpartisan think tank. and there i focused on congressional reform, with a focus on the first branch of government. i worked at some think tanks around town doing the same thing but in a more public way, now a lead the masters program in public affairs at george washington university, because i love the teaching side, too. i love the home at gw, and i can think, write, and political processes top of the list. host: an time to write a book. "we hold these "truths": "how to the myths that are holding america back." a quote from that book -- "t tough to swallow truth about our politics is that there are no quick fixes to our bigroblems. and we have big problems. many. but ther is no savior candidate one is a perfect wedding ourng dysfunction. the sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can have honest

conversations about what to do about it. and the sooner we come of the people, can return from our cliff edge of futility and engage in solutions." there are things we could do, lots of them. what are some things we can do? guest: dang, that sounds good, john, did i write that? there's a lot we can do. we need to stop falling for this "i alone can fix it mentality," right? we see this playing out in the trump administration, where we just think if we get one more law, if we get our candidate elected into office, if we remove campaign perversions, then all of a sudden, all of these things that are, at our core, pretty broken, it's not true. and to keep falling for that is perpetuating this cycle we keep finding ourselves in. reading to the cynicism that makes people step out rather than step income and we need more people to step in. so a lot of those solutions come as much as i want to say all you have to do is 1, 2, 3, anyone

who is telling you want to three, alarm balls should be going off in your head. maybe they are trying to take advantage of simplistic solutions that simply will not solve all of our problems. check in with who you're media sources are. if you are talking politics with your friends, which you should probably do more often, talk to someone who does not think like you. and try to figure out why they think like that then thinking that they are dumb or misguided. say where you got your information, because even if you have to say it out loud, you will check yourself in a way where you are not just saying, hey, i saw on read a," or "i saw on joe rogan," i saw a report from cdc or where you are equating one or the other. they are not the same thing. the other thing, you need to get involved. getting involved can take a lot

of different forms, right? start a book club, start a conversation, go to a city council meeting. stop paying attention to national politics, where ironically you have the least amount of impacts, and pay attention to local politics, where they would love for you to show up. they are begging for people to be interested in it. if you want politics to be happy and entertaining, like wrestling, go to a city council meeting. those things are wild i really recommend it. host: we would like to chat with some callers. this is barbara on our line for democrats. you are out first with casey burgat. caller: hi. ok, i'm listening to what you are saying, and here are a couple of thoughts. first of all, we do not teach social studies anymore in a lot of these schools. and people don't know where to search for trusted information. then they don't trust, you know, documented information from government sources.

we have 21% or one out of five people in the country that are actually illiterate. they cannot read. and then you have the project 2025 that wants to eliminate the department of education and replace it with people that don't even have a teaching degree. and there's one more thought. i remember, and people can google this, trump said to a group of his rally people that he "loves the poorly educated." this is what we are dealing with. thanks for listening. host: that is barbara in pennsylvania. casey burgat? guest: barbara, thank you. you are right on. we do teach social studies, but

what we don't teach is civics. it's one thing to know the organization of congress and the house vs. the senate. it's another thing to know the date of when the declaration of independence was signed. but it is a very different thing to be an active participant in our democracy, right? to show up, to read a ballot, to understand the power structures between who has decisions over what authority right now. that is a civics lesson, and we need to reinstitute civics in the classroom. i'd like to think of this book as that entry point into our civics education, knowing that it is not in our classrooms anymore. so i'm right with you, barbara, that we need to reorient ourselves, to teach folks before they become voters how to become a voter. it is really backward to think that we just send 18-year-olds out in the world without the training to be an active participant in our democracy. so i'm right there with you. host: do we need to just get back to the founders and their infinite wisdom? guest: that's a good transition.

