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- [00:00]
Kyle
This message comes from Carvana. Sell your car the convenient way, enter your license plate or vin, answer a few questions and get a real offer in seconds. Go to Carvana.com today. Hi, this is Kyle from Annapolis, Maryland. Right now I'm about to walk on stage for the final performance of week three out of five of the show, Working the Musical.
- [00:23]
Susan Davis
This podcast was recorded at 12:03pm on Friday, March 28.
- [00:28]
Kyle
Things may have changed by the time you hear this places. On with the show.
- [00:37]
Susan Davis
Hey, break a leg. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
- [00:43]
Kyle
I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
- [00:47]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [00:50]
Susan Davis
And it's Friday, so it's time for our weekly roundup. And we're gonna start on Capitol Hill, where someone was about to leave Washington. Bags were packed. They were on a farewell tour. And then things changed. New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik had been tapped to be the Trump administration's ambassador to the United nations, but her candidacy was withdrawn yesterday. Mara, what did the Trump administration say about why they were withdrawing her nomination?
- [01:14]
Mara Liasson
Well, what they said was kind of a really backhanded compliment. They said kind of anybody can do the UN Job, but we really need a lease in Congress. And this is an extraordinary story. And we'll talk about the politics, but their margins are very slim. And until now, the White House acted as if it didn't matter that their margins were slim because they were able to get such incredible unity among Republicans. But looking forward, they are not that confident.
- [01:40]
Susan Davis
Yeah, I mean, Domenico, we should do a little bit of math. But as we sit here Today, Republicans have 218 seats, which is exactly the number you need to pass anything if all members are present in voting. There's two Republican held vacancies for two House races in Florida coming up next week. But there's signs out there that there's some nervousness in the Republican Party about what might be happening in these races.
- [02:01]
Kyle
And these are not districts that there should be any problem for Republicans winning. These are very heavily Republican seats. Stefanik won her seat with 62% of the vote. It's upstate New York, fairly rural seat, something she held easily, Republicans expected to hold easily, just like these two seats in Florida, including for Mike Waltz, who's the national security advisor now, who got caught up in that signal chain chat group kerfuffle this week. But all of these races, there appear to be some issues, at least for Republicans when it comes to fundraising candidates. The National Party needing to get involved. And clearly what we saw this week, having Trump saying on social media that the Republicans can't risk it with their very slim majority. And that's the first real sign that we've seen that really the Republicans are facing some political headwinds as opposed to having the wind at their backs because of what may be more unpopular than not unpopular agenda for President Trump and Republicans right now.
- [03:03]
Susan Davis
Mara, it does seem like an almost remarkable change of energy when you think just nine weeks ago when Trump was sworn in and talking about mandates and sweeping change and the Republican Party was feeling very bullish, and suddenly it seems like, you know, there's a little bit of nervousness.
- [03:17]
Mara Liasson
Well, that's what this looks like. You know, the Republican Party has been ascendant, unified, consolidated. Trump gets lockstep unity and obedience from Republicans in Congress. You saw the them pass a continuing resolution, something that they actually couldn't do for years and years and years because they couldn't get their own party all on, you know, pulling on the same oar, although that makes you go in a circle. No, that's the wrong metaphor. But that is the impression that they presented. And it looked like events were bearing that out, but now it seems they are less than confident about their abilities to pass legislation. Now, you know, Donald Trump is the EO President and he likes to do everything himself, but there are a lot of big things on his agenda that he does need Congress for, and he doesn't want to take any chances.
- [04:06]
Susan Davis
It also does seem to foreshadow a little bit that, you know, they haven't really had any tough legislative fights yet, but one's coming. They want to extend President Trump's tax cuts, and they want to put a whole other bunch of policies in there. But Domenico, I think this is also a sign that that might not be as easy as it seems.
