Why Does The Government Keep Releasing Prisoners Early?

Summary

Newscast (BBC News) Episode Summary

Episode Title: Why Does The Government Keep Releasing Prisoners Early?
Date: August 4, 2026
Host: Adam Fleming
Guests: Dominic Casciani (BBC Home & Legal Affairs Correspondent), Pia Sinha (Chief Executive, Prison Reform Trust; former prison governor), Debbie Adlam (mother of PC Andrew Harper, via recorded interview)

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the UK government’s evolving policy on early prisoner release. Triggered by new changes announced by PM Andy Burnham, the podcast delves into the complexities driving these decisions—ranging from prison overcrowding to political controversy—and considers the practical, political, and social ramifications. The discussion also features insights from prison management experts and the family of a high-profile crime victim, exposing the difficult balance between public safety, justice, and operational reality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Government’s Revision to Early Release Scheme

• Context:
  • The early release scheme was initially introduced under PM Keir Starmer to address prison overcrowding.
  • PM Andy Burnham's first major challenge was controversy over certain prisoners (notably, those involved in the death of PC Andrew Harper) being set for early release.
• Revision Details:
  • Scheme now excludes offenders convicted of rape, serious sexual offences against children, and grooming gangs from early release.
  • Approximately 1,000 of the 6,000 prisoners slated for early release will remain incarcerated under the updated rules.
    • Early release will now start in October (not September) and will be staggered over a year.
    • [03:01–04:03]
• Legislative Update:
  • A new ministerial order will replace the previous one to formalise these changes.

2. The Pressure on Prison Places

• Analysis:
  • Exempting categories of prisoners risks undermining the policy’s intent to relieve prison overcrowding.
    • "If this process was put in place to release the pressure that’s on prison places, and now it’s not going to work as originally intended, the pressure's back on." —Adam Fleming [04:26]
    • "This is one of the biggest risks of introducing exceptions and exemptions...diminishing returns." —Pia Sinha [04:44]
• Consequences:
  • The cycle of ad hoc emergency measures could return if capacity issues aren't resolved.
  • Further exceptions risk "watering down" the scheme’s effectiveness and rationale. [05:52]

3. Implications for PC Andrew Harper’s Case

• Case Background:
  • Two accomplices in the 2019 killing of PC Andrew Harper will still benefit from early release due to the nature of their fixed sentence, despite public outrage.
    • "They’re not getting out in October, but they will get out eventually. That’s why there’s been such outrage from PC Harper’s family." —Dominic Casciani [06:46]
• Family Response:
  • Debbie Adlam (PC Harper's mother) on the scheme's revision:
    • "He told me that the rapists and the paedophiles and grooming gangs, that they wouldn’t qualify. So that was good... But for us, yeah, it’s just really devastating..." [07:53]
    • "Apparently, the situation is, if nothing was done, then the prison system would fall completely. But we’re paying the price for it." [08:51]

4. Long-Term Prison Capacity and Construction Limitations

• Current Status and Projections:
  • Current prison population: ~87,000 (some relief due to emergency early release)
  • Projected by 2029–30: >100,000 (government building 14,000 new cells)
    • "If they don’t have some kind of plan to manage more offenders in the community... you are going to run out of space again. It’s just the inevitability of the maths." —Dominic Casciani [08:51]
• Insufficiency of Building Alone:
  • "You can’t build your way out of this crisis," says Pia Sinha [10:15]
  • New construction often replaces deteriorating Victorian-era prison accommodations, limiting net gain [10:41]

5. Reconsidering 'Prison Outside Prison' & Alternatives in Sentencing

• Community Sentences:
  • Evidence supports robust community sentences (with strict conditions) as more effective for reducing reoffending among certain offender groups.
    • "Community sentences are not light touch... they have a better impact on reducing risk and reducing reoffending." —Pia Sinha [11:52]
• Necessity of Resource Allocation:
  • Probation and police face increased workload and pressure as more released offenders require community management [12:52–13:14]
  • Probation Service struggles after years of cuts and reforms, now facing a resource-intensive recovery [13:17]
    • "700 million quid has gone into probation... but it’s not enough." —Dominic Casciani

