central, (202) 748-8000. mountain and pacific, (202) 748-8001. you can text us. that line is (202) 748-8003. are @cspanwj. post, as caseson near 5 million, trump digs in on schools reopening. they write the administration is sticking by its view that schools must reopen on time and , as mississippi's conservative governor reversed course to delay school and make students all wear masks. the yuan chief warned that the world faces "a generational catastrophe because of school closures." urgedideo message, he countries to suppress the virus sufficiently to allow schools to reopen, calling the pandemic the largest disruption to education ever. a policy brief alongside this containing the virus the most significant step governments can take toward grouping schools. we are learning a lot from governors about state plans and what localities in those states might do. the governor of texas, greg abbott, held a news conference. the texas tribune reports that local school officials "know best" whether they should reopen. the governor said yesterday that local schools have the power to decide. the bottom line is the people who know best about that our local schools, abbott said in san antonio. educators that texas and presidents have been -- and that parents have been confused about who has the power to keep school buildings closed. they have been frustrated by conflicting messages between state and local leaders. it is parents only this first hour. we would like to hear what your locality, your state is doing, and you -- and how you are handling it. eastern and central, (202) 748-8000. roderickirector, dr. fielded aredfield, number of questions. [video clip] >> i want to talk to talk you about reopening schools. cdc has put out multiple documents for safely reopening schools. here. checklist for parents, teachers. guidance for k-12 administrators on the use of face masks. i know some people want to make that controversial. this is part of trump's plan to reopen schools. it talks about the use of masks. are these all parts of the president's plan to safely reopen? >> yes. >> have you been involved in developing that? >> yes. >> do you think schools should reopen this fall within person learning? >> yes. it is in the best interest of k-12 students. they lack the ability to detect child abuse that occurs? do you know how much child abuse will not be detected of children are not returning to the school? >> clearly, we are seeing less reporting of it. millions of kids get mental health services at schools, nutritional services from schools. we are seeing an increase in drug use disorder and suicide among adolescents. it is not public health versus the economy. it is public health versus public health to get these schools open. we have to do it safely and to be able to accommodate -- host: parents only this first hour. your thoughts on kids returning in the fall term. .e welcome texts this one, leroy from maryland, how can we possibly want our kids back in school when there is no national plan to keep him safe? a hill tweets, i was governor.- iowa's let's get to the phones. fort worth texas, stephen. i am a parent and a special education teacher. the attorney general has overruled the health department, has it said the health department can no longer make recommendations. the district that my daughter currently is attending, i will not be sending her. we had the opportunity to do distance learning. but it is highly -- i do not would bed why we putting aside all the medical advice that it is currently not safe in the area. there is one children's hospital ended his scholarly -- hospital and it is currently full with two covid wards. if we are opening up schools, and we do have a decent plan for students that are there, my concern is how do you keep getting supplies like lysol wipes, which you cannot find in stores, to keep the place sanitized? we know for a fact that this virus is highly contagious. while it does not spread as much for kids under 10, we do not really know that because we have not had the schools open. what i do think is important is that we should not be able to open the schools based on a political decision. we should be making it based on health decisions. stephen, in fort worth, when will schools reopen? caller: for my daughter, it is in two weeks. host: ok. caller: we will have both distance-learning and in person learning. the district i am in is the saginaw district. to have bothided forms available, and they have a good plan. what will happen at some point is there will be an infection and it will spread. this happens with children. when i worked in the fort worth school district, we had things that would go through rather quickly. in this particular case, you have to shut it down, because it is pretty dangerous with about a 5% mortality rate of adults. we don't know what the mortality rate for children is. we have one child who died in dallas that was 17. probably had some comorbidities, but when these children die, it causes a major crisis in the school. i have dealt with kids dying from like a brain tumor before, and it is taxing on the students and faculty. is likely we are going to lose some of our teachers. that is why i am not working the school year. i appreciate your observations as a parent and teacher. milwaukee, cliff, good morning. my grandson is at risk risk in he had -- at that he has development problems. he thrived in school. he was doing so well. and the rug got pulled out from him. is, inole pandemic thing fact, not our fault, not their fault,not the teachers' but when you have unions, the , and entities taking political stands, it is not fair. what is coming out of that camp is all political. when you are using democratic pork and things like that as bargaining chips, it is all political. that is all i need to say. thank you. host: thank you, cliff. moore calls ahead. parents only this first hour. as schools get ready to reopen, we are interested in your observations. we will get back to your comments and calls momentarily. theressional leaders and white house continuing negotiations on the next level of pandemic relief. we are joined by congressional correspondent for reuters richard callan. good morning. guest: hello. host: we are seeing some signs that there is progress being made. what does that mean? guest: it means that things appeared to be inching forward a bit after days and days of each side just kind of criticizing each other and no signs of progress. the mood changed a little bit yesterday afternoon, after a meeting held by the democratic leaders and white house negotiators, the four top negotiators on legislation. they came out of that meeting talking much more positively than they had in the past. what was most interesting was treasury secretary mnuchin said that they had set a goal, and that goal was to try to reach some sort of a deal. he was not very specific, but the outline of a deal at least by the end of this week. that was the first time we had heard a specific deadline. that gay people some hope that they were actually moving forward -- that gave people some hope that they were actually moving forward. the: the one passed in house in june, the heroes act, and the one proposed by the whate, the heels act, but are the sticking points they have to resolve to get there? guest: there are a lot of them. that is why there still is not any certainty that they will actually be able to cut a deal. deal, ithey do cut a is not clear whether it will be pretty targeted or much more sweeping, as democrats are pushing for. just some of the top line items that remain, and maybe they all remained because the details are include,rea, but they number one and number two, extending unemployment benefits. there is a federal enhanced benefit that expired friday, last friday, which was 600 dollars per week on top of state unemployment benefits. around 30 million people. that benefit is not there anymore. democrats are pushing hard for an extension of the $600 and republicans want less. the other big ticket item is evictions, a moratorium on evicting renters from their homes if they did not have the money to pay rent during the pandemic because they have lost their jobs. those of the top two items being discussed. there are a lot of other things. majority leader mcconnell once a aability provision -- wants liability provision that would shield businesses and schools from lawsuits as they reopen during the pandemic. item, democrats want $1 trillion to help state and local governments. their revenues are down during the economic downturn. on this negotiation going on, there were reports yesterday that the president is considering executive action if a deal cannot be reached. do? can the white house caller: it is pretty vague right now -- -- guest: it is pretty vague right now. some people wonder if it is a negotiating tactic to pressure congress to pass a bill. what little we know is that the president has hinted that he would try to use his executive powers to take money that has been the appropriated for other things, and it is not clear why it, and use that to finance may be the continued jobless benefits. at the end of yesterday's meeting, they made the talk of progress, secretary mnuchin and chief of staff meadows would not say that that is off the table. they are still dangling that, but the thinking is that maybe that will not be needed. it is something that would be fraught with a lot of controversy and maybe legal challenges. the president has mad similar -- has made similar moves in the past, but it would theontroversial, and legislation is always better than executive action when it comes to these things. -- cowan is a correspondent for reuters. thank you for joining us. our topic -- the return to schools this fall term. school, high school, and college age kids. parents only. (202) 748-8000 for eastern and central time zones. 1 four mountain and pacific. here is stephen saying this. or school employee becomes ill, would a school shift to quarantine mode?" in north carolina, tony, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. safety.est concern is the way the pandemic currently is, our schools are not safe enough to open to make all the parents comfortable that the children will be safe. until we can get this pandemic control, our children do not need to go back to school yet. bey parents are not going to sending their children back to .chool we will not be sending our children back to an unsafe environment. host: how do you define safe? for physically returning to school, what does that mean for you? caller: it means we will be comfortable that our children will be going there and we will not lose even one life. one child's life is one too many. we have to be at peace that our children can go there and learn in a safe environment. right now, we are asking your children to go back to school and wear a mask. and the work situation for adults, that is completely understandable. but for little children to go back to school and wear masks is i think unacceptable. host: tony, appreciate the input. snapshot from education week. education leaders are making high-stakes decisions about how to reopen this fall as the pandemic rages on, many under competing pressures. education week is tracking and sharing reopening plans. write, 11 of, they the 15 largest school districts are choosing remote learning only as their back-to-school model, affecting over 2.8 million students. they write with over 13,000 public school systems in the united states, this working list is far from comprehensive. it is meant to provide a snapshot of how schools will begin. .org if youedweek want to read the entire list. it includes a lot of major school districts. let's hear from loretta in cleveland, ohio. good morning. caller: good morning, america. i do not think any of this is being done in a correct fashion. i think this liability thing that mitch mcconnell is pushing turns the american people into slaves. that if you do not go back to work, you lose not only your job but your benefits also. know that black and brown people are disproportionately affected by wondero now, it makes me why would they want to force all those people to make this type of choice? whatr you go -- that is the money was for, so that everybody could sit out and we could flatten the curve. all of the states did not do that. most of them opened before they had flattened the curve, and that is what really put this community spread into action. but also, my second point is that this is beginning to look is a dirty, and it harmedcam, where it has a majority of the black and brown population. in thehat because, back 60's, in virginia, they closed the schools down for three years to keep black kids from going to school with white kids. host: that is loretta in cleveland. a text from greg saying this. "that is all it is going to take, one teacher or student with the virus in the building. parents will get paranoid. schools, do us a favor and do not open up to avoid a serious headache." parents only this hour. (202) 748-8000 if you are eastern or central, (202) 748-8001 mountain or pacific. we hear from doug in newport news, virginia. caller: good morning. i have a question. number one. why does this have to be about race? and about the virus and going back to schools, i think kids need to go to school. this teachers union, their demands have nothing to do with teaching kids. why not just fire all of them? new teachers and people need work. to sitld not pay people at home. were in a lot better situation racially until recently. we are going backwards. i have seen the worst in my lifetime and now we are heading back to it. if they do not get back to the school and teach these kids the right things, i do not know what we will do. host: amber in florida. good morning. caller: good morning to you. during the h1n1 pandemic, which was not over blasted in the weia, 1000 children died and never shut schools down. we are at 98 kids who died from this. kids are the least affected by this. it does not make any sense. it seems to be more of a media hype because children have good immune systems. it is adults that are really affected by it. you can protect kids that have problems. they should be remotely learning. proves it does not spread from children to adults. when, are they doing this during the h1n1 -- host: here is some reporting of that issue. "should i send-- my child back-to-school?" can covid spread to children? shows children are between one third and one half as likely to contract the virus as adults. one third of the cases in the u.s. have been children younger than 18. most schools around the country closed in march as the virus circulated more widely. that can explain why fewer children got sick." that came up in the hearing last week with cdc director robert redfield. [video clip] rep. waters: they are saying children are almost immune. is that an expert medical conclusion, that children -- what does that mean? children are almost immune from this virus? generally, when you say a person's immune, you say they are protected from getting infected. and children can get affected -- infected. an. waters: so this is not expert medical conclusion? >> if you are talking about a conclusion that children in general are