- [04:21]
Kyle
It's not. But it's also a reminder that, you know, for as much as, you know, Mara talks about Trump doing all these things by executive order for to have a lasting effect, permanent effect. President needs Congress. It needs the force of law. These executive orders don't have that. Certainly, Trump has been able to get a lot done because he's willing to use, you know, resources of the federal government to intimidate various groups, whether it's universities or law firms or anything else. But they don't have the effect of law like something that Congress could pass. And, you know, we've reported a number of times, obviously, on the battles within the GOP conference, and it's not again guarantee that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, can keep every single Republican in line for every single spending fight to come.
- [05:08]
Susan Davis
Let's also talk about another White House decision this week. It's a 25% tariff on any cars or auto parts made outside the U.S. mara, the White House continues to present that tariffs are going to be great for the US Economy, but the way the world works, you know, the economy doesn't seem particularly convinced of that argument.
- [05:25]
Mara Liasson
Well, this is a controlled experiment in Donald Trump's long held, fervently held belief that tariffs are almost like a magic wand. They're going to make the country rich. They're going to immediately bring all sorts of companies back to the United States and manufacturing will be revived here. Well, the business community and the markets who are not cowed by anything, they just respond to facts to don't see it that way. And this tariff on cars and auto parts made outside the US Is going to increase costs for American consumers. And even though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says that the American dream isn't supposed to be made up of cheap baubles from abroad, tell that to a family that is trying to pay their rent and health care and buy a car.
- [06:18]
Kyle
If we were to take this into the macro, right. There's a, there's grievances that the labor unions, auto workers have, you know, because of these free trade deals that were started in the 1990s and they feel, you know, obviously ship jobs overseas. But the issue is that made things cheaper, but it also hurt American workers jobs and being able to retire and their pensions and all of that and their hope, and that's why the unions are actually supportive of these tariffs, is that you can have more jobs again in the United States, States that are manufacturing, that give people, you know, good paying jobs and all of that. At the same time, this administration is not very pro union and in the micro. This is a president who was elected to bring prices down and he said that he would bring prices down on day one. And his actions, experts say, are gonna have the opposite effect, at least in the short run.
- [07:13]
Mara Liasson
And he acknowledges that that's the most interesting thing. Domenico, how much the administration has started to acknowledge that there will be some short term pain. You know, Bessen kind of dismissing this as we shouldn't rely on cheap products from abroad, talking about a detox period and even Donald Trump who won't rule out that this could cause a recession.
- [07:33]
Kyle
And there is a certain irony here, you know, in having all of the billionaires in this administration make that argument that the American dream, as Scott Bessen said, is not the right to have cheap stuff. Well, I mean, like you said, tell it to the people who, you know, have real kitchen table issues, are going paycheck to paycheck. And it's really easy to be able to try to engineer something in a macroeconomic way when you have no problem paying your groceries.
- [08:00]
Mara Liasson
And tariffs come in many different shapes and sizes. Joe Biden actually kept some of Donald Trump's first term tariffs on China because he felt it was important for US national security to be able to make certain things like computer chips here instead of importing them. But these new Trump tariffs are very across the board, very sweeping. They're more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel.
- [08:21]
Susan Davis
All right, let's take a quick break and more when we get back. And we're back. And another move the Trump administration made this week was an executive action related to voting. It says in part that in order to vote, people need to provide proof of citizenship and that ballots have to be counted by election Day. Mara states traditionally administer these elections. Congress is also supposed to legislate around how voting should work. Largely, it's not a federal issue. So why is the president choosing this issue now?
- [08:50]
Mara Liasson
Yeah, not a federal issue and certainly not a presidential issue. Why wade in? Because I think Donald Trump, who leads a party that will not accept the results of a presidential election unless they win. Donald Trump is a candidate who will not accept the results of an election unless he wins. I think he wants to make elections easier and easier for Republicans to win. And for some reason he believes that if ballots are counted by election Day that will be a advantage for Republicans. As far as the proof of citizenship, this is a false narrative without evidence that Trump has pushed for a very long time that the elections are rigged and full of fraud and that there are tons and tons of non citizens voting in elections. In fact, a minuscule number of people without citizenship vote in elections.