6. Systemic and Political Trade-offs

• Recalls and Failure Rates:
  • Recall rates (ex-prisoners sent back for license breaches) have risen to record levels, reflecting the strain on support services and case management [13:53–14:24]
• Choice for Society:
  • "Everybody wants the most dangerous people in society to be locked up... but most people who get locked up don’t get locked up forever. We have to make a choice as a society..." —Dominic Casciani [15:56]

7. Political Responses and Contestation

• Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch:
  • Criticises Labour’s broader early release approach, contrasting it with prior Conservative policies
    • "Never, ever under Conservatives did we have the early release of rapists, paedophiles or killers..." —Kemi Badenoch [16:31]
    • Argues for building more prisons and renting space abroad (citing Sweden), implying current crisis is Labour’s to own
• Practical Feasibility of Foreign Prison Places:
  • Renting places abroad is constrained by availability and the nature of foreign national offenders (not all are eligible for deportation) [17:25]
  • Anticipated political wrangling over further exclusions when the scheme goes back through Parliament

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Pia Sinha on capacity crisis:
  • "You can't build your way out of this crisis... you sometimes use your new stock to replace a crumbling old stock, so the kind of net gain that you get from spaces also gets diminished." [10:15–10:41]
• Debbie Adlam’s emotional reaction:
  • "We’re paying the price for it. You know, it’s Andrew and his family and many others like us. We’re paying the price." [08:51]
• Dominic Casciani’s summary of the broader challenge:
  • "What are we going to do to manage those people and about the amount of cash that goes into that and how you manage them? That is the question that everybody really has to focus on once the political shock of this moment passes." [15:56]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & context: [01:08–01:53]
• Policy changes explained: [03:01–04:03]
• Risks and rationale with exemption categories: [04:26–05:52]
• Harper case implications: [06:28–07:53]
• Prison population projections & limits of building: [08:51–10:15]
• Community sentencing as alternative: [11:52]
• Strain on probation & recall statistics: [13:13–14:24]
• Societal trade-offs, political future: [15:56]
• Conservative political response, feasibility of alternatives: [16:31–19:34]

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Tone and Language

• Direct, factual, and analytical: The hosts and guests strive for clear explanations of complex policy and operational questions.
• Realistic, occasionally blunt: Discussion emphasises the absence of simple solutions: "There are just no winners in it... devastating consequences." —Pia Sinha
• Sombre and empathetic: When addressing victims’ families and public feeling.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a thorough and nuanced exploration of the early release scheme’s evolution, the intractable challenge of prison overcrowding, and the broad societal, operational, and political repercussions. It highlights the tension between public safety, the limitations of the criminal justice infrastructure, and shifting political narratives. The discussion closes by recognising that meaningful solutions will require difficult political decisions and potentially a fundamental rethinking of what criminal sentencing and rehabilitation look like in the UK.

Transcript

[Dominic Casciani]

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[Adam Fleming]

hello. Good to be back in the hot seat after a day on leave. Now, talking of holidays, Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, is supposedly on holiday abroad right now, but we're told by his officials he's in constant touch with number 10. And actually he's announced something today which is a tweak to the early release scheme for prisoners that he'd inherited from his predecessor, Keir Starmer. So we will kick off this episode of Newscast by talking about that. Newscast.

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[Adam Fleming]

Stare at a wall? Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. Now, do you remember in the first couple of days of Andy Burnham's leadership, the first big political challenge he was faced with was the early release scheme for prisoners that he inherited from Keir Starmer. And what happened was that family members of PC Andrew Harper, who was killed in 2019, had found out that two of the people who'd been involved in his death were going to be released from prison early as a result of this new scheme. There was then a big uproar and Andy Burnham's response was to say, I'm pausing the whole scheme and I'll come back with a revised version. Today we Got his revised version, and it is that certain people guilty of certain crimes will no longer be eligible for this early release scheme. But there's quite a lot of small print. And here to help us read the small print is the BBC's home and legal affairs correspondent, Dominic Casciani. Hello, Dom.