that chapter one in the book, where it takes down the myth that the founders had everything decided for us back in 1787, right? that we don't need to update our government, because they had it all right and i all we have to do is follow their instincts, follow their lessons. this is one thing in politics where two things can be true at the same time. they were geniuses, and we can still improve their work product, right? the iron are here -- the irony here is they were under no illusions that they had every answer for their time, let alone in 250 years when we have bitcoin, google, and amazon, things they cannot even comprehend. they let us build a way to update things through the amendment structure and congress, to make sure we have a functioning democracy in the time in which we lift them and we need to take advantage of that more often than we have. host: the caller barbara mentioned people don't know where to go for trusted information. you work at the congressional research service, were members

of congress have a question of an issue, they turned to you. where did you go for trusted information? what advice would you give to people barbara is worried about? guest: yeah. government data is very trustworthy, and start looking at the sources where people cite, right? on the media side, i know they are getting trashed all about town, but when the legacy media report a story, we should be educated about how many levels of fact checking go into getting a story reported out. this ain't a blog, right? these are people's careers, where if they report misinformation, especially if they do it on purpose for some sort of partisan slant, their career is ruined. that is a very different calculation than throwing something up on wikipedia or a blog where your opinion is in termers to with fact. those new sources where it is legacy media -- do not confuse

cable news with news. they have argued in court with fox news that we are an entertainment company. knowing that as you select the news channels put some onus back on us the consumer. in a profit driven model they will not give us what we do not want. we like the salacious, we like the dramatic, we like the partisan fights. we tell our friends we don't but our consumption habits are telling a different story. host: texas, this is andrea, independent. guest: running. -- caller: good morning. i want to say thank you god for coming on this channel. this is my second time calling in the first time i talked to john about how american people are so ignorant with voting and they do not know the basics which you had cited which is the

three branches of government. i appreciate you reiterating that. i have a lot of stuff but i do not want john to cut me off. host: i won't cut you off. caller: my question came out but i want to ask you anyway because i want you to reiterated. you said at least three times. i want to ask you, can you share with us how we can become actively involved in this political democracy -- this republic democracy we have and also how people can help themselves to discern between whether they are falling into a tribal group versus an educated citizen. guest: i appreciate the kind words. i will take the second part first because it is a chapter within the book.

where we like to claim political independence, i vote the issue and not the party and whatever candidate speaks to my issues i am willing to jump from d to r as long as i'm finding the right person. the data do not support that. even when we claim political independence we are much more likely to reverse engineer our vote to support the conclusions we came to the ballot box with. we are able to explain pollutions -- we are able to explain conclusions from local parties we support when we are able to blame actors from the other party doing the same thing. we are not equal and we are not showing up with his pros and cons list. we are partisan beings and it is important to recognize that. then we can do what my best recommendation is for people struggling to get involved. the first is just pause. do not respond emotionally, do not respond out of defense and defending your position or your candidate or your party but try

to hear people. when you ask questions -- what you end sentences with a? rather than exclamation points, different conversation start happening. you would be surprised with people who you fundamentally disagree with, he start curing them and why they came to those conclusions that is a must different conversation. if we can make that snowball where my conversation with her and him turns into one of my having with 20 people, mention how many people we can reach instead of yelling at. that is a different model to follow it it starts with something as simple as pausing. host: what is your opinion of the filibuster? guest: my personal? the filibuster is one of the biggest misconceptions where we picture the jimmy stewart mr. smith goes to washington where there is this principle of lawmaker standing on the senate floor and making this emotional appeal to stop a piece of legislation from happening. that is what people think is

happening when things are filibustered. that is not what happens in 2025. the filibuster has taken a different tone and method. it is used to block legislation from ever receiving a vote. right now the filibuster in the senate is assumed. you do not even see someone going to the floor to make that speech on the floor of reading charles dickens or a chicken noodle soup recipe. they do not have to go to the floor at all. it is assumed. last time we had a talking filibuster was ted cruz a decade ago. the filibuster come if you think it forces politicians to get of the table to get over that supermajority threshold of 60 votes, it does not happen. right is used as a cultural to keep things off the floor so we never have to take these tough votes. voting exposes people and puts people where they stand it makes people and voters know what does my politician thank?

