It is great to be with somebody who gets the value of National Service. Thank you to all of you for taking the time to join this conversation at a time that could not be more crucial for this country. I get that running for president as a thirtysomething mayor is not a conventional political or professional move. The reason i am doing it is because of the moment we are living in. As we read the headlines, we may be under reacting to the seriousness of the moment we live in. That right now, the pace of change in our economy and politics is accelerating and if we dont get on top of that, we are not on top of the conditions that made the president we are living with now even possible. [applause] mr. Buttigieg a president like the one we have now does not get within cheating distance of the oval office unless something is wrong across the land. We have to speak to that if we want to win. In order to do that, i am convinced we need to ground our politics and our deepest values. I am out to break the spell that has had some americans believing the word values is a word that should only be associated with one political party. These are not conservative values. These are American Values and when you take them seriously, they have progressive implications. [applause] mr. Buttigieg this is why we are having a new conversation about freedom. We are talking about all of the things besides government that can make you unfree if we do not have the right leaders and policies. We are talking about how health care is part of a freedom. You are not free if you are afraid to go start a Small Business and live the American Dream because leaving your old job would mean losing your health care. [applause] mr. Buttigieg speaking of health, this is not a free country if women are denied basic reproductive freedoms by male politicians. [applause] mr. Buttigieg nor is this a free country fa county clerk gets to tell you who to marry based on their version of their religion. [applause] mr. Buttigieg freedom is not just about freedom from, it is about freedom to live the life of your choosing, building up the kind of life all of us will be able to prosper. Organized labor is important in securing the Economic Freedom of people in this country. [applause] mr. Buttigieg a big part of our freedom and life comes with the equipment we get through the process of education. We need a secretary of education who believes in public education. [cheers and applause] mr. Buttigieg this is what it means to take freedom seriously in the 21st century. In the 21st century, we will have a different conversation about national purity, one that looks beyond the things you can deal with by putting up a wall from coasttocoast. That is not going to help with some things we are up against now. A wall is not going to help you with cybersecurity threats or Election Security threats. It is not going to help us name and confront the violent White Nationalism that has claimed the lives in this country and around the world. [applause] mr. Buttigieg security requires a president who can make a decision and stick to it and do it for the right reasons. Who knows what is at stake when we send troops abroad. Having been one of those troops, knowing what it is like to write a letter to my family and put it where they can find it, just in case, on the outside of the envelope, because of a decision made in the oval office. I will never use american troops as props or enlist them to decorate my presidency. They are there for a reason and they ought to be respected. [applause] mr. Buttigieg the National Security starts at home. A president cannot keep us safe if that president has no plan to deal with gun safety in american communities. [applause] mr. Buttigieg it is why we need the question is, if americans agree, gun owners agree, even republicans agree we should have universal background checks and red flag laws that disarm domestic abusers, why isnt it getting done . That brings me to democracy. We want to believe we live in a democratic republic, but it is getting less democratic by the day. We have to act to reverse that. This is not a democracy if politicians can draw a district so they are choosing their voters instead of their voters choosing them. [applause] mr. Buttigieg nor is our democracy strong if dollars can outvote people because of the Supreme Court decision that says a corporation has the same political soul as a human being. It is not right. [applause] mr. Buttigieg in a democracy, everybody ought to be properly represented. That is why our fellow u. S. Citizens in puerto rico and the district of columbia deserve representation. I would argue that in a democracy, it would suit us well to choose our nations leader by counting up all the votes and giving it to the person who got the most. [cheers and applause] mr. Buttigieg we are going to have a new conversation about freedom, security, democracy, faith. We tread carefully when it comes to talking about faith because it is so important we represent people of any religion and people of no religion equally. I want americans of faith to know they have a choice. The choice could not be made more start when millions of people get up on sunday morning, go to church, and hear the ways we are supposed to extend friendship to strangers, another word for immigrant, then read about federal agents tearing families apart to satisfy the radical agenda of this president. [applause] mr. Buttigieg every moral tradition we have, religious and secular, tells us we have a responsibility to look after the most vulnerable, the marginalized, those who are ground down by systems of power around them. Right now, we have politicians who cloak themselves in the language of religion and set out to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. It is not right. We are going to remind people religion doesnt have to push you into the arms of the religious right. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i am proud of the plans we put forward. You will see more from us soon on how we deliver the kind of country i am talking about building, from the National Service plan that is about making sure that we do the work, because there is so much work that needs to be done, but also that we come together doing it. I bet a lot of people would want an intergenerational core that would serve seniors and people age well in this country. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i bet a lot of people would roger up to be part of a climate core, that would weatherize homes and make our country more sustainable. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i bet a lot of people would sign up for Community Health course that would help people dealing with addiction and Mental Health challenges and help them prosper and succeed. In doing that, not only would such good work done, but we get to know each other better. When i was in the military, i learned to trust my life to people who were radically different than me. We trusted each other with our lives. You should not have to go to war to have that experience of learning to trust your fellow americans. That is what civilian National Service can do. [applause] mr. Buttigieg we are going to fund the serve america act, endow communities to come up with their own service plans. By the time we celebrate our 250th, 2026, being able to say we have a million Service Opportunities in this country so it becomes the norm, not the exception. [applause] mr. Buttigieg we are proud of our plans. Most democrats, even though we are jostling for the nomination, broadly agree on many things. We are going to bring out our various differences, but what most immigrants are thinking about is, how are we going to win . How are we going to deal with this president because we cannot afford four more years of this . [applause] mr. Buttigieg i am here to make the case that in order to win, we have to put forward Something Different than what we have done before. [applause] mr. Buttigieg it is not that there is anything wrong with our values. We should be vigorously defending our values. It is why it is the foundation of my campaign. We have to navigate a trap. The trap is this president does things you cannot ignore and at the same time, we cannot let this whole conversation be about the president. When it is about your life, the every day, that is when we win. Most americans agree with us on the every day. They agree with us on raising the minimum wage and immigration and gun safety. That is why the white house means us talking about something else. Why do you think the president invited the comment sections off youtube to join him in the rose garden and let everyone watch the show . Why would he do that . The show is mesmerizing, like all grotesque things, the show is hard to look away from. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time. The less we talk about him, the more we are talking about you. We have to do it in the spirit of conviction and hope. That is worth participating in the politics of this country to bring about Something Better than we had before. Hope is not fashionable because it is a bleak actor when you look at our capital. Running for office is an act of hope. Coming out and watching someone running for office is an act of hope. Can i look to you to spread the hope that is required in order for us to bring about a better day . We have a chance to model different politics, even the way our campaign is conducted before the first vote is cast. We are going to show what it means to have the sort of politics that can deliver racial equality in our time, that can deliver Climate Solutions in our time before it is too late, that can deliver the rising tide that does lift all boats. To do that, we have to come together, stand up for each other. I see a sign up here, three generations for pete. We are building eight generational alliance. We need to build an alliance of people of every walk of life standing up for each other. We do not know the next group they will target, but it will be some of us. Anyone on the wrong side of an equation about belonging, needs to stand up for one another at a time like this. We can build that up and make our country better. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i know there are great questions. We have some gathered up. Please welcome back to the stage representative wilhelm, who will walk us through some of the questions. The first question is, what would you say to people who say their vote is not going to matter or they are not going to vote because they are just one person . Mr. Buttigieg we have to acknowledge the flaws in our democracy at a time like this. We have to make sure no one gives up on a democratic project. This is the best means we have to empower americans to bring about a different result. People say it is just one vote. That Voice Matters so much. I will tell you a story from someone i met in houston. Selena, a college student. She is a dreamer. She participates in all kinds of voter turnout, mobilization things, even though she cannot vote. She explained how she pleads with fellow young people saying i dont have a voice on decisions that are going to affect me. You do. I need you to be there. I need you to rise up and do this. Afghanistan, i was there for election day. They make you dip your finger in purple ink so you cannot vote twice. Everyone can tell if you voted. We have stickers sometimes, they have purple fingers. They did it knowing there were elements in afghanistan who threatened that if they saw anyone with the purple finger, anyone who voted, they would threaten their lives. You could get killed for voting because they were trying to stop the democratic process cold. They still did it. If someone is willing to reveal she is not a citizen to tell people how much is on the line, surely we can get up and