[Dominic Casciani]

Hi, Adam. Hi.

[Adam Fleming]

And also joining us down the line is Pia Sinha, who's a former prisoner governor and is now chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust. Hello, Pia.

[Pia Sinha]

Hello.

[Adam Fleming]

So, Dominic, just tell us exactly what the government is changing now, because last time we spoke was when Andy Burnham said, I'm pausing this, take a look at it. He's now looked at it and the pause has been unpaused.

[Dominic Casciani]

Yeah, yeah. So there are two elements to this. The first is that effectively the main part of the plan still goes ahead. There will be some. Some prisoners on fixed terms who will be getting out of prison earlier than they had expected and earlier than the victims had expected, with the exception now of a few cohorts of prisoners. So offenders convicted of rape, offenders convicted of serious sexual offences against children and people involved in grooming gangs. Not quite sure what that group of offences is at the moment, but you've got a pretty good idea that in theory, the guidance is we'll take 1000 of the prisoners out of the release category. So we were expecting about 6,000 to start coming out from September onwards. Not all in one go. This is going to take about a year to staggered in, but a thousand more. So 1000 of that, 6000 are now going to stay inside.

[Adam Fleming]

So 5000 will still get released.

[Dominic Casciani]

Yeah, but it's also going to be delayed. It's not going to start on the 2nd of September. So, in essence, what ministers are doing is they're going to. They're going to have to basically tear up the ministerial order signed by the former Prisons Minister, Lord Timson, in, I think it was the end of June, and write a new order saying, this scheme's going to start from October.

[Adam Fleming]

Pia. I mean, I. I'm not the expert in the prisons system that you and Dom are, but that makes me think, well, hang on, if this process was put in place to release the pri, the pressure that's on prison places, and now it's not going to work as originally intended, the pressure's back on. On the prison places.

[Pia Sinha]

Well, absolutely. And I think this is one of the biggest risks of introducing exceptions and exemptions. You get sort of a diminishing returns from them. And, you know, don't forget the whole point of the introduction of The Sentencing act was to put a final fix on the capacity crisis so that emergency measures weren't required. And so the risk is that if the numbers don't stack up again, we could very quickly go back into that place where we have a capacity crisis, where we may have to enact emergency measures again, depending on what the space situation is looking like, and then that creates its own problems. And I think this is the. The problem with this issue that the government are now grappling with. They're just no winners in it. So every decision that they make has really important, far reaching, devastating consequences.

[Adam Fleming]

So, Pia, would you say that the whole rationale for this legislation in the first place, which was to stop this being an emergency, that rationale has kind of been blown out the water now?

[Pia Sinha]

Well, it's the first step in it being blown out of the water. I'm hoping that there aren't any further exceptions made because then it will just completely water down the purpose of it. So, yes, there is a real risk. I mean, there was a risk anyway, because you can never, ever control the flow of people coming into prisons. The Sentencing act has tried to do that through various mechanisms, but the moment you start introducing exceptions, that becomes a kind of a road towards watering down all of the kind of anticipated benefits of this act.

[Adam Fleming]

And, Dom, the reason there was so much pressure on the government to do something was that two of the prisoners who were going to be released under this scheme were the people who were found guilty of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper, the policeman who was killed in 2019 when he was dragged behind the car. They will still be released early, even under the revised version?

[Dominic Casciani]

Yeah, two of the three. Two of the three. So the guy who was driving the car who dragged PC Harper behind in this appalling death, he's on a particular type of sentence where he will not benefit from this early release. He still got at least four years, I think a little bit more than that to look at prison walls. His two associates who were in the car and therefore were found guilty of manslaughter, effectively as accessories, because they were part of the plan, this burglary, which went terribly wrong. Their sentences of 13 years are part of the release scheme because they're fixed sentences and they stand to benefit from it when that particular length of sentence becomes eligible from next June. So they're not getting out in October, but they will get out eventually. And that's why there's been such really outrage from PC Harper's family about this. They feel betrayed and everything And PC

[Adam Fleming]

Harper's mother, Debbie Adlam, was speaking to Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight on Monday night. And Victoria asked her about what happened when the Justice Secretary, Alex Norris, called her up to tell her what was happening.