when you don't vote you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and politicians love that because they can take advantage of being able to tell this audience this thing in this audience this thing there's no vote with their name attached to back it up. guest: -- host: down to port charlotte, florida. caller: i have one quick question. is it a myth or a truth that members of congress and the senate partake in insider trading? thank you very much. guest: insider trading. i don't know. i don't have any firsthand account of members of congress engaging insider trading. when you talk to everyday americans and ask should members of congress be able to trade stocks on industries they oversee, that just creates the appearance of a conflict of interest that members of congress should be wise to respond to.

do i have personal instances of members of congress trading and profiting on the information they have before the public does? no. i think the appearance of that conflict gives reason for people to distrust an institution at a time we need to raise the trust levels as high as we can get. that stock act that they have been debating for a couple congresses, they would be wise to bring it up and respond to people's immediate distrust of a system. host: who is steve israel and why is he writing the chapter on the myth of politicians being bought and paid for? guest: the campaign finance one. this is one people want to talk about when we get out the trump new cycle 12 years from now. steve israel is a longtime member of congress from new york and he led the democratic campaign committee. his job was to recruit candidates and fund raise for those candidates to run for congressional seats.

he was literally the one in the room telling people to dial for dollars and you have to meet your quotas and this is the amount of money it will take for you to win your seat and come back after you've won the first election. he is the perfect person to write about what the incentives are to raise a lot of money in politics but also where the influence is. we think you are buying your seat to get in or people are showing up with these brown paper bags like in the lbj memoir and buying votes. that is not where the money influence is. it is this mutually assured destruction between r's and d's that we have to raise more than you. it is not necessarily buying votes. they are not changing their voting behavior but raising a bunch of money because the other side will do it too these campaigns are expensive. host: about 20 minutes left with casey burgat, george washington

university professor and author of the book "we hold these truths: how to spot the myths holding america back." this is bernie, good morning. caller: i have two premises i want to object to the rhetoric casey is spilling out today. what is he is omitting there is a thing called censorship. people could not say it with a really want to say anywhere because they get caught off and on top of that there is an old adage that the fish rots from the head down. he is telling you to go to your city council -- that is a myth. the other thing he is omitting all of these channels and newspapers decided, 90% of them

are owned by one tribe of people who have a monopoly -- who have a monopoly on what we hear and see on tv. host: casey burgat? guest: the censorship question. i like that we could call in and voice our opinions while claiming we are being censored at the same time. the point we make is we get what we want. we should not equate blogs and sub stacks with news organizations who have to be subject to libel laws for reporting information. i get the frustration with the media. we are told -- speaking of rotting from the top down -- we are told by politicians not to trust the news sources unless they agree with us then they start recommending those with clear partisan slants because -- with clear favorable reporting. there are myths of what it takes to be a member of the media and what laws and requirements they

are in terms of reporting the stories. that is something the media needs to get their message out better so people trust this and we cannot keep calling for this trust them but not that person type of media reporting. host: cleveland, ohio, this is laura, line for democrats. good morning. you are on, go ahead. caller: i have a couple of questions. one is about the january 6 people that were let out of jail. or any of them charged with treason against the federal government? host: do you address january 6 in your book? guest: i do not take on january 6 at all. personally i live about a par 5 away from the capital and this

affected us and this community. i know members of congress and staffers and the police officers who were there. this is a personal thing for a lot of folks who lived through that event. i know it can be in abstraction, something that will go down in the history books, it was not that way for us that day. host: this was rich in wisconsin, independent. good morning. caller: a couple questions. when barack obama use the intel community to spy on hillary's opposition after they had found she had this private server and then everyone in his cabinet was communicating with her over that server, which means he had knowledge of it, wanted that make him complicit if someone was getting that information and then for them to go after trump for asking questions about the