immune, we know children get infected, so therefore they are not immune. i must say that when children get infected, when you look at the deleterious consequences, they generally do much better. you look at the hospitalizations. children have a much, much lower rate of hospitalizations. the curve goes way up as you get older. when you get to the age group of children, they generally do not get serious disease as much. understand, but what i was asking was about the president's latest comments that children are almost immune. i think i got the answer to that. host: dr. anthony fauci was on that panel last week with cdc director robert redfield. asking you this morning, parents only, about kids going back to school and college. some political notes. primary day today in a number of states. inh shocks clay congressional primary. cory bush unseated william lacy clay, ending his 20 year hold on congressionalst district, and putting her on the path to be the first black woman to represent missouri in the capital. --s is the mississippi star the st. louis star -- the kansas city star. craig kaplan says representative seventh -- ise the seventh nominee to lose their party's nomination this year. trump, a great race by marshall against a tough and smart opponent. he loves campus -- kansas and will run it well. we will go to st. louis next in here from patrick. welcome. caller: good morning. i wish i could say good morning and mean it. if we get our kids back to early, missouri is surging right now. there are several more states. i feel that if these republican rubes want to put their children of what thesee politicians like meadows and trump are touting on capitol it is going toke cause a lot more problems for the party than it has caused recently. i feel that this is a ridiculous push for power and it will cost our kids lives. host: from cleveland, this is dan. good morning. caller: good morning. listen. i don't know. everything does not have to be a racist thing. cleveland,y here in everything is not a black-and-white issue. kids and then there is parents. opening up shows the difference. i am a parent. do not abuse the computers and stuff like that. i could not ask for better kids. i care about them just as much as everybody else does, but these kids have to go back to the schools. a -- the friends of my kids do not even sign in to do work on the computer. what kind of education will that be? i do know some parents that do homeschooling, and they have it asretty well, but is good as in the schools? the biggest problem are these teachers. if some of these products were a business, they would not be in business. phones tonfiltrating send them to college to get brainwashed by democrats. of a the editorial board newspaper weighed in on teachers. weingarten,randy leader of the american -- ontion of teachers, monday, lines of teachers unions and progressive groups sponsored what they call a national day of resistance around the country, listing their demands. thiswrite, the phrase for is political extortion. open schoolsork safely, unions are issuing ultimatums and threatening strikes until they are granted their ideological wish list. children would have to endure more lost instruction. one for the east and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 mountain and pacific. charles thing -- charleston, south carolina. if we have clear guidelines on how to do this and it comes from scientists and experts, i might think about doing this, but when i look around the world and i see were israel tried to reopen their schools, only to turn them around and shut back down because kids got sick, and when i look at these camps where the kids all got sick, i do not see any way that this outcome will be any different for my kid going to school. as far as the teachers go, look. people are always critics. you have good and bad in everything that you do. we are human, ok? but for the most part, all of these teachers care about their kids. and you have t remember something. if there is anybody a risk here, it is the teachers. i would like to know who it is that things, in a legal point of tow, that you are able require someone to go to work and it might cost them their lives? that is a legal question that needs to be answered because i have been in the kind of jobs where i put my life on the line, but i had the choice and i could refuse the order and not suffer blowback because of it. look. parents out there, along with me, will have to buckle down and become more of a teacher than you have ever been in your life. you will have to discipline your children. and to keep them safe, you'll have to teach them at home. until we get a vaccine that works, i do not know what else we can do. host: on text, this is deb in columbia, missouri. in we are going to provide person education, he needs to be safe. public schools have grown too big regardless of the virus. more teachers, smaller classes, smaller, better schools." dave tweets "not sending my six-year-old back regardless of policy. we cannot find it daycare, so i will close my business and stay home." starts monday,l wednesday, and friday. tuesday and thursday are on the computer." i mentioned trump's son barron trump returning to school. this is the headline. "barron trump's private school will return with virtual classes only. the private school has determined it will not open the school year within person learning. st. letter sent to parents, andrew's episcopal school's head of school announced they will begin in early september with a virtual learning plan. barron trump attends st. andrew's. he is scheduled to start the ninth grade." to your calls. g nice in maryland. janice in maryland. caller: good morning. that last caller was great. he stole some of my thunder. but i will say this. they say this is about mental health. covid-19ds bring home and the parents die, what will that do to the kids mental health? now the kids will be orphans. this is ridiculous. this is common sense. you read the article by "science " that kids are not likely to spread it, but i have read other articles that kids 10 to 17 are just as likely to spread the virus as adults. so, here we go again with conflicting information. but it is just common sense. colds, flu, normal things, kids spread it quickly to others, so my kids will not be going to in person class. they have remote instruction for the first semester anyway, but it is just a matter of common sense. it is ridiculous that they want to try to send kids back to school in some of these other states. host: that piece we read was from "usa today." they referenced that children were one third to one half as likely to contract the virus. cdc, 10%ording to the of contracted cases, but schools have been closed. we go to donna. good morning. caller: i would like to know why to wear hard for people the mask, for the president not to make it mandatory for everyone to wear the mask for at least one month? if you get caught, you get cited. host: what are they doing in terms of the schools in verona? let be part of it? -- will that be part of it? caller: should be. statesying the united president should make it mandatory that everybody put their mask on, at least for one month. news this morning. you have probably seen this story. the pictures do not tell the story. show --line "horror dozens dead after explosion. and explosion blew out windows in beirut. wereast 60 people killed. lebanese broadcaster said the material exploding was sodium nitrate. we're showing you some of the video from cnn in the massive blast that happened after that initial blast. in's go to robbie joining us bronson, florida. go ahead. caller: i wanted to say that congress and the administration have underfunded the schools for covid along with everything else. art, music everything -- art, music, everything. having made the first homeschool in our county, the first private school in this county, i found that it worked fine for me to homeschool my own because i have education and only one parent was working, but in homes where both parents are working, it is not such a good fit for them. to thiseds to be added covid package for public schools all across the nation to be able to work around these problems to help students have distant learning, especially where they live in families where grandparents may be living at home. i have a 95-year-old grandmother. you know, we all have people who have underlying conditions, and it that shed the virus. -- and kids that shed the virus. they bring it home. and teachers are so underpaid. they need to be protected because they have years of experience and they are dedicated. this just blase open the schools is no kind of solution. there needs to be money, a thoughtful process, and time to arrange it. that is my comment and thank you for listening. host: wilson, north carolina next up. hi there. why they want to know put education in front of the catchives, when you can up with education but once the lives or gone there is nothing -- lives are gone there is nothing you can do. i do not understand that. you cannot get lives back. education does no good if the kids or teachers are dead. your area,us about wilson, north carolina. what is the district doing this fall? caller: they are letting the parents decide. they have let them stay out for the past nine weeks. after nine weeks, the kids in kindergarten and first grade have to go back. grade cande to third decide to stay home. i do not see the difference. they are going to get that. they say, if they find out one child has it, they will let one parent -- they will let parents know. once one child has it, it is too late. i do not understand. the young kids get it just as worse as other kids. host: appreciate your call. parents in the eastern central simon zone -- time zone, (202) 748-8000. (202) 748-8001, mountain and pacific. "yates back to testify in revelations of fbi set up. sally yates will be forced to -- bed her 27 testimony forced to square her testimony with that of michael flynn. yates, the former number two official at the justice department, is the second player to get girl in the senate judiciary committee investigation into the origins of crossfire hurricane, an investigation into possible collusion between the russiant's campaign and to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. crossfire hurricane eventually morphed into special counsel robert mueller's investigation." we will cover the hearing live. it is scheduled to get underway at 10:00 a.m. live on c-span. karen. erie, pennsylvania. problem withe no my daughter going to school. i live in the suburbs and we have a very affluent school district. they decided to hold off for 30 days into remote -- and do remote. i think she should be going back, but our problem is, if she had gotten it and come home, we would all be tested and contact traced, and i am fully against that. so until something happens, i guess she will be doing remote. host: ok. isaac. lexington park, maryland. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. the previous caller just caught me off guard. she was saying she had a problem with her child getting tested and contact tracing. that just calm me off guard. anyway. my school system is promoting virtual learning for the first semester. i believe that it is simple common sense. school district has decided we need to pause, do some remote learning, try to add some funding to support students and special needs students so they can get the assistance they need, but until the time we get an administration in place that wants to focus on the problem, parents will have to step up into what is best for their kids, which is making sure we do not endanger ourselves and our -- our family. until we get an administration that gets focused, gets serious, and can support the schools the way they need to be. park isaac, and lexington -- in lexington park, your district in the maryland suburbs. will ago virtual? -- will it go virtual? caller: first semester they will go virtual. i believe they will look at it again in october or november to reassess, but they are starting virtual. oh finisher- thought. -- finish your thought. caller: i was going to say it is the most logical thing to do, start virtually. host: what has been your experience with kids accessing lessons and teachers plans? caller: my experience was not that bad. we had a good support system in place. great teachers that were able to send out packets. studentthat not every was able to get access to the internet and computers, which i believe the government and the school system should look at. all students should have internet access. but for the ones that did not have internet access, there were sites to go to to pick up packets to work with the boys. i have been in constant contact with teachers who have been working with me, giving me some motivation and advice. i have twin boys. --t of my sons is autistic one of my sons is autistic, so i am in that special group where we are really trying to stay ways tod and find extra keep our children engaged. iep is individual education plan, right? caller: yes. i have an autistic son with specialized needs, mostly sensory and language, but i have been receiving support through the school system, and we have just been working together. that is the advice i give to all parents and communities. we have to step up, put our differences aside, work together, find a way to support our communities. it takes a village. host: in another part of maryland, disagreement between county leaders and the governor, larry hogan, who clashes with montgomery officials about private schools reopening. monday over whether students should be back on campus in private schools for learning. the governor said private parochial schools would have to stick to online until at least october 1. the governor sought to invalidate that directive. rebukedeved my -- he montgomery county exercising -- for disallowing local instruction." we hear from max. caller: hello. i believe kids should be back in school. shut downey should and they don't need no money. what do they need money for if they are not opening the schools? are you there? host: i am. thank you. arlington, virginia. eric is on the line. caller: my thought on this. of course kids should be in school. everyone wants their kid to be in school. the problem is this. covid is out here. ding, ding, hello, hello -- covid!. i do not care what plan they have, whatever. be goingof mine will back in a in this predicament. -- back in a school in this predicament. we have a president who clearly does not give a darn about this. he has no other alternative. he knows that november 3 he will hopefully be in jail or something, but anyway, you are counseling all of these conventions -- you are canceling all of these conventions and catchingstaff are covid. , a dumb have devos idiot. zimbabwebring some talking about witches getting women pregnant. are you crazy? host: we want to hear your texts. (202) 748-8003. "i am an adjunct professor and that we woulded receive a 2% pay cut. we should receive hazard pay." that is rose from connecticut. rachel "no way i am letting my son walking into a school until the covid spread is under control." they should provide everything the kids need to do, not