[Debbie Adlam]

Well, he told me that the rapists and the pedophiles and grooming gangs, that they wouldn't qualify. So that was good. It made it feel like there was something actually achieved in raising my head above the wall, really. So it has done some good, but for us, yeah, it's just really devastating. He basically agreed that we shouldn't be in this situation, he agreed that we shouldn't have to be fighting, but ultimately, here we are, he's the Justice Secretary, he could change that. Yeah. Apparently, the situation is, if nothing was done, then the prison system would fall completely. But we're paying the price for it. You know, it's Andrew and his family and many others like us. We're paying the price.

[Dominic Casciani]

I think there's also a really, really interesting thing we've got to focus on in terms of what's happening to the prison population. And Pia and every governor around the country knows this. At the moment, the prison population is about 87,000. Right. So this is. There's headroom in that they're in a better place than they were two years ago because of the Emergency Release scheme. The problem is what's going to happen by 2029, 2030, and the prison Services own projections say by then we're probably going to have more than 100,000 in prison. So that's about 13,500 thereabouts more than we have at the moment. The government is building 14,000 new cells, so you can see that if they don't have some kind of plan to manage more offenders in the community. Let's just get the release word to one side. This is about managing off in the community. If they don't have that plan and therefore you free up more cells, you are going to run out of space again. It's just inevitability of the maths. And just think about the politics of that. Keir Starmer came into power inheriting a prison crisis which he said he was going to fix. What would happen if Labour went into the next general election in 2029, knowing that they're facing another crisis? It'd just be an extraordinary situation. That's why this scheme is so, so important. And the other provisions under the actual.

[Adam Fleming]

And so, Pia, would you say that Labour's plans to build more prison spaces are probably never going to be enough?

[Pia Sinha]

You can't build your way out of this crisis. And as Dom said, it takes a long time to build new prisons. It's expensive. You've got to get all the planning permissions for it, which are complex. But also you have at the same time a crumbling Victorian estate where sales and accommodation is frequently going offline.

[Adam Fleming]

Offline? What, because there's like a leaking roof or the power cut?

[Pia Sinha]

Yes. Or broken windows or the fabric is so badly damaged that it's no longer safe to contain someone safely. So those kind of issues means that you're sometimes using your new stock to replace a crumbling old stock. So the kind of net gain that you get from spaces also gets diminished. So it's not easy. And I guess the supply and demand question is something that's really relevant. You can't run a prison estate. Having been a prison governor, you can't run a prison estate which is so hot.

[Adam Fleming]

A little bit like in the health service, where hospital administrators are spending a lot of their time just trying to find a bed for that person who's come into the emergency department. Pia, I know you've got to go because you've got a busy day today because there's a lot of prison stories in the news today, but just a last question to you. A phrase I've heard during the rounds today is that actually, as a society and the government and, and. And people who are in the field need to start thinking about prison outside prison, because the answer is that people serve their sentences in ways that are not in old Victorian buildings. Give us just a final thought before you go about what prison outside prison could mean.

[Pia Sinha]

Well, the, the evidence suggests that when you are. For certain types of offenders, when they get a community sentence with really stringent conditions wrapped around them, like a mental health treatment order or drug treatment order, or domestic violence courses or any offending behaviour programs, and you put strict restrictions with the caveat that if they breach any of that, they'll go to prison. So there is a deterrent factor in it, that it has a better impact on reducing their risk of reoffending. So we do need to get to that point where we come back to the evidence which says these community sentences are not light touch, they shouldn't be disregarded, because ultimately they have a better impact on reducing risk and reducing reoffending. And we have to be swayed by the evidence, not just by the rhetoric, hard though that might be.

[Adam Fleming]

Pia, thank you very much for joining us on newscast today.