money laundering through zelinski in ukraine after they started the coup in 2014 and then they impeached him for it and then joe biden parted everybody who set him up for the phone call that they impeached him for and then then when it cannot get him that route they took him to court in favorable jurisdictions with people that came out of the justice department? host: a lot of topics there. guest: i will avoid almost all of them because the point of this book is not to be they did this so we can do this or what aboutism. you will never win those debates and they should not be debates. the purpose of this book is to talk about what we think is wrong and what is actually wrong. any collar and i can agree there a lot of things we should do on policy fronts from education to health care to immigration to

climate change. there are things we must do in 2025 but we cannot get there because we are distracted and having the wrong conversations over and over again. host: what about the pardon power? is that a conversation we should be having? guest: sure. the constitution does give the president the pardon power, so to change it would take a constitutional amendment. there is a route to do that and it should be kept in mind the pardon power was given to a president at a time there was not all these layers of court cases that you can appeal. this was a break glass in case of emergency type power that obviously presidents have extended and extended and extended. now we are having conversations that the founders never had in their brains as a potential. if we want to change it and we are worried about it, there are routes to ameliorate those concerns with a constitutional amendment. host: this is willy in arkansas,

democrat. you are next. caller: my question is all the stuff he says we have learned through the books and social studies and stuff, now we learned all of that back in the day. now they have -- they have somebody doing something different lately to what we learned. the same stuff we learned back in the day it does not associate with us today. host: a question about education again. guest: it is that same point that civics is different than history and civics is different than government. one is an active participation requirement or knowledge and one is knowing the theory behind it. theory and practice are very different thing and to expect

people to know the theory and go out and be a good player, it does not work like that. we should get people involved, and the younger the better. how to read a ballot. we in the united states have an incredible number of elections which means we are constantly facing this high-stakes emotion of showing up and deciding to get out, knowing what our city council does versus our mayor versus our state legislature. there is a lot to learn and to pretend it is simple or the minute you turn 18 you're ready to go do that and decide things for not only now but decades from now and generations from now is not a helpful way of conducting a government that requires the participation and the knowledge of its citizens. if we want to have a government that requires the knowledge of its citizens then let's educate our citizens and what it takes to have such a government. that takes a lot of practice and we should be purposeful about that instead of pretending the minute you turn 18 you're ready to go make decisions about

everyone's future. host: houston, roberto, independent, good morning. caller: perfect timing. i am a retired history government teacher, civics teacher, and what you are missing and all of your guests miss this point, you have to practice democracy at your level. i was a counsel sponsor in high school. that is very important. i was in student council when i was second grade and i was elected recording secretary. i vote every time. you have to practice it come he just can't keep saying take civics class, listen to what is being said, three forms of government. all of that goes in one ear and out the other. you have to practice. the other thing is and i hope you keep this number, it is a number you can call to get the name and telephone number of

your representative and your assemblers. that is how you get involved. call these offices. my question to you -- i think trump is losing it. we have an amendment to the constitution. it was not used against biden. he only has four years. i do not think it will last. we the vice president to takeover within the four years. that is not been limited. how do we implement that? host: that is roberto in houston. the number he gave out as the number to the capitol switchboard which can get your member of congress and call their offices directly. to what he said. guest: amen to the first part of what he is saying. practice is key. it is not enough to learn civics, you have to do civics. that means literally showing up. one of the biggest barriers to entry is the fear of the unknown

or the fear i might make a mistake or think about this politician or this policy and therefore i will take a step back. it has to be the other way around and he is right. you need to show up early. you see it in practice before your ever being called on to be a decider. it is helpful to see it and mock it up in our classrooms and our participation at the most local level. completely agree with that. with the 25th amendment question , to have the cabinet kick out a sitting president of the united states and elevating the vice president, that is an available option. it is a pretty dangerous one. a slippery slope to catch left. the route is used where the route is available. if the cabinet thinks the president of the united states is unfit for the job they have the ability to do that, to elevate jd vance. there was conversation about that in biden's administration

