The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress, content creators, and Can't Let It Go

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

There's another fight on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to get four more spending bills passed before the end of the month. We talk about what's at stake and how both parties are navigating the high cost of health care.Then, a look at how the Trump administration is using social media content to sway public opinion & influence governance, and what our panelists can't stop thinking about this week.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional reporter Sam Gringlas, White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and political reporters Stephen Fowler & Jude Joffe-Block.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Data Bricks, the data and AI company. Are your AI agents working? Most aren't reliable for business. You need AI that's accurate. Agent Bricks, AI agents grounded in your data and built for your goals. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast for Friday. January 16th, 2026.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And we are taping this podcast at 1239. It is Friday, so we are going to try to make some sense of another crazy week in Washington.

Sam, I want to start with you. Congress has a deadline, another deadline at the end of the month, to get some various spending bills passed. I feel like the government shutdown was just yesterday, so how in the world are we back here again? Okay, so to end the shutdown, what Congress did is they passed three spending packages, and they need to do 12. The rest were just basically extended at current funding levels, this other deadline, which is coming up on January 30th. And now at this point, Congress has passed half of those appropriations packages, and two more of them are really close. But the four that are left are really tricky, including health and human services, defense, and homeland security.

It sounds a little bit like me in college waiting till the end to do the hardest stuff. Yeah, you're fascinated. What are the sticking points? Okay, so these buckets that are still on the to-do list, they actually make up a majority of discretionary spending, so the stakes are really high. And appropriators say that they are on track except for the Homeland Security package. And this one is proving to be pretty thorny because some Democrats are calling for it to include provisions that would rein in immigration and customs enforcement amid all these really forceful ice crackdowns that we're seeing around the country. But I got to say, there is not a lot of appetite even for a partial government shutdown,

right now after all that we lived through back in the fall. So what's more likely is that this DHS funding just gets extended without change is another continuing resolution and would kick that debate until after the midterms. All right. Well, let's also talk about health care because, you know, when the shutdown did end, it ended without a deal on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Millions of Americans are now heading into 2026, staring down big increases in their premiums if they do get health care through the Affordable Care Act. There's still no deal,

though. So where do things stand there? Yeah. So the other week, a handful of Republicans joined Democrats to force a vote on an extension in the House. And, you know, that particular measure was never going to become law. But what it did do was recharge bipartisan negotiations over in the Senate. And last week, you know, I was talking to all these lawmakers who were involved in these talks and they were so optimistic. They were saying things like, we're getting really close or, you know, another even said they were in the red zone. This week, though, it was a totally different story. You heard people saying that the talks were paused.

They're basically floundering. And then you had President Trump, who released a health plan of his own, that seemed to spiral things even further. I just want to listen for a minute to how one of these bipartisan negotiators described the current environment. Here is Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. We've all known that to be able to advance something we're going to have to have,

buy-in from the White House. Does this set things back if he signals that he does not support extending? I mean, that's the basis of our plan here. I've told Alaskans, I'm not back and down off the engagement. I don't think it is too late to salvage something. You know, others said the talks could still continue basically in tandem with what Trump wants. But you also heard some of them starting to shift the blame for possible failure to colleagues across the aisle, you know, if all this goes south. I should say that there were sticking points between the parties in these negotiations even before this Trump plan rolled out, namely that some Republicans want stricter language ensuring that federal money is not used for abortion. And you do have to wonder how President Trump would react were Congress to actually pass the extension on these enhanced ACA subsidies. Because just a few days ago, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that he did it not.

if he would sign such a bill. And the White House in following up on that had said that, well, Trump wants the money to go straight to people and not into the subsidies for people on these health care exchanges. This is a reference to Trump's great health care plan, which we're going to get into. But you do have, as we've talked a lot about when we've talked about these extensions, a lot of people in red states, as Senator Murkowski and plenty of other senators know, who do depend on these subsidies, not just Democrats. So. So Trump and any other Republican faces kind of a dilemma here. Which way do you go? Well, I mean, what is the White House perspective on this health care issue? I mean, what is Trump saying about the fact that millions of people are facing these higher premiums? Trump right now is really focused on the messaging that he has a health care plan. And if you think you've heard that before, yeah, you have. You have heard this since Trump first got into office back in 2017. Way back when you had him and all sorts of congressional Republicans saying, hey, we're going to repeal. and replace Obamacare. Well, now, that is not exactly Trump's central messaging. That's not what he's leaning into at the very least when he's talking about this new great health care plan that he outlined yesterday at the White House. Instead, this is part of his whole affordability messaging,