go to the polls. It only works if all of us do it. I would encourage you to say that if anyone is wondering if their Voice Matters. Mr. Wilhelm expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with your own nominees is an undemocratic act. Explain your position or explain alternatives for depoliticizing the court. Mr. Buttigieg it runs the risk of coming to be regarded as a nakedly political institution. Some of those have beneficial legal actions. I would argue the republicans changed the number of Supreme Court justices. They changed it to eight until they got a republican president , and then changed it back to nine. As president , i will put together a commission that will propose solutions to make the Supreme Court less political. One you mentioned that is appealing but problematic is the idea of term limits. The appeal as you have less of the strategy of putting some on the court who can be there for 40 or 50 years. The problem it creates is you have, for the first time in a while, Supreme Court members thinking about what their career might be like after the court. We need a cure for that problem for that policy to work. The more ambitious one i have floated, you have more members of the Supreme Court, 15. The crucial thing is the design. You have one third of them appointed not by a partisan political process. By a unanimous agreement by the other 10. They cannot be seated unless that happens. It is a little complicated. It is being published in the yale journal. Not by me. Some constitutional scholars think this could be done and it would help cure some of this issue. Another way to do it would be you have a rotation. You bring people off of the appellate bench and it sends them back. Im less concerned saying we will figure it out, rather than opening americas imagination saying we can change this. When i became mayor, we band the phrase we have always done it this way. It is unacceptable d. C. Is not a state and they live without members of the senate. It is not right. In a country that has evolved over and over. The most eloquent qualities is developing our institutions. We are capable of taking on these challenges. Constitutional reforms stopped in the 70s. [applause] mr. Wilhelm i have heard a lot of talk about plans for how to address the opioid epidemic. How do you plan to address the issue . We need someone with tenacity, stamina, and drive to take them on. I am going to answer this. Yes, he is up to the challenge. Mr. Buttigieg as huge as the opioid challenges, there is more we have to deal with. We need to be smart. This is not about saying there should be no these medications cannot exist. Fentanyl was a blessing to my family during my fathers last days. It needs to be responsible and managed the right way. A lot of these companies have acted in nefarious ways. They have done a lot of harm to our city through dishonest practices and deserve to be held accountable. We welcome the achievements of pharmaceutical companies that do the right thing. What we see now is a lot of gouging, where they are taking advantage of medical distress and scarcity of important medications. We need policy that can tell the difference. We will have circuit breakers. What we need is not the right kind of treatment for pain, but more people certified in the treatment for addiction. We finally begun to figure out as a country that we cannot criminalize addiction and expect it to get better. We need medically assisted therapy. We need more doctors qualified and certified to deal with things like suboxone. As we go on this journey as a country, we have to have an equity lens. People where i am from are justified in raising the question about drug policy when it comes to opioids, but where were you during the crack epidemic . It created these three huge racial sensitive. It also has to be retroactive and recognizes the racial inequality that is a huge part of how we have dealt with drugs throughout. [applause] mr. Wilhelm do you have plans to aid the growing issue of student debt, specifically lower income educators. Mr. Buttigieg this is personal, i married an educator. As a household, we have sixfigure student debt and we live in a country that does not reward Educational Service the way it ought to. It is relative to the importance of that position in our society. We ought to respect teachers more like soldiers and pay them a little more like doctors than we do. [applause] mr. Buttigieg it is one of the reasons we need to expand the Public ServiceLoan Forgiveness Program and teacher Loan Forgiveness Program. They are on the book but too hard to access. Very few people are taking advantage. I think we can change the way they are set up so it is more of a benefit to doing it for different lengths of time and make it easier to deal with. That is one. On the front end, we have to do a lot of work to make education more affordable. The right combination of carrots and sticks, a federal state partnership, will help states carry more of the burden so less falls on the students. We will see it is not just something that benefits the borrower, it benefits the country. A majority of teachers surveyed said they would discourage their children from following into that profession. That puts us in a bad place. We cannot let that go wide. We have to act, in terms of how the profession is treated, as well as what it takes to get qualified in their profession. Mr. Wilhelm the next question is from nakeel. What will your douglas plan due to address racism in the criminal Justice System . Mr. Buttigieg one of the things i am proudest of in this campaign we put down a new level of detail our douglas plan to address systemic racism in all areas of life. It is all connected. We are going through tough discussions. When we sit down with Community Members to talk about it, we are talking not just about policing, but things about economic empowerment. Our plan includes provisions to