and even trumps first term but right now we do not see that as a likely scenario. host: back to the chapters of your book, who is jane mcmanus and what did you ask jane mcmanus to write about? guest: this is the chapter that is not like the others. the myth is keep your politics out of my sports. the underlying assumption is people are frustrated when they turn on the tv and an athlete is making a political statement or making their stance heard. you remember colin cap reinecke kneeling at the national anthem. sports and politics have always been connected, not only because athletes are some of the most revered people in the united states who have a genuine platform and should be able to use it like we expected anyone else, but also sports conversations proceed political conversations. when we think about the black athletes raising their fists in the games against hitler's,

these conversations can foster a faster way to process a lot of the things we are struggling with culturally and given the amount of love and support we give our sports figures, going back to the days of roman emperors, sports and politics have always been intermingled. you do not have to shove it down your throats when you're watching the super bowl but should be recognized as a helpful platform that not only sports figures can use but we can use to bring ourselves together when it is often times hard to see each other outside of party labels. host: these myths that your book focuses on, did they all start around the same time, are these myths that have emerged in the past couple decades or have we been dealing with a lot of these myths the entirety of this experiment that is happening in the united states of america? guest: is a good question. it is individualistic to each of the myths. i will say the trajectory of them is getting worse and not better. we are falling for them more and

even using them as defenses of what we believe and who we support rather than checking our assumptions. as my therapist's wife will tell you, if you want to make genuine change you cannot start at the conclusion, you have to start at the beginning. what are you getting wrong about how you see the world and that he could have helpful conversations about what to do about it. a lot of these things have been weaponized by political parties and politicians who use the ignorance of voters because it puts them in office. you run against congress to win a seat in congress. you run against the administrative state to control the administrative state. it is a perverse incentive. to be able to point and say this is who to blame even if it is never that simple, that is a way to garner support for yourself and your position. blame lobbyists, blame campaign-finance, all of these things can be used to accumulate political power and ultimately

mold the government and policy in your image. it is a tough doom loop we need to escape from. host: is this your first book? guest: this is my first book people will read. i've written a book about congress for an academic setting. this is purposely for people, it is supposed to be accessible, it is supposed to use stories and people you have heard of to put them within the myths themselves to see where they are taking advantage of the american voter ignorance. i am hopeful this is seen as an entry point into understanding government where i know it is incredibly easy to step back from because there is so much information out there. this is an evergreen book. it is applicable right now but it will be applicable in two years come in four years. use it as a resource. you do not need to open it up on page one and crank through all of the myths. you can go chapter by chapter of what is of interest to you and what is dominating the news

headlines. they are all applicable. host: what is the most interesting myth we have gotten to -- the most interesting myth we have not gotten to get? guest: there a lot of misconception about lobbyists where everyone has this house of cards mentality where they are showing up on capitol hill bribing members of congress. what lobbyists do, their power does not come from money. it is actually information. members of congress and their staffers do not struggle with access to information. they struggle with the processing of information. to be able to decide and write legislation on a tuesday that has ukraine aid in it, whether we are shuttering usaid, tariffs , who knows all that stuff to the degree we expect members of congress? they are inundated with information and congress lacks the capacity to process that in a way that makes them effective at their jobs. if you don't know the answer to

something you do any of us to come you google it and then when that doesn't work you find someone who does know that information. who does? that is lobbyists. we think of them as influential because of their money and their information. we should have conversations about access problems with lobbyists because there are huge discrepancies between the haves and have-nots and lobbyists, you are not showing up in capitol hill -- most people are not showing up to lobby directly. meaning if you want someone to get in members of congress's ear about issues you care about you will need an intermediary. those are lobbyists. you love the lobbyist to advocate for things you believe in it is easy to hate the lobbyists advocating against things you don't stop it is a misunderstanding of how the system works. host: time for a couple more calls. this is james in new jersey. republican. caller: i had a quick question. i've been watching the senate