ask us to provide items." from the washington post daily dr. birx headline " argues against trump's push for reopening schools." he writes "deborah birx was at a vacation home when staffers said they needed to put her on sunday shows. cnn'speared remotely on state of the union. asked whether schools should reopen, burks answered -- deborah birx answered we are asking people to distance learn. administration officials says deborah birx has been arguing this privately, but saying so publicly was one of those factors that put her crosswise with trump." here are her comments on state of the union. [video clip] >> should schools in areas with a positivity rate of 5% or more remain closed and have distance learning only? >> as you described at the beginning, i am a coordinator. i work with dr. redfield, dr. fauci, dr. adams every day. we go over the data together. whattainly would endorse dr. redfield is saying in the areas where we have this widespread case increase. we need to stop the cases. then we can talk about safely reopening. >> so schools should stay closed? >> i would do what the cdc guidelines have recommended. if you have high caseload and active community spread, just like we are asking people not to go to bars, not to have parties, not to create large spreading events, we are asking people to distance learn at this moment so we can get this epidemic under control. host: and this from washington, d.c.. russ says this is a squeeze play. forcing desperation is the government and citizens to make bullish decisions. if you believe the virus israel, do not allow economic you -- ton to make force you to make dangerous decisions. antoine in new york. next up. caller: hello. host: go ahead. this whole thing is crazy. every decision that is being made is to get donald trump back in office. opening the economy, which you see what happened. time should have been some weighted -- waited. that is how we got to this point. now we're just going crazy all over again. secondly, i am not sending my kids to school. they keep pushing for the economy to be open, for these kids to go to school, just -- all for him to get back in office. he feels this is the only way he can get back to office, to get the economy going, because he knows he is stuck with this virus thing. kidsnybody, put your first. you have to decide -- you have to be -- that is why you are a parent. we have to make the best decisions for our kids. i am not sending my kids to school. they had the rich people that can afford to do all these different things, homeschooling, or, you know, they have more options than we have. host: antoine's comments reflecting some written in the new yorker. "donald trump's push to open schools is going to backfire." they write, "why is trump so eager to open schools?" they write "there is a certain base logic. back -- cannot go saddledwork if they are with childcare duties. this could backfire in a way that is dangerous for trump." in texarkana, texas, steve. caller: i am appalled and astonished that grown adults and media are acting like children. there is no documented case of a child transferring covid to anyone. why are full-grown adults denying the facts? it is crazy. thank you. host: all right. california. lupe, good morning. caller: yes. first i have a question. is, is anybody out there -- i do not have a computer and i cannot remember -- but the question was if you ever ran for president, mr. trump, what would you run under? i would run as a republican because they believe anything you say. as a republican, my daughter lives -- as a parent, my daughter lives in tennessee, and they went back to school last week. they went morning and evening. she is going in in the evening. now she is in quarantine because one of the children that went back to school, at home somebody had the covid-19, and now she is under quarantine. she was positive. inm on -- i am out here california. i cannot fly out. host: what grade is she in? .aller: she teaches what do you do? these children not understand where they have been, these parents do not take instructions. some wear masks, some do not, but she needs her position. furthermore, she has to wear the mask because she has kidney problems. so, was this fair to her? trump, are you listening? anybody? thank you. host: a tweet from alex leary, who says "watching trump on fox and friends, this thing is going to go away. it will go away like things go away." donald trump on fox and friends asked about schools reopening. charlotte, north carolina, good morning. go ahead. caller: good morning, c-span. good morning to the host. i do not believe kids should be going back to school this early now. we have cases rising now and the country and anyone with common sense should be able to see what trump is doing. you have the director of the cdc dr. birx in the background. there comes a point in time where people have to stand up for the country instead of protecting themselves and worrying about a tweet from the president. i just read an article this son's school will not be opening this year. the rest of the school year is going to be online. host: we read that article as well. pollard -- caller: that's my point. i'm hoping november changes this thing around. i hope everybody goes out to vote. that's all we can do now. host: more ahead on washington journal. innext, a discussion on jobs the economy amid the pandemic with former obama acting labor secretary, seth harris. attention toour the issue of mail-in voting and public security with public interest legal foundation's cleta mitchell. >> american history tv on c-span3, exploring the history and events that tell the american story every weekend. sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of nagasaki, japan. three days after the bombing of hiroshima. american history tv will look back at how the bombings ended world war ii with richard frank, downfall, and a professor at american universities nuclear studies institute. they will take your calls, texts, facebook questions and tweets. railamerica, -- real america, the1946 film documenting origins of hiroshima's peace park. and the 70th anniversary of the potsdam conference, where truman informed winston churchill and stalin about the new u.s. super weapon. exploring the american story. watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> washington journal continues. the: seth harris served in obama administration as acting labor secretary. he's currently visiting professor of public affairs at cornell university. here to talk about the unemployment and the job situation during the pandemic. seth harris, good morning. we had you here a couple days before the july jobs number will be released. what sort of trends are you seeing as states begin to report rising cases and we've seen closures of the economy in some states across the country. saying goodart by morning to you. the trendlines have not been good. there are two indicators for what's happening with employment. the census bureau is putting out per luminary data that indicate that the percentage of americans who are employed is declining again. and the labor department puts out data about initial weekly unemployment claims. filing foreople their unemployment benefits for the first time. and those numbers have been pretty stagnant since the beginning of june and recently have begun to take up a little bit. which is an indication that there are more people losing their jobs in the economy. those indicators suggest that while we may see some jobs growth, it's going to be a low number at best and that's going to suggest that this recovery is going to take a good long time. >> in this discussion and our anticipation of the jobs number on friday? that $600 benefit from the federal government. looking beyond the next few weeks, how long do you think additional unemployment whether it be $600 more or less will be needed for americans? >> the answer is we are going to need the benefits as long as extremely high rates of unemployment continue and the unemployment is going to continue as long as the economy is in trouble and that will be true as long as we have the pandemic with us. there is no separation between managing the pandemic and getting the economy to recover. a week benefits which are absolutely critical to millions of families across the united states are going to have to continue until families are able to get their breadwinners back into the workforce and get the jobs they need in order to get paychecks that will support their families. the economy really is struggling almost entirely because of the pandemic. we were doing reasonably well. with incomele inequality and wealth inequality and racial disparities in our economy. theat the top line level economy was doing reasonably well. we are doingcator, very poorly. maybe the worst economy that we've seen since the great depression. maybe even worse than that. and that's because we are failing to manage this pandemic successfully. we are not bringing down infection rates, we are not bringing down death rates. hospitalizations remain high. front-line workers don't have personal protective equipment. we don't have contact tracing and testing or at least testing that can be used effectively for contact tracing. we are failing in the public health approach and that is causing us to fail on the economic approach. seth harris is the former acting labor secretary during the obama administration, talking about unemployment during the pandemic and what your job situation is like. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8000 democrats. independents and others. for those of you whose job has been impacted by the pandemic, (202) 748-8003. thehat issue, we spent first hour talking about whether schools should reopen. concurrent with that is having parents available to monitor their kids, that means those parents working from home. how does that complicate the return to work for those who are actually still employed? complicatedemely for working parents of school-aged kids. we have more than 30 million of those in the united states. having to balance being a caregiver for your child, a teacher's assistant for your child for those who are trying to do remote education while also doing your work, if you can work remotely. not every worker in the united states is able to work remotely, has proven to be frustrating and difficult for a lot of people. millions millions and of workers who have to go to a physical place in order to do their work and there are two challenges. one is the challenge of childcare. system is under immense pressure. they are suffering horribly with respect to funding. we have schools that are closed. the most ats are risk of being exposed to the covid-19 virus. they are the front-line essential workers who are coming into contact with the public and in a lot of those workplaces we are finding extremely high rates of transmission from grocery stores to meatpacking plants, transit system to frontline first responders. there is grave risk to those workers and what they worry about most is bringing the disease back into their home and exposing their children, partners and spouses, older members of their families. that's really a worry for these workers. protecting those workers has to be part of the larger scheme. we are not going to solve this problem by forcing a bunch of kids back to face-to-face instruction in schools. schools are also workplaces. so they don't just have kids in them. staff,s, janitorial administrators, cafeteria staff. they also need to be protected. whereby see a system schools successfully protect those workers as well as the kids, i think it's going to be very difficult for school systems to make the decision to bring kids back into the classroom. july the jobs number for comes back on friday. this headline from the techrepublic, the jobless number falling in june from 14.7 to 11.1. what do you think we will see when the jobs number comes out on friday? >> it's really volatile. i think it's hard to predict. i would say the likeliest outcome is that we will see some jobs growth, something below 2 million jobs which would still be a tremendous number of jobs. i think it's not out of the question that we see flat jobs growth. i think it would be surprising if we lost the 4.8 million jobs that we were able to add in june. those were mostly people returning to work. in some jurisdictions where they have re-closed the economy. i think that it's possible that we've seen a shrinkage of jobs in those jurisdictions but in other jurisdictions, we have seen a lot of people returning to work. i think that will largely even out and lean towards the small amount of jobs growth. we lost more than 21 million jobs in march and april. we recovered about a third of those jobs in may and june. recovering even a couple of million jobs now is not going to be enough to get us on the road to recovery. we really need a concentrated focused effort on dealing with the pandemic while also dealing with the economy. forcing people back to work and kids into school is the wrong way to go. >> when we hear the jobs created number, does the labor set aside, these are the jobs that are returning jobs. these are absolutely new created jobs. >> the bureau of labor statistics is the premier statistical agency in the world. i don't just say that because i used to oversee them. it's because it's true. they are a terrific organization. they are able to parse out the reasons why people lost their jobs and the reasons why people are going back to work. numbers, we know the 4.8 million jobs created were entirely people returning from temporary furlough to their former jobs. the big concern that we should have is the number of people on permanent furlough meaning they've lost their job and they are not going back has been increasing. unemployedage of people in that category has been increasing. from alan in hear east chicago, indiana. caller: good. longtime listener, big time fan. thank you for taking my call. i have a question. i'm confused about the number of people who are actually unemployed. i always assumed that anyone who benefits willnt be considered unemployed. all the major cable networks who been tracking people are doing initial unemployment filing each week and it's a total of like 54.6 million i last heard. but the labor department is saying there's only 20 million for one month are unemployed. so i don't know what happened to the other 34.6 million. i assume these people filed for more than one week. i would just like to know what is the exact number of total people who are unemployed and do they base it on just everyone who's getting unemployment benefits or just people who file for the first time? >> that's a terrific question and good for you for playing close attention to these labor statistics. there are a number of different numbers out there. i will try to clear it up and i don't want to promise i can give you an absolutely crystal clear answer. right now there are 30 million americans who are receiving some kind of unemployment benefits. that includes traditional employees and because congress expanded the unemployment insurance program, it includes people who were self-employed, people who are independent contractors. they are now getting benefits as