[Pia Sinha]

Thank you. Thank you for having me and Dom.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah. That point about prison, outside prison One of the other things I've been hearing today is people involved in probation saying, we're going to have loads more work monitoring these people who are out of prison early because there's new conditions on them when they're out of prison. And the police also saying, well, we're going to have more pressure on us because we will have to respond if those people break the terms of the license under which they've been released early.

[Dominic Casciani]

There's no doubt about that.

[Adam Fleming]

The pressure just sort of gets moved around the system.

[Dominic Casciani]

It does, but that's where the question of resources comes in. So the Probation Service has been through a series of absolutely disastrous reforms. I don't think anybody will dispute that. All the official reports in Parliament and elsewhere show that it's been through 15 years of turmoil. It was massively, massively cut, and it's now in the process of what you could euphemistically call recovery. You know, 700 million quid has gone into probation and community management of prisoners since. Since labor took power. That's an enormous wallop of cash, but it's not enough, says Martin Jones, the Chief Inspector of Probation, who says, okay, you may be now trying to recruit 1300 extra probation officers, but this has to be a start because the workload is so massive. Can I just give you an example of how this works in practice? Let's just say Pierre's former colleagues in the prisons finally work out who's going to be released and on what date. Under this revised scheme, from October, that offender, once they've got their date, preparations have to be made to resettle that person in the community. They have to be. They have to have a bed. If they haven't got family, they can turn to, there has to be something else found for them. If they get the bed, they've got a greater chance of getting into work, particularly if they've been through rehabilitation or education or drug treatment or whatever inside prison. And that's going to continue on the outside, which is the responsibility of probation to try to deliver. If you get them into work, it's axiomatic, they're less likely to commit a crime, they're less likely to go back to prison and everybody wins. Society is safer. You get a potential model citizen at the end of the day, or something approaching that. That is the prize in this. But if everything is being done at effectively crisis rate, the opportunities to intervene in people's lives massively, massively reduce. And that's why you get this churn. Figures which came out last month showed that the rate of recall to prison since Labour came to power because of the emergency release scheme had gone up. It reached record level in December of last year. And that's simply because so many people were being released and there wasn't the plan in place to manage them because all these resources aren't there. This is a hugely, hugely complicated exercise. I think there's another thing about this as well. I think people need to bear this in mind in terms of the choices that politicians are going to have to make about this long term. Everybody wants the most dangerous people in society to be locked up, but we effectively are in a situation where most people who get locked up don't get locked up forever. So we have to make a choice as society about what we're going to do to manage those people and about the amount of cash that goes into that and how you manage them. And I think that is the question that everybody really has to focus on once the political shock of this moment passes in the coming weeks. Realistically, what are we going to do long term to manage this? Are we going to try to build our way out of this? Labour says it can't be done. You just heard Pia there saying it can't be done. If we're not going to build our way out of this, what is the alternative model? And I think, to be frank, politicians of all colors are still actually grappling about what they think is going to be palatable and what they can sell to the public.

[Adam Fleming]

Talking about other political parties, Kemi Badenoch was asked about this today. And here's what the Conservative leader said.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Never, ever under Conservatives did we have the early release of. Of rapists, paedophiles or killers. Yes, we did have an early release for people who'd served two thirds of their sentence, not people who'd served or half their sentence, not people who served a third of their sentences. And definitely not paedophiles, not rapists, not killers. In 14 years of Conservative government, there was early release, about 10,000 prisoners. We have had 60,000 released under labor in just two years. You cannot compare the two situations. We do need to solve the problem of prison overcrowding. We said we were going to build prisons in the Conservative Manifesto. Covid derailed that program. We still need to build prisons, we need to remove foreign criminals and we should do what Conservatives had planned to do two years ago, which Labour stopped, which is rent prison spaces from other countries. Sweden does it. The UK can do it too.

[Adam Fleming]

I mean, she's talking about renting prison places abroad, is that feasible?