- [09:39]
Kyle
In fact, just to cite some data on that, Republicans in Ohio did a study that took them a year that they released this past January and they identified, get this, 137 potential noncitizens in the statewide voter registration database. Not even that they voted. Out of millions of people that there are 137 who might be non citizens in their voter registration database after a year of, of investigation on this. So it really, and this has been studied over and over again, including by the George w. Bush administration 20 years ago that found it to be very small number. This is not a real problem, but it's one that again, continues to be something that Republicans put out there to, to drum up fear of something that could be real. And has gotten a lot of people who, you know, see it as a cultural signpost almost to wave around and say, you know, we can't have, you know, people who are not citizens voting when it doesn't really happen.
- [10:41]
Mara Liasson
But the real reason is to destroy trust in our election system. So it's easier for a candidate like Donald Trump to say, I won't accept the results un I win because by definition, if I don't win, there must have been a lot of fraud. And this has been going on for years.
- [10:54]
Susan Davis
I also think it's built on sort of a fact that has proven to be untrue in recent years in that Republicans often supported voter ID laws because the idea was that the more people voted, the better Democrats would do. But that understanding has largely been flipped on its head. I mean, there's been a lot of sort of post mortems on the election that show actually when voters turn up in en masse right now, they would benefit Republicans more. So Republicans putting up these sort of barriers to voting might actually be hurting their political interests, but more than helping them right now.
- [11:25]
Mara Liasson
Yeah. And we saw that there are certain states, Republican led states that have almost a total mail in ballot system. And now that Donald Trump has won the popular vote, I would think that Republicans would want as many people as possible to vote because they are increasing their registration numbers around the country. But he still sticks to these false narratives about how more people voting is bad for Republicans.
- [11:52]
Susan Davis
It also is to me, just viewing this from the point of Capitol Hill, it is very interesting to watch, which I think is becoming a reality of this administration, how much power Congress is acquiescing to the White House. And these types of issues around voting reform really fall under the purview of the legislative branch. But they don't seem to be putting up any pushback to things that the White House is doing, whether it be shuttering agencies that Congress should have a role in or cutting spending that Congress has already appropriated. And now they seem to be almost legislating with executive actions that Congress should be doing. But if Congress isn't willing to fight back on it, you know, you cede power, it just goes over to the President. It just increasingly speaks to how powerful Donald Trump is in this moment, I think.
- [12:33]
Mara Liasson
But sue, have we ever seen a Congress abdicate to the executive on so many things?
- [12:38]
Susan Davis
I can't say in like Forever in history, but certainly not in the modern.
- [12:42]
Mara Liasson
Not in our lives, lifetimes. No.
- [12:43]
Susan Davis
And there used, I would say, like, even as recently as, like, Obama and George W. Bush, there was much more dissent within the parties over policies that they were doing. And there's almost no dissent sort of ideologically within the party now.
- [12:56]
Kyle
You know, 30, 40 years ago, you had way more institutionalists in Congress. In the Senate, you don't have that many Institutionalists, especially in the GOP conference right now. Most of the Republicans, many of the Republicans who were swept in, you know, beginning with the Tea Party, are people who don't like government, who think that government does too much, that they want to see the president, who they agree with, be able to do more. They don't like a lot of the rules that are put in place. They don't really have a ton of respect for everything that came before. They feel like they agree with what Trump wants to do, and they want to see him get it done.
- [13:31]
Susan Davis
Domenico, what do you think the chances are that this holds up to legal scrutiny?
- [13:34]
Kyle
Well, look, I mean, we don't know if it's going to be constitutional or if the courts are going to block it, because we're supposed to have decentralized elections in this country. And they very well may do that. But the enforcement has always been the issue. And Trump really is kind of putting the bully back in the bully pulpit here, because what we've seen with a lot of these executive orders is him trying to say to universities or institutions like law firms and the rest that he's gonna withhold federal funding. We don't know if he's gonna do that kind of thing, but it's certainly been his MO in these EOs to go and try to hold something over them to make them comply. And we've seen groups, you know, kind of on their own kind of capitulate because they don't want the heat.