well. some number of those people are not completely out of work, they've just lost summer most of their work or they've lost a part-time job. be counted ast unemployed by the bureau of labor statistics in the monthly unemployment numbers. statisticsof labor does two surveys. they talk to people and establishments. that's how they get the different numbers that they have. the unemployment claims numbers tells us who is receiving benefits. what the bureau of labor statistics tells us is people who are out of work, people who have not worked in the preceding week. count, there are at least 20 million, maybe as many as 30 million americans who have lost their jobs or had a significant reduction in work. those who are suffering from this pandemic recession and need those unemployment benefits from congress. my hope is speaker pelosi and later schumer are going to cut a deal with the white house and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell will go along with it and be able to get those unemployment benefits going as long as the other things in the heroes act will spur the economy and get people back to work. up next in thousand oaks, california. caller: i have a simple question. who issomeone personally making more money through the supplemental unemployment insurance, the $600 plus the federal state unemployment, then he used to get while he had a job. so he's not going back to work. why is it right for someone like me who has to work for a job to earn less than someone who would not be working for a job? thank you. question.a fair and this is a big part of the debate that we are seeing over the next covid-19 recovery bill. there are some people who are both stateeceiving and unemployment benefits meaning the benefits they would get from their state under ordinary circumstances and an additional $600 from the federal government and some percentage of those people are getting more than they would earn in wages. but there was a very important study that was released this week from yale university that shows that that has not had any effect over and overall effect on people returning to work. basically people would like to go back to work. they prefer to earn their living rather than getting unemployment benefits. the reason we need those official benefits is because there are very few jobs in the economy right now. if you take two different data sets and the labor department, there is one that shows for the end of may there were about 5 million job openings in the united states. there are about 30 million people receiving unemployment benefits. every job in the united states fell by unemployment right now, we still have tens of millions of people without jobs. we want those people to have as much money as they could get around the amount they were earning before. to spend. need them that keeps the economy growing. we don't want them to be evicted from their homes. them to be able to keep the economy going by spending and keeping their families going. that's the way we are going to survive this pandemic recession. this one from roland says, i haven't missed a day of work since this pandemic. phone isn't ringing. i'm checking phone. it's working, just not ringing. the question, business is very slow now because the $600 is going. that benefit was ended as of last friday. business hasow why slowed down for you. i think it's not out of the question, for most people the benefit ended last week rather than this week. so some number of people who had money to spend before last week don't have it now and that is going to be felt in grocery stores, gas stations, landlord-tenant relationships. other places where unemployed workers spend their money to keep their families going. it's going to be felt in retail, eating and drinking establishments. ofs billions and billions dollars each week that goes into people's pockets and the evidence from a study we did airing the great recession shows that when an unemployed worker gets a dollar, they immediately turn right around and spend that dollar and that's why that money keeps the economy going. i don't know what exactly is happening in your business, but all across the country there are businesses wondering why they've seen a drop off in their weekly or daily receipts, and the reason is because republicans in the united states senate have refused to go forward with extending the $600 weekly unemployment benefit. host: reference on unemployment rates throughout history from cnbc, the high level during the peak of the depression, unemployment rate in the united states 25.6%. april's unemployment rate was 14.7% according to the bureau of labor statistics. of you whoor those have lost your job during the pandemic, (202) 748-8003. sarah is on that line in houston. caller: thank you for taking my call. to anlling in regards overlooked situation for substitute teachers. with the school year being pushed back, some teachers aren't going to be able to work even if schools don't open it all. that's going to pose a problem. are opportunities for substitutes to go into a classroom, it's going to be difficult for those in high risk groups to work. so i'm wondering what the situation is going to be for that population. of teachers who substitute. i'm sorry that you're going through these struggles and i know it's no consolation for you, but there are lots of people around the country experiencing what you are experiencing right now. we have a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen with schools and i think it's going to end up being at most estate estate decision. in a lot of states it will be a district by district decision. this is an excruciatingly difficult decision for these folks to have to make because honestly we don't know what is required in order to keep kids safe and also how to keep teachers like yourself save in a face-to-face environment. any population of folks who don't socially distant successfully, it's little kids and even teenagers. i think there is cause for concern. the answer to your question is going to depend on the state. if you had employment and lost it because of covid-19, you should be eligible for unemployment benefits in most states, but it's going to depend on what your state rules are. ais is going to be frustrating answer, i encourage you to reach out to your state unemployment office. mostare swamped now and states with claims and questions like the ones you have. toncourage you to reach out your state unemployment office. everyone who has lost a job or has fear of losing the job should try to figure out what to do in order to support themselves. i don't want to see people tapping their savings if they can avoid it. you want to see people tap into the available government funds to support themselves while this recession continues. host: one of the states struggling with that is california. point one 3 million unemployed california workers --rt trapped in edd plate payment limbo. in ripley, west virginia. republican line. morning. caller: morning. i hope everyone's having a great day today. why did thestion is unemployed get the $600 a week bonus plus the stimulus direct payment? i call that double dipping. my second question is why can't justeliminate the $600 and to stimulus payment to everyone where it's equal across the board until this pandemic is over thank you. -- is over? thank you. >> the reason they were given of $1200 percheck adult $500 per child was they needed it very desperately just as many other americans who are still at work need that money. and the goal of that money is not really some kind of reward for people. it's to keep the economy going as much as we possibly can midst of a recession. because the pandemic has spread throughout our communities, people are deeply fearful and government is shutting down large segments of the economy. so commerce has slowed very dramatically. we saw the largest single drop in gross domestic product is the measure of goods and services being sold and bought in our economy. largestrter we saw the single drop in gdp since that measurement has been taken. that is really disturbing. that happened even though people were getting this additional government money. without the government money, our economy would be much worse off than we would suffer permanent harm. money tow is give the the people who need it most. they will turn right around and spend it, and that will keep stores and businesses and landlords and manufacturers and others going to some extent until we can deal with the pandemic and get the economy growing again. i think that's an important part of an economic strategy. i would say it's not ideal. it's not the way anyone would like to see it run frankly in a situation like this when you have a crisis, you are not going to be able to have a perfect policy. the extra benefits and checks are good policies that are helping us survive in a difficult time. host: the house passed the heroes act back in late june. that would provide $1200 per family, up to $6,000 per household plus a weekly unemployment benefit extended through january 2021. thesenate has proposed heels act from the u.s. senate. their measure would reduce the unemployment increased to $200 the direct payments part of that proposal, $12 per individual. let's hear from susan in baltimore on the democrat line. it sounds like you are in the car. turn down the volume and go ahead with your comment. in waldorf,areata maryland. good morning. caller: morning. basically prior to the pandemic i always worked two jobs. mgm was not an option. i did not even receive unemployment benefits until may. my mom at the time was the only one working. so there was no income. mgm, now i'm only working at kohl's and i'm only getting a hundred something dollars a week. and the hours that i was getting have been drastically reduced. so we talk about the benefit and i had people say, they don't let the benefits because the majority african-americans. they receive benefits and don't want to work. i would love to work, but i would like the work that's going to benefit me as well. dilemmas kind of the that i have and everything i have is backed up online at risk of losing my car and everything else. can you do with 100,000 something dollars a month? >> let me say first i'm terribly sorry. there are millions of struggles just like yours across states right now. let me just say the struggles that states have had in paying these unemployment benefits are not a surprise to those of us who work with the unemployment system. the unemployment system is been under resourced, has not had updated technology or data systems for many years. we knew about this but we were never able to get congress to appropriate the money that was necessary in order to be able to update the systems. every state has its own system. some of them are updated. the other states have very old systems. they are creaky, they are slow, they are understaffed. they are just not able to deal with these claims. that's why areata or others had to wait months to get there. that's one of the lessons of these experiences. we've got to play -- pay close attention to these systems. everyone is trying to do the right thing. they just don't have the resources to succeed. that she's at risk of losing her car and her family being thrown out in the streets, that's a serious risk for americans all across the united states. this argument that is at the argumenthe republicans for the benefits is people want to sit at home and they don't want to work and we are incentivizing them to sit at home so why would they go back to their jobs. anecdotes that people don't want to go back to work. as a general matter, people want to go back to work if they can do it safely. they want to get back into a regular viable earnings mode. it's not the fault of unemployed people that they are not able to work. it is the fault of the people who are failing to manage this pandemic properly and failing to get this coronavirus under control and get back to something approaching normal. the idea of punishing unemployed people in hopes that they will go back to a job that doesn't exist anymore is frankly a cruel approach to public policy. host: the heroes act includes $75 billion in homeowner assistance funding and $100 billion in rental assistance. eli and florida asks this. how does mr. harris see the impact of all the stimulus packages on the national debt? what is the real impact in growing the national debt? at anms we are already impossible number. >> i think that's a legitimate concern to have. national debt has been growing dramatically under president trump but in circumstances like those that are in right now where the private sector has had to reduce its spending, reduce its demand. the only option is for government to step in and spit. rates areinterest close to zero so we are borrowing that money at essentially no cost to the american taxpayer. so that's the right thing to do to keep our economy from really collapsing completely. butad a big downturn frankly, it could have been significantly worse. any hope of recovery is going to be focused on the government spending money to get us going again. i'm not too worried about the ledger sheet right now, what the deficit looks like or what the debt looks like. it is something we are going to have to deal with over time. but we are not going to be able to reduce the date by flashing spending and collapsing the economy. we need to get the american economy to be the growth engine of the world economy again. host: on the independent line next bob. caller: i think you are at best disingenuous when he responded to the gentleman that pointed out that some people are getting with theng unemployed $600 supplement than people are working. the fact of the matter is that last week c-span had someone on our receiving greater benefits -- than they are when they were working. 