increase black entrepreneurship in this country, health equity, a 21st century response to the homestead act that would help support homeownership in our communities and for black americans. And, education, where we need to do a lot of work to support historically black colleges and universities, affordability, and make sure title i schools get the help they need. We are the most incarcerated country in the developed world. It does not make us safer. It is not true. More prisons do not lead to more safety. We have to undertake a whole bunch of steps to reduce incarceration. I see evidence we can reduce it by half and i have committed to do that, without an increase in crime. First of all, you should not be able to profit off of other peoples misery. We should not have forprofit prisons. [applause] secondly, you look at incarceration in the federal system and across the states and you see a lot of it is driven by nonviolent drug offenses. We can look at the statistics and what they will tell us is there are cases where the incarceration does more damage to our country than the original offense. In south bend, we have a generation of kids growing up with the incarceration of a parent, which is up there on the list of traumatic childhood offenses that could make a child have problems later in life. It hurts society. Drug possession should not be something that leads to incarceration in this country. [applause] mr. Buttigieg New Hampshire has shown enormous leadership in abolishing the death penalty. Something i think we need to do at the national level. Its application has been hugely discriminatory. Another thing we have to do and can do is recognize how much he country has its stake in bringing people back into society and getting on their feet. The exclusion of the ability to get access to Public Housing when you leave incarceration is selfdefeating. It makes someone more likely to commit another offense out of survival in the future. When it comes to things like that, the ability to get education while incarcerated, when it comes to that medicaid exclusion, which makes it harder to have Health Outcomes and puts people at risk of overdose deaths, the moment they are out of incarceration, and the simple fact we need to invite people to be able to vote without imposing ridiculous requirements on being able to do that. All of these things add up into a more just Justice System. Until we live in a country where the criminal Justice System delivers justice, all of us are worse off. People of color bear the brunt of systemic racism in this country. The truth is, everyone is worse off because of the harms it creates. This is a conversation white americans need to have. This cannot be a specialty topic for black audiences only. All of us need to talk about this and all of us need to support these kinds of reform. [applause] mr. Buttigieg thank you. Mr. Wilhelm the ultimate goal is for the democrats to win the 2020 election. Mr. Buttigieg thats right. Correct. This is the true false section. Mr. Wilhelm how can the party be unified to win . Mr. Buttigieg great question. I expect to be the nominee. I am working to make that happen. [applause] mr. Buttigieg no matter who the nominee is, approximately 23 Democratic Candidates are not going to be the nominee and need to rally around the one person who is and quickly. [applause] mr. Buttigieg we know what will happen if we do not. We will have all of the harms that have been there through division, and we will have countries, intelligence agencies, expertly manipulating those divisions and you Better Believe they will do it again. We have got to be rocksolid in our commitment to bringing about a different presidency. I am pretty sure im preaching to the choir. We have to tell our friends. You would be surprise how will we get along as candidates. The important thing is to make sure when you are out on social media, when our supporters and sympathizers are out there, that we have the same spirit of remembering. We are going to have contrasts. That is ok. This is a competition. I do not view the others as opponents. I view them as competitors. We will take it to our real opponent, the occupant of the white house who must be replaced at all cost. [applause] mr. Wilhelm this is from lori in santa barbara. There she is. Good morning, mr. Mayor. After the rollout of the douglas plan, how do we address undecided voters who suggested you are pandering to the black vote . Mr. Buttigieg you can let them know our first discussion of the douglas plan was more than a month ago. The black voters deserve to be addressed with serious policy proposals. This is not just politics. This is the right thing to do. [applause] mr. Buttigieg black voters i talked to are pretty tired of being taken for granted, being lied to by people in both parties. Also of the idea that sometimes the voters talked about like it is one guy. There are a lot of diversity of opinion among the black voters i am meeting and the residents of my own community, who agree with this part or disagree with that part of a plan, proposal, or candidacy. In addition to this being my effort to provide the most conference of answer of any candidate to the question of how we deal with systemic racism, this is something that goes to the very heart of what it is to live in our country. It involves correcting an illusion that will be hard to correct. The illusion is if we just take racist policies and replace them with neutral policies, everything will get better, that is the illusion. It turns out, we now know from recent years, it is not that simple. Because of the way harms compound, the same way you save a dollar it compounds. Over time, it becomes two dollars, then 10, then 100. The same thing is true of a dollar stolen. It is why we have to have a conversation of what it means to be a just country and how all of us will be elevated when it is impossible to predict somebodys life expectancy, income, or educational outcomes based on race. We will all be safer. We all need this. [applause] mr. Wilhelm next question is on gun control. What is your position on reasonable gun laws . Why are you not talking about it a lot . Mr. Buttigieg i talk about it a ton. We cannot allow the Second Amendment to become a death sentence for thousands of americans. [applause] mr. Buttigieg as i pointed out in the Democratic National debate, did you see the debate by the way . [cheers] mr. Buttigieg if more guns were all it needed to make a safe, we would be the safest country in the world. Commonsense gun safety, as a party, we have to get out of a defensive crouch on this. This is one issue where we have the most support among the american people. 