[Dominic Casciani]

Well, some other countries have done that, but the problem is if their prisons are full, you, you have an issue about how you can, you can make that work. There is a, there's a really important piece of work going on in government about trying to get some foreign national offenders out of prison to their home countries. I would caution on the value of that in terms, not the value of that, about how much that will achieve simply because there are an awful lot of foreign national offenders in British prisons where this is actually their natural home. They just happen to have a passport. You know, they could have been born here. And you can't deport everybody. If somebody goes to prison for, let's say for argument's sake, for three years for burglary, which is linked to coming from a broken home and drug addiction and everything, it's going to be very difficult to win the case that that person needs to be deported. Once that comes comes down to a challenge politically, you know, in fairness to the Conservatives, although, you know, they in essence were previously responsible for how this panned out because of decisions they took about prison building program, they have got a fair point which they've been basically lobbing at labor in the last 24 hours or so, saying, we said back in October you should exclude rapists and some other types of offenders from this plan. We put that amendment before Parliament and you rejected it. So when this all comes back to Parliament, I mean, yeah, you know what's going to happen? They're going to be able to make political, you know, Mario, over this and watching Labour MPs going to vote for a which was rejected by them and now has been adopted. So that is a major political win for the opposition there. I think the question beyond that is will they try to amend this plan even more? Will they go back into Parliament to say, well, you're excluding rapists, but what about these offenders? What about people who are doing manslaughter for killing emergency workers or whatever? What about this? What about the other? Each of those exceptions will come with a cost and it's going to be really interesting to see how the government deals with that, because there's no cost for the opposition imposing that question, but there's a cost for the government and how it answers it.

[Adam Fleming]

And that comes back to our earlier conversation about why the fact there is has to be a Westminster process to make this change happen is so important because it means people can then hang other things onto it. Dom, thank you very much.

[Dominic Casciani]

Thank you very much.

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Now there's an excellent long read, as we call them in the trade on the BBC news website about the many issues small and large confronting Donald Trump at the moment. And the author of it is a very promising journalist who presents AmericasT and is our North America correspondent. It's Anthony Zerka. Hello, Anthony.

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And then in terms of what can be driving those record low numbers, one of the things seems to be this issue about the reflecting pole, which is that oblong bit of water in Washington, D.C. in between the Lincoln Memorial at one end and the Washington Memorial at the other, which now I experienced that story as all the memes on social media about, oh, they're trying to restore it or make it more reflective, but they've painted it the wrong color or it's been full of algae or whatever, but it's actually in Washington turned into a proper kind of political story rather than just a interesting, funny picture building story.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

I know it's remarkable because it's a renovation project in D.C. not even on a monument, but on a pool of water next to, to some monuments. The stakes seem so incredibly low, they've gotten higher. And this has become a political issue because Donald Trump has made it so. He got very upset when, when the, the project didn't come off the way he wanted with the algae, when bits of the, the lining that had been put down after he had talked about how great the lining was in the last for 50 years, it started to flake off and he began reaching for explanations in the explanation he settled on was that it wasn't because of any kind of manufacturing or installation error. It was because of vandalism, because of his political enemies, leftists out to get him. In fact, he pushed and was able to obtain through the Justice Department a number of prosecutions, number of arrests of people who he said had vandalized this reflecting pool, one of which was a former Olympian who, whose case was proceeding on felony destruction of property charges. The big news, however, which I talk about in my piece, is that on Friday, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, ended up dropping the charges against Mr. Hearn the Olympian, saying that it wasn't because of vandalism, it was because of a rushed and botched job. So they're in a court filing. It was Donald Trump's own Justice Department acknowledging that what Trump had said about vandalism and not being a faulty installation, that was not the case which Donald Trump has not taken kindly to, let's say the least.