2/3. and there was a texas congressman came on who indicated that 75% of the p's receiving -- 75% receiving more than. wanty that the republicans to give people money, they're just saying it's too much. the firstsaid it when cares act was passed. i can tell you as a financial professional, let me get the people a quick example. there's a client of mine who goes to these tradeshows to make arts and crafts. those things have been shut down. at best over the years maybe she needed $500 from her business. the $600 plusg -- $500 is thel best she ever earned and that's what she's receiving. another situation where young kids left college and wanted to take a year off and he started bussing tables and living at home making about $200 a week. he's never seen for almost $900 those are not working the facts and there's a lot of that going on. that was onal c-span last week, i'm a financial professional. it is big number whether 66%, 70%, 60%, it's a big number. from sethill hear harris. >> i don't particularly like being accused of being disingenuous. i agree with you. there are people getting more money from employment insurance than they were earning before they lost their jobs. the question is what effect is that have. where is the evidence of what effect that has simply stating that fact does not tell us what the consequence of that fact is. the truth of the matter is there is no evidence that the fact that people are getting additional money is keeping people from going back to work. states, if yout are offered your old job back under the unemployment insurance system and you say new, you lose your eligibility for unemployment insurance. so these benefits that people are getting supporting them at maybe a little bit more than they were earning before. that's what's allowing them to pay their mortgage, pay their rent, pay their bills. not end up in thrown out in the street. but if they are offered their old job back, they have to go and take that job and there's no evidence that anything else is happening in the economy so this idea that somehow people are on the gravy train because they are frankly, that's what's disingenuous. that's the argument that's disingenuous. sam inomment from wildwood, georgia. i don't understand why people keep complaining about others having a few extra dollars from unemployment and. if you want to get the economy going, that's how it goes. for some it is the first time in their lives where they actually had a little money. why keep them down? are we not all in this together? jonathan in goldsboro, north carolina. caller: i'm a truck driver. i'm running roughly $1000 a week and i know there's jobs out there because i've had to look to get this one just recently. and i've seen people making $600 a week staying home. i'm a little sore about it because i do want to get out there and work. i went through the last economic depression we had in the early to thousands where i got laid off and had to join the military. i understand there's work out there and i understand their people that do want to work. there are also jobs. they may not be the jobs you want, but i do know there are jobs out there. i have a problem spending my tax dollars with people that are making more now on this unemployment benefit than they were making before. i have a problem with it. i don't feel like it should be out here slaving to earn $300 more on average than someone .itting at home host: all right jonathan. >> i'm really glad that you were able to get that job congratulations. that's a good solid income in our economy. numbers, the national and the truth of the matter is that there six people collecting unemployment benefits for every open job in our economy. so as i said before, even if isry single person who unemployed and can find a job and felt that job, you would still have more than 20 million people who didn't have a job. not everybody can do every job. in order to do the job jonathan has, you have to have a commercial drivers license. not everybody has that. some jobs may be in silicon valley. you have to get the skills training in order to do that. it doesn't happen instantly. some jobs may not be in the locale where people are located. are people going to move across the country in order to get a job. some will, some won't. i want to focus on this very important point. i worked with the company which is a mass online focus group company and we did a focus group a month and a half ago with work or asking them their attitudes about turning to work. and what we found from that mass online focus group of 300 workers is that there is deep and pervasive fear among lots of people of this covid-19 crisis. they really worry about getting sick or making members of their family or extended service sick. and getting people back to work particularly in jobs where they are going to have to be face-to-face with customers is going to be extremely difficult unless we see evidence that employers are taking seriously the need to protect their workers from the virus. and in lots and lots of workplaces we are seeing evidence of the opposite. but employers are not being careful enough. we see retail establishments that allow customers to come in with no mask. we see packing houses where the workers have not been protected, thousands have gotten sick and others have died. we see transit works -- workers getting sick and some of them dying. workers are very worried about back to work in this environment. there are real racial disparities here. 43% of white workers felt it was safe to go back but only 21% of workers and 18% of african-american workers felt it was safe to go back to work. that's an understandable response by black and latin workers to the experience those communities have had over the last several months. because they have much more likely to get infected and dying. i think the fear factor is incredibly important i think it's the leading economic the united states. folks don't want to catch this coronavirus. dolores.'s go to caller: my name is dolores. i'm 61 years old. i've been working since i was 15 doingold at a hotel coffee and lounge. i work around many people traveling all over the world. so hotel employers stopped working since march 15. is $239.come coming in the $600 they were giving us was a big help to workers that work at hotels. host: are you still working your full schedule that you were before? caller: no. i'm not working at all. no employees are working at the hotel right now because they shut us down since march 15. $600 was doing us real good. host: appreciate your experience. any comment? >> you happened to working with the industries that was the most hard-hit by this pandemic. all those industries where there face-to-face interaction with, hospitality, eating and drinking establishments, travel. retail. those industries got hit so hard right at the beginning and that disadvantage a lot of women like dolores, those industries tend to have a disproportionately large percentage of women in their as well as workers of color. there are folks who are being disproportionately affected why this pandemic recession and the idea that we should take money out of their pockets because we think they may be getting a little extra money out of the system is unfair and isn't in the right way to go. if we are worried about people getting too much money, really gaming and cheating the system, let's take a closer look at some of the folks got money in these business loan programs. businesses that easily could have gotten any from public debt markets but instead borrowed money at no cost or low cost from the federal government and millions of dollars. that's really where we should be focusing our outrage and the attention of the public, lobbying our senators and congresspeople to do oversight to make sure the people who get the business loans in the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars that those people are the people who need it most, who are keeping their workers on the payroll, helping their communities thrive, surviving this pandemic recession, and not folks who are just cronies of the current administration in washington and helping line their pockets. that's what we really need to be outraged about and focused on. host: seth harris is a visiting professor at cornell on public policy. appreciate your time on washington journal. we will be joined by the public interest legal foundation's cleta mitchell, joining us to talk about voting by mail after yesterday's primary. that's coming up here on the program. ♪ >> book tv on c-span2 has top nonfiction books and off every weekend. coming, sir lena maxwell with her book, the end of white politics. on identity politics and how to create a more inclusive democratic party. marilyn republican governor larry hogan on his life and career with his book, still standing. c-span2 this tv on weekend. this week marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic awnings of hiroshima and nagasaki. wesley spence washington journal live thursday at 8:00 a.m. eastern for a discussion about the bombings with ian told, author of twilight of the gods and clifton truman daniel, grandson of harry truman. then on sunday, watch american history tv and washington journal as we look back at how the bombings ended with her to and their legacy in decades ahead with richard frank, author , and a professor at american nuclear studies institute. watch the 75th anniversary of the bombing of hiroshima and and thursday.day this week, two hearings before the senate today at 10 of 5 a.m., sally yates, the former acting attorney general at the start the trump administration testifies on the russian investigation. chad wolf will testify on the department's deployment of personnel to protest unrest across the country. watch live on c-span. online at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. washington journal continues. than three months to election day. we are joined by cleta mitchell, chair of the public interest legal foundation to talk about election security. good morning. welcome to washington journal. >> good morning. nice to be with you. host: tell us about your foundation. >> the public interest legal foundation is dedicated to protecting the integrity of our elections and to serve as a counter to the marriott leftist groups that are very well-funded who are filing lawsuits all over the country to try to upend the election laws of the states and just trying to serve as a balance and a counter to the increasing demands of leftist groups to change our elections ,rocess and really to eliminate their goal appears to be to eliminate all the safeguard that have been put in place in the early part of the 20th century to shift the responsibility for conducting a shins to the states from the political parties and to protect the right of individuals to vote, have secret ballots, to not be intimidated or harassed in voting. our foundation is dedicated to trying to get election officials to clean their terminals so that are on thegible rules and to ensure that the outtion laws are carried and that every citizen who is eligible vote is able to vote with the confidence that his or her ballot will be counted and that those who are not eligible will not interfere in the integrity of the election. host: how is your foundation funded? >> well, we get along. i'm a volunteer. our little foundation has grown, but there's been a lot of good work, it is shown how dangerously out of date the rulesroles are -- voting are. we try to intervene where we can and make sure there's always a voice in the process for those of us believe in election integrity administration being carried out properly. that votersstem feel confident about. where are a 501(c)(3) educational and public-interest law from as the irs defines it. host: let me ask you about an cowrote, a fox news piece in april, the headline of which said coronavirus and elections, risk of voter fraud. he wrote that no one should forget that absentee valid voting is vulnerable to intimidation, fraud and chaos as all male elections move behind closed doors the on the oversight of elected. not to mention lengthy delays in certifying questionable results. a number of primaries have happened in sven. what do you think the evidence of those primaries have borne out? >> i think we were very prescient in telling people what was going to happen. byn you increase voting mail, you increase the odds of fraud and intimidation among other things. bipartisane carter-baker cochairing commission looking at election systems across the country, and here's what they said. remain thellots largest source of potential voter fraud. they said that in 2005. new york times in 2012 for an article about the fact that mail balloting was a huge concern and source of potential fraud. my talk about the system of election administration, were talking about people going to the polls and casting votes in a process -- there's no in the voting process. voters can cast their ballot without being pressured by political parsons. you don't have those protections when you are voting inside nursing homes. those who are most vulnerable, senior citizens, there's a huge concern about whether or not those people are going to be political partisan actors going into those group homes and influencing and in fact practically voting the ballots for those citizen. concern and if you look at what happens as far as , we had an election in new york six weeks ago. that just finished counting and certifying elections yesterday. -- some of is that the studies by the election assistance commission and by the u.s. postal service, which have documented just in recent weeks and days that when you vote by mail, you don't have any assurance that your ballot is actually going to be delivered to you on time and delivered back to the election officials on time and in fact there is a huge number of ballots that have been lost and undeliverable votes that were sent by mail. host: let me ask you about the reuters reporting on mail-in voting. there piece in july said that fraud is rare in u.s. mail-in voting and here the method that vented. with the number of americans voting by mail on november 3, expected to nearly double, there in voter increase -- fraud. the conservative heritage foundation found 14 cases of attempted mail fraud out of roughly 15.5 million ballot casts in oregon since that state started conducting elections by mail in 1998. the most prominent cases of mail fraud involved campaigns, not voters. north carolina invalidated the results of an election after officials found a republican campaign operative orchestrated a ballot fraud scheme. do you think the oregon example is typical of mail and experiences in states? >> no i don't. i didn't hear who you said wrote that piece. host: that is from reuters. found the media is hardly unbiased on this issue. but that's a topic for another day. election, the election assistance commission surveys all the states and one of the western they ask is of the ballots you sent out or absentee ballots requested and transmitted from the election officials to the voters, what percentage of those were returned to you undeliverable or not utilized or spoiled for any reason. oregon in 2014 and 2016 did not answer the question. for some reason they didn't even respond. but in 2018 they admitted that ballots were not returned. i would be very concerned about that. there were about 2 million votes in the presidential election in 2016. what's 2% of 2 million? 