90 think we ought to have universal background checks. 90 , including most republicans and gunowners. The fact we cannot get it done as a problem of democracy that is very visible in the daylight between the American Congress and the american people. We know we need universal background checks. We know we need red flag laws that disarm domestic abusers. This is a common sense position. There are weapons, weapons like some of the things i trained on in the military, weapons of war, that have no place in american streets and neighborhoods in peacetime, especially near a school. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i have taken heat over the years as an indiana mayor when i embraced some of these policies. I have been talking about this for a while. I took heat, usually along two dimensions. One said it would have prevented this shooting or that tragedy. Maybe that is right. It would save thousands and thousands of lives. You dont have to believe it would fix every problem to know that it will fix many problems. How can we not save thousands of lives if we have the chance . The second thing i hear is you cannot do any of this because of the Second Amendment. It says shall not be infringed. It also says wellregulated, but they skip over that part. They say any regulation is unconstitutional. It is not true. Think about freedoms we honor. That i defended with my life. We apply common sense. The freedom to free speech does not mean you can yell fire in a theater. The right to swing your fists ands or somebody elses nose begins. We have already established as a country that we are going to draw a line somewhere because it is common sense. Everybody can have a water balloon. Nobody can have a nuclear weapon. We have decided somewhere on that spectrum there is a limit. Somewhere between a slingshot and a predator drone, we are going to draw the line. The question is where we draw the line and that is something i think my military experience speaks to. We have to draw the line tighter than we are today and most americans agree that is the right to do. [applause] mr. Wilhelm we have time for one more question. It is a good one. How will you work around Mitch Mcconnell . Mr. Buttigieg oh. All right. I have a few ideas on this. It reminds me of something. I am here running for president , but we cannot treat the presidency like it is the only office that matters. Every office matters. [applause] mr. Buttigieg there is great power in local office, state office. Your legislature is a beacon to the country, in terms of good legislation. A lot of it is getting vetoed, but it is really good stuff coming out of there. Nowhere do we see the limitations of the presidency more than in dealing with the United States senate. Especially because, i am big on reaching across the aisle. An indiana mayor does not get much done if you dont figure out how to work with the republicans some of the time. You have to have a good faith partnership. We do not have good faith right now. Mcconnell said if there was a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020 he would schedule a vote on that, when in 2016, it was a matter of principle that you would not do that in an election year. They are not pretending to act in good faith anymore. It is raw cynicism and power. The good news is, because most americans agree with us on most of these issues, a great use of air force one is to fly it in the state of a person getting in the way of good policy, and remind them they still could not take away the aca, but it shows you the power that rests in the fact that the people are with us. That is part of how you outmaneuver Mitch Mcconnell. There is a better answer. You might want to nominate an industrial midwestern mayor with coattails. The best way to deal with Mitch Mcconnell is for him to not be in the majority anymore preferably not in the senate anymore. I hope you are excited about being part of this. I hope you will get to know our New Hampshire team. We are hiring by the minute. We need your help. Tell a friend, tell a neighbor, bring them out to vote and i will see you on the trail. Thank you for joining us. We will be with you every step of the way. Thank you. [applause] [up around the bend by Creedence Clearwater revival plays] [indiscernible conversations] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Democratic president ial candidates are campaigning throughout New Hampshire this weekend. Cspan has live coverage saturday at 5 00 p. M. Eastern from New Hampshire, new jersey senator cory booker. On sunday, live at 1 15 eastern, California Center senator Kamala Harris speaks in guilford. Watch coverage of democratic president ial candidates from New Hampshire on cspan. Hit threejudge panel of the d. C. Circuit court of appeals heard oral argument in trump v. Mazars, which concerns the congressional subpoena for president trumps Business Financial records. House oversight and Reform Committee chair congressman Elijah Cummings of marilyn issued the subpoena in april. Us is about two hours and 10 minutes. This is about two hours and 10 minutes. Committees on oversight and reform of the u. S. House of representatives. Good morning