which is, I have ideas for how I'm going to bring all these costs down. Let me tell you about them. Now, the big question, of course, and Sam will speak to this, is how much appetite Congress has, not only for passing something like that, but even for putting it together because what Trump has outlined is some big, big changes. And so will Republicans in Congress go for that? And also, is Trump willing to push them on that? How serious is he? Or is this just messaging? What do you make of that, Sam? So I think the reality is that it has been very hard to find a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. you know, health care is so complicated and is also really personal for a lot of people. And so while there was all this optimism about doing something kind of narrow about the subsidies

specifically, a broader health plan is a much bigger ask, even though there probably are some areas within this that there could be room for bipartisan collaboration. And this is purely from a political standpoint, a heck of a strategy for Republicans, because Democrats, very broadly speaking, tend to poll better, do better when they message on health care, when they run on health care. We have seen that in past midterms. Voters in recent years they've liked Republicans on immigration, defense, often the economy. But Democrats, they got health care. And so for Republicans to be leaning into health care right now, again, purely politically, that is a bet in a midterm year.

Well, it's so interesting also just thinking about Trump's broader. strategy. I feel like you have this very, very specific problem of these millions of people on the ACA whose prices are going up and then Trump responds with this kind of broad outline of a plan, but no real specifics to address that specific problem that's impacting people. How does that fit in, I guess, to what you've seen from Trump during his second term more broadly, Danielle? Ever since especially Democrats won a whole bunch of off-year elections in November, touting, again, This is their framing of it, affordability, which you can call any number of things, by the way. You can call it inflation.

You can call it prices. You can call it cost of living, which people have talked about for years. But Democrats won on that very effective messaging. And Trump really noticed and honestly seemed pretty mad about that because he ran and won on inflation and prices. And so Trump has been very haphazardly pushing an affordability message. He has gotten a bit more on message in recent weeks. But on the one hand saying, you know, affordability is a hoax seeming like he's not taking it seriously. But on the other hand, he has put forward a whole list of policy ideas pitched at affordability.

For example, 50-year mortgages, blocking large institutional investors from buying homes, capping credit card interest rates at 10%. He has reduced some tariffs. He wanted to give people $2,000 checks from the tariff money. in the big beautiful bill. He passed no tax on tips, Social Security, overtime. So he really likes to talk about all of this. And health care is another thing in that bucket. I think you can look at it that way. Not quite as here is Trump's repeal and replace plan, but also here is another bullet point on his list of affordability policies. But again, the question is, how invested is he

in all of these as opposed to talking about them? And how hard is he going to push Congress on these things? He hasn't relied on them for very much at all. All right. Well, Sam and Danielle, go get a cup of coffee or something. Come back for. Can't let it go. But we're going to take a quick break. This message comes from Data Bricks, the data and AI company. AI agents work best when they have the right context.

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episode of the NPR Politics Podcast. And I want to bring in two of my favorite reporters here at NPR, Jude Jaffe Block and Stephen Fowler. How do you both? Hey there. Hey. So you guys have some great reporting out today about the Trump administration's use of social media, particularly with regards to the surge of immigration enforcement in Minnesota that's going on right now and how social media is basically influencing policy in the White House. Jude, just start there. Explain for people who aren't terminally online exactly what this content looks like? Well, I'll give you one example. Our story opens with this video that the Department of Homeland Security posted this week, and it shows these helmeted, heavily armed border agents in a helicopter repelling down, breaking down doors. And, you know, it's this very militaristic, combative imagery. It's captioned with a Bible verse, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. You know, it's this juxtaposition, you know, religious overtones. And it's coming in this week where there's this push, this really heavy-handed push to control the narrative of immigration

policy in Minnesota. And especially after this fatal ice shooting last week. And that in itself has been very emblematic of this, this effort to control the narrative. You know, within hours of reports of this shooting of 37-year-old Renee Maclin Good by an ice agent, we saw a President Trump taking to Truth Social immediately posting. This was, you know, willful and vicious in an attempt to run the agent over. The Department of Homeland Security posted and Secretary of Homeland Security, Christine Nome said in press conference, you know, this was an act of domestic terrorism, this effort to frame it, get out ahead and frame this issue right away before there's facts and investigation done. And this whole episode of why we're even talking about Minnesota

right now, you could argue, goes back three weeks ago to another viral social media post. You know, this is Nick Shirley, a right-wing influencer who's close with the Trump administration, who posted about allegations of fraud in these Minnesota daycares, which in a way, kicked this all off. It was in the aftermath of that that the Trump administration sent thousands of federal agents into Minnesota, has attempted to freeze federal funding. Some of that's been blocked by the courts. And now we're seeing aligned influencers on the ground recording clashes between protesters and ICE agents and using that to call on the president to evoke the Insurrection Act and send in military.