40,000 votes. i think it's really important to realize that even in a state , bothashington or oregon of which had legislators decide that they would have mail-in voting, it took years before they were able to get there voter rolls cleaned up and make sure the ballots they were sending where people actually lived where they said they lived. family -- and yet every election even though they have told the election officials, their parents at a ballot for their parents and for each of their daughters even though those girls have been gone for eight to 10 years. when we haveelling a situation, there are dead people on the roles, there are not eligible people on the rolls. our foundation did a study in one county in pennsylvania. -- person was at the russia actively registered seven times. he would get seven ballots. this is what the left-wing groups are trying to happen. the post office has said its goal is only to lose 4%. is only to lose 4% of the ballot that is sent out. that inn't even reach the elections. host: airgas -- our guest is cleta mitchell. (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independent. if you have had experience voting by mail, (202) 748-8003. u.s., mail-in voting. seven states and the district of columbia you can mail-in ballot. excusetates require an beyond covid and seven states require no excuse. wilmington.phen in caller: she kind of tapped that with who funds her group. if the male is good enough for the senses, i don't understand her position. >> the census is all of the above. they use mail, door-to-door, online. workerse an army of whose job it is to know who has responded and to go back to people using various methodologies so i do think you can compare the methodology -- methodologies employed by the census department to voting. about is theerned idea that we're going to flood the system, which is ill-prepared to handle the massive influx of voting by the, when more than half of voters in previous elections have voted in person either early or on election day. it's really problematic when you suddenly shift in the days leading up to an election, you shift the entire system to mail when the post office has already said that they are not, their goal is not even to be able to 4%iver timely the ballots of of the people. inspectorffice general just released that only 81% of the ballots were delivered on a timely basis. if i'm voting, i want to make sure my vote is received and cast, i will make sure it is get ting there and counted. host: ms. mitchell, do you care to expound upon the question of funding the caller asked about? guest: we received money and public and private individuals. it is not like we have 10 or 20 groups funded by george soros -- where does your money come from? it comes from foundations and individuals concerned about election integrity. it is not much of a secret. all of our foundation grants are published in the annual report that they have given us money. host: john, republican line, arlington, virginia. caller: your guests spelled out a couple of problems that we had, washington and oregon have been in the business for quite a while and still they have problems. have this problem of vote harvesting, which north -- a republican had to resign because some of his supporters vote harvested, but in california they do it all the time. there is a suit to allow vote harvesting, which is a real problem. when you go to a voting booth, there are republican, democrat poll watchers -- vote harvesters are a whole different animal, and it is dangerous to democracy. i go along with her on the mail in problem -- i voted absentee but to dothat is ok, this on a mass basis when the country is not ready for it yet, just by example and by pratt practice, it would lead to a disaster, especially with the problem of when to the balance count -- when do the ballots counted when they come in? election day? five days later react that there is all this stuff out there and it has not been regularized. the termn mentioned voter harvesting. what is that and how prevalent is that in the united states? guest: it is illegal in many states, but democrats are filing suit to make it legal. mm part ofbeliever, a task force our nation put together to establish standards for voting by mail. one of the standards is that the ballot, the application and the ballot themselves, should not be handled by third parties. they should go from the election board through the postal service to the voter back to the election boards be of the mail or an immediate family member is allowed to deposit those and help and assist with those, but not to allow partisans and campaign operatives to go door-to-door havecting ballots and third parties out after the election going to third places to try to generate more votes where they know they need them. that is what happened in california in 2016 and 2018. it seems to me, their arguments are completely contradictory. on the one hand, they say we have to have mail-in voting because of covid. on the other hand, they are saying we want ballot harvesting to be legal so strangers can come to your home and collect your ballot. to me, it makes no sense. it is very dangerous, there are too many interested -- in new jersey, the attorney general has indicted four individuals for engaging in voter fraud in their primary, and that happened recently. --re are many interested many instances and situations where they determined where the votes are and go get them, and may be your ballots is picked up by somebody -- they know you are a republican and they don't want your vote delivered, your vote might get cast aside. it is a big problem when you let campaign workers and third parties and strangers put themselves -- and the law allows them -- put themselves between the voter and the election officials. host: we will go to marriott in georgia,- marion in democrat line. caller: if it is a bank teller, would you close down a large bank? no. people do stupid things, but they are in a teeny, tiny minority. let me read something i just saw -- if it is safe to mail tax refunds, social security checks, stimulus checks, drafts registrations, prescription drugs, driver's licenses or actual id used to vote, it is safe to vote by mail. don't try to scare people. this is a small minority. they are problem people in every and that our life,, does not mean you destroy the entire system. this is a good idea. i am a senior citizen and by god i am going to vote. butve never voted by mail, i am going to this time because i am afraid and i want my vote to count. so i would appreciate you not trying to scare everybody. thank you. guest: i'm not trying to scare people. i'm telling you what the facts and statistics show. the government reports from the u.s. post office. hear what i am saying. the u.s. postal service just issued a report in the last isth showing that their goal to be able to timely process 96% of the ballots, what they call political mail. that is their goal, to only lose 4%. let's imagine that you had all mail voting in ohio in 2016. would you like to know how many ballots in ohio in 2016 -- i looked this up last night. were 5.6 million votes cast in ohio in the presidential election in 2016. if the postal service is unable to deliver 4% of them, that is a quarter of a million votes. that is a quarter of a million votes, ballots that are not delivered on a timely basis. to me -- that is if you are all of the post office. there are jurisdictions in america, according to the u.s. postal service, where they can only deliver 81% of the ballots. that is nearly 20% of the ballots in a given area that were not timely delivered. given thea mitchell, increase in mail-in voting because of the pandemic, does it make sense to increase resources, funding, and personnel for the post office so they can process and deliver those ballots? office and, the post its operations are a subject for another program. i will say this. i believe very strongly one of the things that would help is if every jurisdiction will require by law to run their voter rolls through the national change of address system and remove people who have moved from their addresses. the postal service does maintain the ncla, the national trains of change of address registry. not moving in great numbers because of covid. the postal service should be required and the election should be required to coordinate and keep running beer voter rolls through that registry -- running their voter rolls through that registry to stop sending ballots to people who no longer live where they may be registered to vote. congress has made several billion dollars available in the first two cares act and covid relief bills, and made money available to states to clean up their voter rolls and prepare for the election, and there really is no excuse for voter rolls to be such a mess, but the keeprats always sue to election officials for maintaining the integrity of their voter rolls. we know there are dead people and people who have moved and people who are not citizens on the voter roll, suspending a ballot to everybody on the voter roll is a huge problem because it clogs the system and gives people the opportunity to vote ballots they are not legally qualified to vote with. host: the london national says this about that -- the only beason someone should purged from the voter records as if they are dead. what right do you have to purge them, no matter how infrequent they vote, other than voter suppression? ryan is next in hackensack, new jersey -- guest: can i response to that? that is absolutely ridiculous. there are dead people on the lls, they have moved, they have lived in in another state -- they should not be receiving ballots at a written address where they don't live. every state has provisions as to who is legally eligible to vote. those laws should be enforced. if somebody only wants to vote every five or six years, fine. with aect to go vote provisional ballots, be removed from the active role, and maybe they can call you up -- active roll, and maybe they can call you up. to say it is voter suppression to endorse the law and make sure only citizens, living people, and only people who live where they are registered to vote -- somehow that's voter suppression? that is ridiculous. host: brian, you are on the air, hackensack, new jersey. caller: it is hackensack, minnesota. host: oh, i'm sorry. caller: i worked over the years, i would get an absentee ballot and vote. but when i voted, i had to find another official -- find an to -- well, ial had to find one of them and they had to put me in a room where i could vote, then they verified my application and stuff. they signed that ballot and i put that in another envelope and mail it again. well, all ing -- have understand you have to do is sign it. no one has to verify your signature. the security in the mail -- and i don't even know absentee ballots -- cleta mitchell, in terms of mail-in voting, what most states are -- what are most states requiring a people request a mail-in ballot? guest: it varies state by state, and i cannot even begin to tell litigation that has been filed by left-wing groups to preclude any kind of verification. there have been lots of suggestions about possibly issuing people an identification number that would have a combination of your name and the last four digits of your social security number, so that is on the voter rolls and that is the number you would include on your ballots. ways to authenticate that the ballot is by the- or returned person listed on the voter rolls. with very difficult signature verification, because obviously our signatures do change over time and election officials are not handwriting expert. it is a difficult process to ensure that there is authenticity and verification of who the voter is. let's imagine a scenario -- if you are not on it and you get four ballots at your house or your apartment -- multi family dwellings, apartment buildings where may be on the ballot this woman says it is suppression to remove people from the roll? let's think about apartments for a moment. 10 to 20 people could have lived at your same address in the last 10 to 15 years, and if ballots come in all of those names and i live there, i can sit there and vote everybody's ballot. there is nothing to stop me. that is a big problem if we don't have proper verification, and it is difficult to have verification and methodologies in place to make sure that ballot is from that actual voter. host: we will hear from jerry in western maryland, oakland, maryland, who used the absentee ballot by voting in that state. caller: no, the local election board had problems appear. 10 to 20k the last years, our mail has to go 200 miles east to baltimore and 200 miles back again. i called the local election board, and he said yours is not an isolated case. i will mail you another one. the way they set it up in maryland, each county had one polling place. i said, i am not sending my vote back to baltimore again. we took our ballots up to the armory and put them in the ballot box, and that is the way we are going to do at this time. this system has so many flaws it is not funny, and it starts with the post office. like i said, we had to send our mail 200 miles to baltimore and back. a lot of it gets lost, from birthday cards on down. that is my comment. very importanta point this gentleman is making. i will give you an example -- in arizona, one of the things we severald over the last election cycles going back more than 15 years is the increase in the number of mail ballots after election day -- it takes them weeks to count all the ballots in the county. you do not know the result of the election for days and sometimes weeks after the election. the reason is -- i am told that the processing center, the mail processing center for the u.s. postal service for arizona is now in idaho. their mail has to go from arizona to idaho and back to phoenix. so that causes a lot of delays. just throwing money at the post office when they have been losing money, closing mail processing centers -- what this gentleman is experiencing is not unusual. i live in a small community south of brolly, north carolina , northh of raleigh carolina, and all the mail used to be processed in this village. now it goes from here to an adjacent city where they have a big processing center, then comes back. it may take four or five days to get something across town, but they get lost. the gentleman is right. they get lost. that is something the post office acknowledged. this is an the president trump saw has been happening with increasing frequency over the years and if we flood the postal service with mail-in ballots, i do not know how we can possibly know the outcome of this presidential election in time for the electoral college to meet. that may be part of the plan, to create such chaos that the electoral college will not be able to meet in the house of representatives -- host: a question from twitter, what is miss mitchell's proposal for dealing with covid? we are at risk of losing more ballots because of exceptionally bringings and people the disease back to their family. does she support greatly expanded early voting? caller: i do not think you need to expand early voting. most states have early voting. this is one thing the general government made available -- we can follow the same kind of andnliness and sanitation disinfecting protocols, social distancing, wear your mask, disposable pens -- there's all kinds of things that can be done that will protect workers. in the primary where we have already seen voting this year with covid, we have not seen a spike in covid cases as a result of in-person learning. these are scare tactics. talk about scaring people, try to scare people into not going to the polls? to me, that is voter suppression. the government has made funding available to the localities, local election officials, billions of dollars already appropriated so that election officials can hire more workers and train them and make sure they have the proper sanitation and disinfectants. the same thing that allows us to go to the pharmacy or the grocery store. host: one mail and experience from renee in marietta, georgia. i voted in the primary, my vote was listed on the voter page. no problem. it worked fine. in houston,rom ed democrat line. caller: yes, i have been an off for judge on and 30 or 40 years and held the democratic runoff in my district. people