- [14:16]
Susan Davis
And finally, I think we need to talk a little bit about Signal Gate. That's the disclosure via group text of plans to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to launch missiles against Houthi rebels in Yemen. I'd say to both of you, I think it's fair to say that this is the first crisis the President is facing, aside from the legal questions it raises. What are your political takeaways for how this is been handled? And do you. How consequential do you see it?
- [14:43]
Mara Liasson
Well, politically, it's been handled terribly, but I don't think it's very consequential politically. I mean, I don't think that this is going to really hurt Donald Trump the way the, the retreat from Afghanistan hurt Joe Biden. I mean, this is not something that touches a lot of people's lives. It certainly makes the Trump administration look incompetent. Their defenses on this don't really add up. But I think as something that is a long lasting political problem, I don't see it.
- [15:12]
Kyle
Yeah, well, and the Trump playbook partially is to muddy the waters and make things seem more complicated than they are. I mean, you know, they've really, what we've seen is this, you know, Trump spin cycle that's gone into overdrive, kind of, you know, using that Trump playbook, denying, downplaying, attacking the messenger, of course. And, you know, Trump and others have made this more about, you know, the problem. The mistake, quote, unquote, was letting a reporter into the chat, not the fact that they were using this app in the first place to discuss such sensitive details. And I think that that is a place. I thought it was interesting listening to Trump because he was clear that he thought that too. Because when they asked him, when reporters asked him about Pete Hegseth, who had been the one to deliver so many of the specific details of this upcoming imminent military attack plan, he said that Hegseth. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, it's all a witch hunt. So for him, the it really had to do with that Mike Waltz or his staff let this journalist into this chat rather than the much bigger issue of the security of these kinds of, you know, details that any American foreign adversary would want to get their hands on.
- [16:24]
Mara Liasson
The it here is we got caught. That's the problem that Trump sees that because they let in the reporter this got published. He doesn't think the fact that they were doing something without any kind of protection for national security secrets was the problem. No, we got caught. That was the it. That was the problem.
- [16:43]
Susan Davis
I am admit I am a little surprised that no one's been fired and someone may still be fired over it, in part because I think that Donald Trump has long seen that as effective management. You fire people. And I always thought one of his better moments in his debate against Joe Biden is when he attacked Biden saying, you haven't fired a single person. I felt like that was a solid political hit. Like accountability is still popular and Trump likes to fire people. And this seemed like such an obvious thing that you could maybe fire someone and move on, but, you know, maybe he still will. It just, it hadn't happened yet.
- [17:15]
Kyle
Well, who he did fire, five days after he was inaugurated were more than a dozen inspectors general. And when you have a bipartisan group of senators, you know, Roger Wicker from Mississippi, who's the armed services chairman, saying, hey, we want to get an expedited inspector's general review, makes it a little harder when the Pentagon inspector general has been fired.
- [17:35]
Susan Davis
Good point. All right. One more break. And when we get back, time for Can't Let It Go.
- [17:40]
Kyle
This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. Start selling with Shopify today. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle.
- [17:52]
Susan Davis
Go to shopify.com NPR and we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise domestic go. I'm going to let you go first this week. What can't you let go of?
- [18:07]
Kyle
You know, I can't let go. Honestly, what's nice is this is my favorite time of the year. It's not just the weather changing, but it's the idea of spring. And spring being, you know, hope springing eternal. Right. And there's so many signs of that, whether it's the cherry blossoms here in D.C. or in something that I really enjoy, opening day for baseball, which happened this week. Of course, it's a little cold for baseball, frankly, in my opinion, in a lot of parts of the country in the Northeast. But it still makes you feel like, you know, there's still a chance. And everyone starts out zero. Unfortunately, the Mets lost their opening day, so now we're 01. So things are not quite as sunny, but it's still just great to be able to have baseball, to have March Madness, to have the cherry blossoms. It's just, it's just a great time of year.
- [18:56]
Susan Davis
I love springtime. Domenico?
- [18:57]
Kyle
Yeah.
- [18:58]
Susan Davis
You're so cheerful and optimistic.
- [18:59]
Kyle
I do have to take my allergy medicine.
- [19:01]
Susan Davis
Same, same.