[Adam Fleming]

And I suppose there's two consequences of that. Number one, it makes his claims look quite hollow to a lot of people. And number two, Janine Pero is a big Trump Ally. And she's not doing what he tells her to do. She's doing what. What the law and her office tells her to do.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Right. She's a former Fox News host, someone who had been an ardent defender of Donald Trump on the airwaves. That's probably how she ended up on Donald Trump's radar. He picked her for this key job, which is the chief prosecutor for crimes committed in the District of Columbia. And she has been generally marching in lockstep with Donald Trump. But here, I think she ran into the reality that there just wasn't a case to be made. She said that it was the Interior Department's faulty, false assertions, evidence presented to her that that got her to bring these charges. And she has since realized that the Interior Department was not giving her a clear picture. She didn't point the finger directly at Donald Trump, but Donald Trump, in response, said that she folded like an umbrella, that, that she backed down, that she, she disagreed strongly with her decision that she gave into. He said that in a true social post on, on Saturday. He said it again at the White House yesterday. So it'd been very critical. And apparently today, Tuesday, this morning, Jeanine Pirro was seen at the White House leaving the White House carrying a big box of who knows what. But she had some sort of a meeting with Trump officials, if not Trump himself.

[Adam Fleming]

And another area where Donald Trump's authority is being challenged or could be described as waning is over the appointment of a new attorney general. So this is to replace Pam Bondi, who was chucked out the administration. And there's a. Todd Blanche is kind of filling the job in the interim, but would like the job permanently and so would Trump. But not everyone's playing ball.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Yeah, Todd Blanche was the number two at the Justice Department. So he's been in an acting capacity since the job opened up in April. But. But Donald Trump has been very happy with him and the way he's handled his job. He was a former Trump defense attorney during the felony trial that resulted in Donald Trump's conviction in New York several years ago, so has been a close ally for quite some time. Donald Trump wanted to put him, nominated him to take the attorney general spot, but that has been tied up by Democrats in opposition, obviously, but also by a handful of Republicans, not because of anything Blanch, particularly any objections to him or his qualifications, but objections to Blanch signing off initially on this settlement of Donald Trump's lawsuit against the IRS for disclosing his taxes to the media several years ago, and then the settlement Some key components of this settlement was establishing this $1.8 billion prosecution fund, politicized prosecution fund, that could be used to pay off people that Trump said had been irresponsibly targeted by previous Democratic administrations as well. As part of that settlement was allowing Donald Trump's audits to be dropped by the IRS and insulate him against any future audits by the irs. So these handful of Republicans said this was beyond the pale, that these sorts of agreements should not have been made. And while the Justice Department Department had subsequently dropped them under political pressure, they wanted some sort of a formal written guarantee that this $1.8 billion fund wouldn't come back up again and that Donald Trump would not be totally immune from IRS or Justice Department investigations from this point going forward. There was significant resistance from the Trump administration to providing that. But just on Sunday, Blanche did produce two documents backed down essentially from this confrontation. And that has been enough to win over these holdout Republican senators. Now it looks like he's going to be confirmed. But it was another case where Trump ran headfirst into political reality and had to acknowledge that and move in a different direction.

[Adam Fleming]

And actually, you put those two things together and a bit of a pattern is emerging. And it's not just a sort of like inside the Beltway, insider baseball only interest to Washington geeks kind of pattern.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Yeah. In the court of law, we have to prove facts in order to convince judges and in order to convince juries. And in the court of politics in Congress, where there are members of his own party who have to answer to voters, have to cast votes that they could defend before the American public. In both cases, Donald Trump ran headfirst into this wall and ended up backing away from it. So it is notable when you're looking for any kind of evidence that Donald Trump, in his second term, almost two years in now, his political influence is starting to wane, that he is starting to not be able to make his own reality using his own facts, but having to acknowledge external reality. Here's two examples of it, at least.

[Adam Fleming]