had already voted, either early or by mail, so we faced very little turnout actually at the polls, may be 25%, which is 300 to 400 votes. the problem i have with ms. mitchell is she seems to feel less voting is better. guest: no. no. caller: following the velocity that only people are rich and well educated should be allowed to vote. guest: well, that is a crazy assumption. i never said anything suggested that. i started out talking about people i am concerned about are the most vulnerable voters -- the elderly, the infirm. they are the most at risk of being pressured and intimidated and having their votes stolen. i am very earned about this. i want everyone to vote. i want everyone who is eligible to vote. i do not want people who are not eligible to be spoiling the system for the rest of us who are legally eligible to vote. see a do not want to situation where someone thinks he or she can cast a ballot, but it is lost and not recorded. it is tragic. i think people ought to be aware of what are the tracking mechanisms to keep up on mail. the woman from georgia said there was a barcode and she voteed it, her was posted and counted. if you want to vote by mail, do what the man from western maryland said. make sure your vote is tracked, and if you apply for a valid and have not gotten it, follow-up and make sure that you get your ballot and track it and it is delivered and counted. i just want to make certain that people seem to think -- certain that -- people seem to think, why not just mail everyone on the voter rolls a ballot? that is a good way to ensure millions of fraudulent and lost votes, and we need to be concerned about making sure people who are legally eligible to vote are able to vote and have the confidence that their vote is going to be returns timely and counted. that is what i am concerned about. this business of accusing me of not wanting anyone to vote, it is just a liberal lie. another liberal lie. host: let's hear from our caller in connecticut, who voted by mail. caller: good morning. i received my ballot, put it in on monday at my town hall in a very secure box. i have voted in every election but duefe in person, to covid and severe health issues, i am not going to take a risk and give up my right to vote. it is difficult to listen to this conversation because you people like your guest and other parties would spend this much time and energy on educating people on how to do this right, clean up our voter rolls on things like that -- if someone in your family passes, go to the court and let them know. when i went back to my maiden name, i went to the court and corrected it. it is now back. when my daughter moved out of state after college, she unregistered from our town here, took the lead just -- the and registered in her new place. we get what we pay for, basically. you go there,et marisol. civic duty and voter engagement? guest: 100%, i agree. i wish everyone would remember to notify their local election officials if they move. most people forget to do that. that's why -- there are a lot of things with the voter rolls -- there's so many problems with the voter rolls, because election officials do not maintain them in the way they should. state, both of those young women who notified they election officials had moved, non-withstanding continue to received ballots. -- received ballots. so even if you notify people, i do not live at this address, i moved down state, it does not translate. it is as big a priority as what we do, keeping and maintaining those voter rolls. we fought to huge battle -- a , our foundation, the public interest legal foundation, we fought a huge battle to every time we file a lawsuit to get an election official to clean up the voter rolls and a jurisdiction, we are faced with an onslaught of left-wing groups and big money lawyers who to -- defend the right of the election officials to keep the voter rolls of screwed up as they are. we had that experience in 2017, when our foundation brought a an election official in broward county, florida, because the voter rolls were unmatched. there were 17 lawyers and law firms that came in on the other side, from the aclu, the usual suspect, and argued against cleaning up the rolls and the mechanisms in that county. guess what? guess you had a problem in the 2018 election in florida? pointd county, to the where she was removed by the new governor because of the mess of that county. we tried to prevent that in 2017 and the democrats and the left wing groups stopped us. host: let me ask you about florida in relation to president trump. he tweeting this morning about nevada, saying this -- nevada has ciro infrastructure for matt -- zero infrastructure for mail-in voting. it will be a disaster. florida has built a great infrastructure over years with two great republican governors. florida, send in your ballots. the president was asked about his comments on florida and why he approves of absentee voting in florida and not in other states. i want to play that for you and get your response. [video clip] florida has a great republican governor and had a great republican governor. it had ron desantis, rick scott -- two very great governors. over this period of time, they have been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. florida is different from other states. governor, you have a let's send out millions of ballots and the post office cannot be prepared. i have not spoken to them about it but i do not know how they could possibly be prepared. florida has been working on this for years and they have a very good system of mail in. or beyonde absentee absentee. in florida, there are not too many people that qualify. a well-run state, low taxes, everything. they have done a great job. the two governors between the both of them have a great system of absentee ballots and even in the case of mail-in ballots, the postal services are built up -- it takes a long time. when you look at the carolyn maloney election, i think you have to do that election over. that election is no good. you have to take a look in new york. they have thousands of ballots that don't know what happened to them. that is a relatively small number of ballots, but they have to do the election in new york over. the times wrote a front-page story about it. it is a disaster. it is a mess. they have to do that election over. nobody can know what the election result is. in the case of florida they have done a great job. they have had tremendous success with it, but they have been doing this for years and made it really terrific. in florida, you can mail in your ballots. you don't have to go -- maybe in a couple of other state have worked out a system, but this took years to do. host: they have called that race in new york for carolyn mahoney. host: guest: one of the things -- guest: one of the things they do in florida which is not what they are talking about in nevada , let me take florida -- you send in an application and request an absentee ballot. then they send you the ballots. they don't just wholesale mail applications are ballots to everybody on the roll. there is a process for obtaining an absentee ballots, returning it and verifying that you are the voter who returned it. the problem is when they come up with a system to mail applications or ballots to everybody on the roll. that is a big problem. andda, its legislature governor met in the middle of the night and came up with a whole new election system. it is not the time to be changing the system. nevada has had a pretty robust early voting system with voting around the population centers look, oneave had -- of the things i think is interesting, when you are voting in physical locations, there are counters on the machines so you know at the beginning of the day and at the end of every day how many ballots were issued, how many ballots were returned and put through the county mechanism. when you have wholesale sending way toots, you have no be able to determine where this actually was delivered, where they delivered to the right voter? has reportede esc that out of 43 million ballots mailed in the united states and 28.4% of those were returned undeliverable, spoiled ballots. voters had to go in person provisionally -- that is 28.4%, almost a third of all the ballots that were mailed by election officials in 2018. so i'm not trying to scare people. i'm just saying, if we double or triple or quadruple the number of ballots that are just sent 2020, i don'tin know how the system can manage it. there's got to be -- it's got to be particularly acute in the cities. it is not as big a problem in the rural areas, but we heard up from callers about the problem of getting their absentee ballots because of the delay in the mail system. i think the president is right. it is inappropriate for the legislature to determine in the middle of the night, three months before the election, to completely up and the system. i worry about that. i think he is right to be worried and i worry about the conclusion of our election. i don't like the chaos. i don't like the chaos. host: our guest is cleta chair of the public interest legal foundation. thank you for joining us. of ahead on washington journal, as schools begin to open online, virtually and in person, we would like to hear from parents only in the next hour. what is ahead for your kids, , middlery, high school and college students. eastern and central time zones, (202) 748-8000. mountain pacific, (202) 748-8001 . ♪ >> c-span has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events. c-span'satch all of public affairs programming on television, online, or with the free radio app. and be part of the daily conversation through c-span's daily washington journal program or our social media feed. c-span, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. binge watch booktv this summer. saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m. eastern, settle in and watch several hours of your favorite authors. saturday, featuring books written by former first ladies, including rosalynn carter, barbara bush, hillary clinton, laura bush, and michelle obama. and watch as we feature the late and nobel prize-winning author toni morrison. summer,tch booktv all on c-span two. host: a little over 25 minutes left. many school systems have opened across the country. we want to hear from parents only. how are your kids going to fare virtually or in person at your school's? line to8-8000 is the call for those of you in eastern and central time zone. (202) 748-8001 mountain and pacific,. and we welcome your comments fire text -- via text as well, (202) 748-8003. the new york times with their opinion piece, opening schools won't be easy, but here's how to do it safely. not all schools will be able to restart, but here's how those can, if the focus is on more than the classroom. let's be clear, not all schools will be safe to restart. we need to understand this. kindergarten through 12th grade involves more than just the classroom. writes the schools, than, is much more complex just having students where face masks and sit physically distance from one another in class. we must ensure that all five of the core school based activities -- transportation, time in the andsroom, mealtimes, gym extracurricular activities are safe. we created a school risk index to assess the dangers and offer recommendations to reduce the chance of spreading the virus, not only among students but also among teachers and other employees. the new york times with five different areas. on transportation -- in terms of transporting kids to and from school, on the low risk side of things, walking or riding a with a, riding in a car member of the household, family member only. withm risk, carpooling non-household members. high risk, school bus or public transportation. subway or bus. in terms of routine classwork, desk-basedow risk is instruction, shop and vocational /technical classes, and going to the restroom. medium risk is unmonitored study halls, at high risk behavior in terms of kids back in an actual school -- lockers, changing rooms between classes. (202) 748-8000 for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001, mountain and pacific. the topic of school safety came up last week at a hearing that heard from cdc director robert redfield, dr. fauci and others. here is the house minority whip, questioning dr. redfield. [video clip] >> i want to talk to you about reopening schools. you have been very involved in this -- cdc has put out multiple documents of guidance for safely reopening schools here. checklist for parents, checklist for teachers, guidance for k-12 school administrators on the use of cloth face masks in schools. some people want to make that controversial. this is president trump's plan, safely his plan to reopen schools. you have school decision-making tools for parents, caregivers and guardians. are these parts of the president's plan to safely reopen schools? >> yes. >> have you been involved in developing that with president trump? >> yes. >> do you think schools should reopen in the fall within person learning? >> yes. i think it is in the best interest of k-12 students to get back to face-to-face learning. i think there are public health consequences of the school closure -- they lack the ability to detect child abuse that occurs and is detected often in schools. do you not much child abuse will not be detected of children are not returning to the school? >> we are seeing less reporting of it and it is a consequence of the school closures. they get mental health support, nutritional support from schools. we are seeing an increase in drug use disorder as well as suicide in adolescent individuals, so i think it is important to realize it is not public health versus the economy about school opening, it is public health versus public health in k-12 to get these schools open. you have to do it safely and -- >> i appreciate that. comments, parents only. deborah in new haven, connecticut. good morning. caller: i am a grandparent and also a childcare worker. the kids come before and after beool, and the concern would if you have the children in school, which you see what has happened when we opened up the and all the kids became infected from the camp situation, we know all the kids together, there is a really good chance they are going to then they come back home or to a childcare provider, because children need before and after school care to a certain age. now you have [inaudible] in school. you get infected in school. you come back and get that child you are going now to infect possibly the childcare provider and the children in the childcare, and that opens it up to other children. [indiscernible] i understand both ways, both opinions. through has to be taken a lens that it is not just going to be the kids. involved the workers with the children, including any afterschool care that they go to. everybody's got a parent or whatever. [indiscernible] it always seems to come back to -- economic simplification implications, and there is more than the economic implications. i am a senior, i am in that percentile that might be susceptible to get the, get this virus. i am going to worry about that too. we have to pick up a little bit more, just a little bit more beyond the