hearings over the last couple of weeks. it just occurred to me on the grandstanding and showboating, it is not just the democrats, it is the republicans -- this will never happen, but how about we not televise these hearings? the supreme court does not televise their hearings and we have done alright with that. guest: is a really good question and there has been this debate since the 1970's. post-watergate is when they flipped on the cameras to get around the distrust of government that was happening. sunrise is the best disinfectant? we've seen perverse disincentives with unrecognized consequences -- they will play to the cameras. they can reach millions of people by crating a viral moment which means there is an incentive to create a viral moment to raise your brand, to fund raise, to be known as this

type of lawmaker. there has been a growing debate of have we gone too far with our public transparency? your question gets down to the root of does the public have a right to know what is going on within these committee hearings, on the floor of the house should we have privatized votes? this gets to a long-standing debate about privacy, transparency, and is there such thing as too much transparency where you start incentivizing the wrong behaviors that it is pretty undeniable when you flip on a committee confirmation hearing to not see those really trying to be very public in their questioning to create a brand for themselves instead of trying to get at the root of the question in every good-faith faith back and forth with these nominees. host: you think there is such thing as too much transparency. this network has try to put cameras in the supreme court and we every day try to put cameras in as many hearings as possible.

we have meetings about which hearings we think we can cover with limited resources to show the public what is happening on capitol hill. guest: i am sympathetic to the transparency debate. at the end of the day i think if i would have to choose come and it is hard to have a middle ground solution, if i do choose between knowing what my members of congress are doing and voting on and saying versus not, i will choose knowing every single time. i think too much distrust can be weaponized when you close the cameras off, and to say nothing of we want our people to be involved in be involved mean seeing it in action, i would rather know that. to me if you are taking a different vote because the cameras are on versus off you do not deserve the job in the first place. if your name will be attached it, then stand up and put your name attached to it. host: time for one more phone call. maryland, democrat, good morning.

caller: good morning. i was wondering what your thoughts are on elon musk staff plugging into hard drives inside the office of personnel management, the treasury department, and the general services administration and it does not seem like anyone is reporting on this and i would like to get your opinion. guest: the elon musk and doge questions is the final boss of a lot of these myths playing out, fundamental misunderstanding of presidential power and who has the power of the purse, which is unquestionably congress. congress needs to step up and say i support you, even republicans in congress, i support you president, but this is not how it is supposed to work. congress needs to step up and make its place known as a constitutional separation of powers instrument. it was not supposed to work like this worry over private citizen who has not been appointed to anything official, doge is in

and in between place of a government agency and quasi-government agency but there's been no active congress to establish it or fund it. this is where you get two of the president just says it is so that right now in this nationalized political moment we just accept it, or at least his supporters to. that is not the way to supposed to work and members of congress need to recognize that and be vocal about that. host: the book is "we hold these truths: how to spot the myths holding america back." announcer: c-span's "washington journal," our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy, from washington, d.c. and across the country. coming up tuesday morning, center for immigration studies executive director will talk about the trump administration's

recent deportation actions and broader immigration policy. greg of bloomberg newswill talk about elon musk's role in recent actions with the department of government efficiency. and texas democratic congresswoman julie johnson will talk about her legislative priorities and democrat's approach to the trump administration and the republican congress. c-span's "washington journal." join in the conversation live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. announcer: if you ever miss any of c-span's coverage you can find anytime online at c-span.org. videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. these markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen if you hit play on select videos. this timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in

washington. scroll through and spend a few minutes on c-span's points of interest. ♪ >> in his latest book titled wasteland, author robert kaplan focuses on the importance of technology on determining the world's future. author of 24 books, he holds the chair in geopolitics of the foreign policy institute. in the chapter number three in his 177 page book, kaplan claims quote, civilization is now in flux. the ongoing to pay -- decay of the west is manifested not only in racial tensions coupled with new barriers to free speech, but in the deterioration of dress codes, the erosion of grammar, the decline in sales of serious books and classical music, and so on. all of which has traditionally been signs of civilization. announcer: author robert kaplan talks about his book wasteland,