And then when we talk about the big international thing that he's doing, which is the war against Iran, I mean, that takes us back to where our conversation started, which is about his cratering popularity, because Iran is driving that quite strongly. And I don't mean Iran, the, The, the country, the com. The government. I mean the situation.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Right. You could say the Blanche nomination or. And the reflecting pool. Those are small bore that the American public doesn't necessarily care about, certainly not matters of international import. Or life and death. The Iran war is an entirely different thing, but it's a similar example of Donald Trump having to confront an unpleasant, uncomfortable reality. And that is that despite all the talks about breakthroughs with the Iranians and the Strait of Hormuz being opened up and Iran agreeing to abandon its nuclear weapons program, it seems like there has been a cycle now going on for several months where Donald Trump touts a breakthrough, says the Iranians are conceding that they've been begging for negotiations, that Trump is going to get his way. It ends up falling apart. Trump threatens a massive strike. It looks like that strike's gonna happen, that he backs down or backs away from that, say that there's some sort of a breakthrough, and then the cycle starts all over again. This clearly is impacting Donald Trump's public approval ratings in a way that the Reflecting pool or Blanche probably doesn't. But this is what the American public sees as a self made mistake for Trump, that he, he chose this war and it has driven up the cost of energy, it has driven up consumer costs. It is got no clear way out. And that has become a drag on, on Trump's popularity. When you look at everything that is pulling Trump down, it is still economic issues that is driving the drop, but it's trickling into even areas where Donald Trump is strong, such as immigration and crime. And it has been a lead weight. And the challenge for Trump is that there's no clear pathway out of this. He's talking about another negotiating breakthrough today, but it's hard for a lot of Americans to believe that this is the one that will really stick.

[Adam Fleming]

Although I noticed in the last 20 minutes or so, just before we started this conversation, Anthony, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, says there's been progress in talks with Iran. So maybe we're going to have a sort of breakthrough in, in the, in the short term. But then think how many times we've said there's about to be a short term breakthrough and it's never actually materialized. Also, Anthony, every time we have you or one of your colleagues on from Washington D.C. we sort of make the joke about the midterms are just around the corner. And like we are slowly getting around that corner. I know there's a lot of midterm stuff going on, but is there one thing going on at the moment around the whole big kind of carnival of elections that are about to hit you guys that you want to bring to newscasters?

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Well, I think primaries are ongoing in all of these different key battleground states.

[Adam Fleming]

So picking the candidates.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

Basically, there's a big one tonight in Senate where a progressive leftist candidate could very well win the open Senate nomination. For the Democrats, it could be the latest example of the left wing of the party which has shown the most enthusiasm, most energy once again getting their candidate through to the general election. Time will tell whether a candidate like that can win, particularly in a battleground swing state like Michigan. But I'll be watching that very closely. The other thing I'll say is that another round of polls came out and we talked about this on AmericasT earlier this week. Another round of polls came out for these key Senate battleground states and they were bad news for Republicans. Democrats were leading in places like Georgia, which may not be an entirely huge shock because there's a Democratic incumbent there. But in places like Texas and Ohio and Iowa and Alaska, these are Republican held states, Democrats are running ahead, running over 50% there. So if you're looking at an indication that Donald Trump's approval rating isn't just something that doesn't really matter, something that he can shrug off, this is a sign that that approval rating is not just pulling Trump down, but it could be pulling the Republican Party down. We've still got three months till the election, but there's a saying in baseball here in the states that it's getting late, early, and it seems to be getting close to a point where the economic political cake is baked. And it'll be much harder for Republicans to change that dynamic as we get closer to November.

[Adam Fleming]

Well, Anthony, the end of this episode of Newscast has come early, but for people who want more, they can listen to your latest episode of AmericasT. Thank you so much.

[Bus Driver / Voiceover]

My pleasure. Always happy to be on.

[Adam Fleming]

And before we go, just a reminder of the experiment we're doing with the timing of Newscast. Obviously you listen to it whenever works for you, but what we're trying to do is get the podcast into your feeds by 5pm at the latest every single day, so that in the terrible jargon of the old radio world, it becomes more like a drive time product. I can't even, don't even like saying that because I'm Mr. Podcasting now. Anyway, the idea is that Newscast will be available at a more consistent time, which is less random and earlier than when we often did it in the past. So that's the little housekeeping notice I just wanted to draw your attention to at the very end of this very timely episode of Newscast. Bye bye. Newscast.

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[Asma Khalid]

President Trump has described the surge of migrants into Spain as an invasion. But what really happened in the tiny Spanish enclave known as CEO? I'm Asma Khalid, and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. Last week, tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco streamed into CEO. It ignited a political storm in Europe and even here in the US but who's really to blame? For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.