economic impact. host: ray in alabama. hi there. caller: yeah. host: mute your volume and then go ahead with your comment. i think they should go back to school. it's too early. -- should not go back to school. it is too early. [indiscernible] and trump, he opened up two tooopoened up quick. [indiscernible] alabama. in up in the points brought usa today, in their section on kids going back to school, is the issue of social isolation, kids working or doing school virtually, entirely from home. the question they raise, can social isolation harm kids? saved social isolation might bring a range of psychological harms. originhers in china, the of the pandemic, examined a sample group of 2330 schoolchildren for signs of emotional distress. after around a month of lockdown, 22 point six of them reported depressive symptoms and nearly 19% experiencing anxiety. the american academy of pediatrics has advocated for "having students physically present in school." mcdonald, tennessee. this is pat. go ahead. caller: yes, i am a grandparent and i am very involved in my grandkids' schooling, anything to do with my grandkids. -- i want the schools to open, i want them to go ahead. these kids are very happy to be able to go back to school. we don't know yet what everything is going to pan out to be, but they have things they have to do and be responsible for. they need to get back to school to be with other children, it might not be physically able to be close to them anymore, but they need to be with somebody other than their parents, their grandparent, or another older child. this involves everybody. you need to say yes -- this is a political thing, and it is not just the virus. i think people -- see people out shopping, at the grocery store, their kids are with them, etc. etc.. open the schools and the kids that are sickly, keep them at home. we do that anyway to prevent them from getting what everybody else has. send the kids back to school. socialize. host: melanie is up next in chandler, arizona. good morning. caller: good morning. i completely disagree with the previous caller. we are keeping their kids -- our kids home. they return to school virtually on monday. they have their computer setup and they are virtually learning, and this virus is so new and we don't know much about it and how it affects kids. even if they do return to school, which they are slated to do on the 17th of august -- by think that will be pushed back -- they live at home with their parents and multigenerational households, so it is inevitable they are going to spread the virus. we have seen this. county schools in georgia had this experience where they returned to school and hundreds or more staff and students were infected. i think they should just wait, push it back and until there is a vaccine, honestly, i don't feel comfortable having the until at them return least 2021 or later. host: school-age kids -- how old are they? have two teenagers, 14 and 15. a freshman and sophomore in high school. host: and what was their experience in the final few months of the last term? they were -- they've been out of school since march, because they were supposed to return from spring break and that is when this all came crashing down. the school issued the laptops to when theyally so that did return for the last few weeks of school, they were on their laptops. the schools are making it convenient for the parents that issuedave the laptops be , and it is a way to accommodate these families that need a have the personal learning in the house. we have been lucky and the schools, they won't reopen based off of what the white house is trying to put in their agenda. they will do what is right and listen to the health professionals and the scientists. host: certainly as a parent, you had to do a bit more monitoring of their school work, i suspect? caller: correct. i work from home as well right i can check on them, monitor them, and this first week there have been some snacks, but that is to be but that issnags, to be expected. the virtual learning to have done with their high school, it is like they are returning to school, they have period classes, they are live with the teacher and other student through each -- students through each period class. there are no assignments this week. it is because of some kids having connectivity issues, wrong classes, or not all the links are working, but that's just getting worked out day day, and it's uncharted territory. host: i appreciate you calling in this morning. this is an interesting map that works better on television than radio, but it shows the patchwork of reopening plans f u.s. schools -- for u.s. schools. the deep blue means they have gone full remote learning. the more towards the white is a hybrid plan or partial, and the or in person.ll as you can see from that map, it runs the gamut across the united states. we will hear from brian in oregon, illinois next up. caller: how are you doing? i've got four kids here, they are all school-age kids. they are all in junior high and great school, and they have been home since march also. homeschooling is a nightmare for a parent, especially a single parent. another thing, no one is actually following the science. everything i have read online in other countries, children have a 0% chance of transmissibility and almost a zero chance to become really sick . most studies show influenza is more deadly to children then this covid-19. and we have a vaccine for the flu, and still 90,000 people a year die from it, you know? why don't we follow the science and do what we should do, and follow the science? the science says kids are not susceptible to this disease, and kids need to be in school. they need to socialize with other children. it is a very important part of the learning process. host: michelle in new york, good morning. caller: yes, i will kind of follow up with the last gentleman. they let the children out when [indiscernible] cuomo --time, governor i live in new york -- can start the progress for the children to go back to school. i work in a hospital that has a mental health unit, and i can verify you that the children that are coming through that system are direct effect from this. [inaudible] no one is following the science. and nobody is standing up for our children. i live in a community -- i cannot tell you, i know no one who knows no one who knows no one who knows no one who has coronavirus. but i know someone who was goten by a mosquito and equine encephalitis. [indiscernible] and not taking up individual children and [indiscernible] andderstand that teachers older employees might be affected, but you have student teachers and everything else be more direct teachers to our children. you are taking away our children's education. host: michelle in new york. an update on the congressional race, one of the primaries holdsday, the hill, talib a large lead over detroit city council president brendan jones in the democratic primary, but only with 16% of precincts reporting, according to the associated press. andy is in lewiston, california. good morning. caller: good morning. just waking up here. thist think it's nuts, short period of time this pandemic has gone on, we've seen more and more lives being lost. i found it -- one word in a with thecaller, teaching, the virtual teaching -- that's the keyword, live. let's give our children alive. -- keep our children alive. we want them all to go back to school, but we sent the and to play.tes out that was a mistake and is going in a terrible direction. i think it is putting price tags on lives, it's just not the way to go here. stay safe. thank you. host: thank you, andy. some social media reaction on text and twitter. connie from illinois says this -- we have zero kos -- zero cases of covid in my county. kids should be in school. it is not the same in chicago. treat each county individually. -- the fact that it takes a pandemic to implement virtual learning is irrational. and from georgia -- i am grateful that my rent children in texas, my great-nephew in north carolina, and my great-niece are being virtually taught by their moms, dads and aunties. this is not the time to return to in classrooms. marjorie in winchester, ohio -- i hope i have that right. go ahead. good morning. i'm a school bus driver. i got children. those children are packed on that bus. we have closed schools from the flu before. i think it is absolutely crazy -- everything has said, even the science, that big crowds keep it going and expose more people. i don't understand the logic in putting the children in big crowds to learn. i understand the importance of them getting their education, but they need to live. i just totally disagree. it scares me really, a lot. update from the negotiations on capitol hill, on the latest pandemic relief package. a couple of tweets from chad , a meeting today on coronavirus talks. house speaker nancy pelosi will host minority leader chuck schumer, white house chief of staff mark meadows, and treasury secretary steven mnuchin at 3:00 p.m. in her office. joining that session is postmaster general lewis to dejoy. -- s asy will discuss mail issues well as a democratic push for assistance for the postal service going into the election. our next caller, hello. caller: hello, thank you for taking my call. how are you? great show. i am a parent, grandparent -- why did it take so long to get the schools back, the kids back in school? we have had enough time to have a plan in order, in place. i just want to know why everyone is panicking? we knew this was going to happen, so why didn't someone have a plan? thank you. host: max, are you still there? what is the plan in detroit? what are schoolkids doing? inler: my children are florida and ohio, and grandchildren into dante states -- in two states. i went to vote yesterday. i think they are trying to open up. they are boycotting, protesting i reallyervices, so don't know. i'm just grateful to know that some of them, different states have different plans in order. i really don't know what's going on in detroit. that is the problem. it just boggles my mind that no one had a plan, that this should have been [indiscernible] what's next? thank you. journal,l street writing about the city of detroit. here is the headline for that into what school could be like. what could school be like in the fall, summer school in detroit offers a preview. up next week your from brad -- we hear from brad. good morning. importantthink it's that we get kids back in school. i think it could possibly be one of the worst mistakes we've ever made to not ensure they don't make it back to class. being in class, the country has a lot of brainpower here. it doesn't have to be one or two hard options that we choose between. another thing, you had a caller a few calls ago and not to knock her, by any means, her situation was one where she was able to be working from home and her kids were remote learning on the computer. i'm not sure if everybody realizes that not every student in this country has a stable home. are drugids' parents attics. they do not even have an address. they will not have an internet connection. we are severely handicapping our least fortunate students, our disadvantaged students. we are handicapping if we are expecting them to all jump at this remote learning at the same when they didn't even have any training on how to do this when they were abruptly sent home from school in march. there is a lot of thought and care in the country. we should come up with something, but we do not have to disadvantage our kids this way. host: an idea on twitter saying this -- why doesn't c-span open the lineup for kids? let them call in to see how they feel, since some parents are willing to sacrifice their kids for trump's sake. good idea for a future program. an editorial on today's wall street journal about an sec commissioner, michael o'rielly. he has been a guest on our communicators program a number of times. their peace, their opinion on the wall street journal editorial pages -- michael o'rielly has done human work as a member of the federal butunications commission, the white house abruptly pulled his nomination for another five-year term. this week's better of mr. o'reilly than the president. monday announcement gave no reason for dumping mr. o'reilly, who has served on the commission since 2013. 's renomination passed out of the committee with bipartisan support, though janitor james -- senator james a hold on his nomination to take a hostage in a fight between the fcc and the pentagon. but our reporting suggests that mr. o'reilly was scuttled for remarks about regulating speech. invoke on the right and left his room writing section 230 of the communications decency act of 1996, which empowers social companies to scrub objectionable content and shield them from liability for what user say on their pratt -- platforms. mr. o'reilly said in a june c-span interview that he was talking to experts that had "deep reservations" that congress intended the fcc to have such authority. this modesty is unusual for a regulator. they conclude their editorial piece with this -- mr. o'reilly will now be out of a job in 2021, when his voice would be valuable at a biden fcc. this is regrettable, because he has been a champion of innovation and deregulation, especially in areas without glamour, such as misuse of 9/11 these or anachronistic rules on children's programming. the episode is a warming that the left is not the only movement that demands ideological conformity. from the wall street journal. we will take you to capitol hill in a few minutes for the senate foreign relations committee hearing. let's hear from charlie, next in morning., georgia, i want to make a comment. i wife and i used to work for miami-dade public school system -- my wife and i used it work for miami-dade public school system. we are retired now. there is no way you can bring children back to school. there are too many children at school at one time. there is no way you can see them at the distant -- at a distance. no one is going to be at the bus stop to make sure they are wearing masks. i know parents want children to go back to school. i have a son in college right now. college is supposed to star in two weeks and i don't even know if that is going to -- start in two weeks and i don't even know if that is going to be safe. we will be at the third level of this virus and it is not safe. thank you. host: thank you charlie. we take you live to capitol hill. former attorney general sally yates will be testifying before the senate to to sherry committee. we will see you here -- the senate judiciary committee. we will see you here tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern standard time. >> [indiscernible] me?an you hear >> yes, thank you. [laughter] >> we will get through it. [indiscernible] >> [indiscernible] >> yeah, thank you very much. >> [indiscernible] >> something tells me, if we have problems -- [indiscernible] [laughter] i don't think anybody is going to be accusing -- [laughter] [indiscernible] >> that is the world we live in, i'm afraid. safe.better to be >> [indiscernible] [no audio] [no audio] >> good morning, everybody. hearing will come to

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