- [19:03]
Kyle
So, sue, what can't you let go of the thing?
- [19:05]
Susan Davis
I can't let go of this week. And I genuinely tried to find something else to talk about. Cause it is a little horrifying, but it is truly the thing that I cannot let go of. I don't know if y'all saw this story out of Barton County, Kansas, where local news reported there was a babysitter and like many scared kids at bedtime, was telling her there's a monster under My bed. There's a monster under my bed.
- [19:23]
Mara Liasson
Oh, I saw this.
- [19:24]
Susan Davis
And she said, no, there's not, and bent down to look under the bed to show him that there was no monsters under there and came face to face with a man lying under the bed. And I would say as someone who both was a kid who had those fears, who was a babysitter who often did that, and now as a mom who has to be the person that assuages the child, I was like, you never thought this was something that could actually happen, but everyone's okay.
- [19:47]
Mara Liasson
And it wasn't the dad playing a joke.
- [19:49]
Susan Davis
It was not a joke. It was actually. It was someone that had lived in the house before and was supposed was under a restraining order to stay away. So it sounds like they might have known the person, but once she screamed, they had an altercation, he fled the house. He was later picked up by police. But I feel like, what a traumatic event for both. But how vindicating in some ways for that child, right? Like, imagine if she would have been like, just get in bed, you're fine.
- [20:11]
Kyle
Yeah, but how many nights is she gonna be sleeping with mom now? Because I don't know if I'd go back to bed, to be totally honest with you. It's like it was kind of a little bit scary to even watch Monsters Inc. As fun a movie as that is, right? You know, you get somebody coming out the closet, that's like literally your worst nightmare as a kid.
- [20:27]
Susan Davis
That would have ended my babysitting career in high school for sure. Mara, what about you? What can't you let go?
- [20:31]
Mara Liasson
Well, mine is just so trivial compared to the beauty and optimism of spring and the existential terror of someone under the bed. My Can't Let It Go is a story from the Associated Press. A Pennsylvania man was going through security at a New Jersey airport, and he was found to have a live turtle concealed in his pants. He was. TSA found it because the body scanner alarm went off. Now, I don't know what about a turtle ca the alarm to go off, but it was in his groin area and he was questioned, and he reached into his pants, pulled out the turtle. It was only 5 inches long. It was wrapped in a towel. He said it was a red ear slider turtle, which is popular as pets, and my son used to have a turtle. Anyway, he was escorted from the checkpoint area and missed his flight. And we don't know what happened to the turtle. It was confiscated.
- [21:26]
Kyle
There's a lot of innuendo there, Mara.
- [21:28]
Susan Davis
Yeah, almost too much for this podcast.
- [21:30]
Kyle
I'm glad it wasn't a snapping turtle.
- [21:33]
Susan Davis
All right, that is all from us this week. Our executive producer is Muthoni Mutore. Casey Morell edits the podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Andrew Sussman. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
- [21:45]
Kyle
I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
- [21:48]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [21:52]
Susan Davis
And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics podcast. Does one of you want to ask me?
- [22:01]
Mara Liasson
So what's yours, Sue? What's yours?
- [22:04]
Susan Davis
Can you do it with a little feeling, a little umph?
- [22:06]
Mara Liasson
What's your can't let it go, Sue.
- [22:08]
Kyle
99% of the US population lives within listening range of at least one public media station and everyone can listen to NPR podcasts free of charge. That means you get completely unpay walled access, access to stories, prize winning reporting and shows that represent the voices in every corner of the country. Hear the bigger picture every day on npr. Hi, this is Steve Inskeep. Our team is in China, inside a historic Chinese trading city where people come from all over the world to buy wholesale goods to import to their countries. And we're here to find out, among other things, how people are responding to tariffs on goods that go to the United States. Listen for that report on up first from NPR News. NPR informs and connects communities around the country, providing reliable information in times of crisis. Federal funding helps us fulfill our mission to create a more informed public and ensures that public radio remains available to everyone. Learn more about safeguarding the future of public media, visit protectmypublicmedia.org.