And, you know, Trump has indicated that that he is considering that. And we're seeing those calls and that pressure on social media continue today. Right. It's the circular thing that's going on where people posts, then Trump responds to it. And then Trump seems to be responding to the posts. And so then there's more posts because more people are. kind of involved. It's this really interesting cycle that I feel like we're seeing happening in Minnesota, Stephen, but it's also not isolated to that, right? I mean, this is something that is becoming a trend through Trump's second term. Correct. There are a lot of posts. And in the last

two weeks, we've really seen this strategy lead to a lot of different headlines. You've got Vice President J.D. Vance frequently arguing with posters on social media about Minnesota, but also with the military operation in Venezuela where defense secretary Pete Hegset is monitoring the situation with all of these screens of the social media site X in the background. You've got the official White House account posting memes about seizing Greenland and declaring an end to a war on protein. And if you also go back to this other thing that happened last year, Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency was something that was spawned by online conversations. led by Elon Musk, the very online owner of a social media site, and even the name itself is a meme. I do feel like government officials want to share what they're doing and what they're working on. That part of this is not new, though it does feel like what's happening with the Trump administration is different.

Jude, can you explain a little bit more why this feels so different? You know, one element of this has to do with volume. You know, the Trump administration is in constant campaigning mode. you know, we heard that from some of the experts we spoke with. You know, they use a rapid response account, which is usually something we see campaigns use, but not as typical for those who are governing. They've understood that they want to shape narratives and respond in real time. And also the ecosystem is different.

I mean, this influencer dynamic, which we've talked about, you know, this is something that actually help propel Trump back into the White House in 2024, these mega-friendly influencers and podcasters and the dynamics on X. were helpful to his campaign and now are continuing to be. You know, we talked with Renee DeResta. She's a professor at Georgetown University who says these influencers are part of what she calls the propaganda machine of this administration, that they get special treatment, they get access, they are invited to certain briefings and roundtables and ice ride-alongs,

and then they create this viral content that then can be used to justify policies. So I think that's something new. And she says, you know, in the past, we might have thought of propaganda as something that's state run or top down media. But it's now this relationship with creators that should be considered. That's so interesting. I mean, I guess the next question I have is this new strategy, is it working? Because it obviously worked in 2024 to get Trump elected. You won the popular vote. But I guess I'm wondering if it's having a positive impact on. how people, now that he's governing, how people perceive him or perceive the administration. So, Miles, I asked the White House a similar version of this question, and if they had any sort of

concerns that being very, very focused on a particular medium and speaking to a particular subset of people within that medium, if they were worried about the messaging, leaving people behind who aren't as online or who might be turned off by some of the tones of things, and a White House spokesperson said, quote, The White House has an authentic style and unmatched communication strategy because it's led by the greatest communicator in the history of American politics, President Donald J. Trump. I mean, what's interesting thinking about Minnesota is that some of these influencers who are on the ground

are, you know, showing video clips, showing ICE, taking increasingly aggressive steps and tactics towards protesters and even just people in cars who seem to be in the wrong. wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, there's video of people being pulled out of their cars, their windows smashed. And there's influencers sharing this saying, you know, I voted for this, you know, like sharing it gleefully to show the might of the ice agents on the ground. It raises a question. What happens when some of this video starts to circulate more widely and a bigger swath of the public is seeing this. And I asked this to Whitney Phillips. She's a professor at University

of Oregon who studies how people interact with information. You know, the irony might ultimately be that if the administration has harnessed for their own benefit algorithms and trending topics, that those very same things might be what ultimately become part of their undoing when people see it and then think, oh, God. That said, I do feel like we're moving toward this place where people just feel more polarized than they were previously, and that kind of doesn't allow for as much of critical, I feel like, assessment of videos like this. I guess I'm a little curious about where this goes from here. Like, is this just the state of play for whatever the next administration is now, or what do you guys think about that?

Well, to your point, there has been a notable increase in other politicians and accounts that crop up that have this sort of trolling antagonistic style. For Democrats, you have the official press accounts of California Governor Gavin Newsom and New York Governor Kathy Hochel that have adopted this sort of mentality and kind of owning the conservatives and pushing back and memifying everything. So there is evidence that that is where some people are heading. But this is also something that I ask Larry Shaq about. He's a political strategist. He recently published an analysis of the 2024 election with,

the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, he said that his research and polling found that this political environment we're in has switched from being one driven by policy to one driven by narrative. And what he means by that is that somebody's perspective on an issue is determined by the party that they voted for, not necessarily what they might be persuaded to believe. So in the case of the fatal ice shooting in Minnesota, this is what he had to say. And the evidence doesn't exist to inform. The evidence exists to create and expand and blow out the narratives that support the predominant view of each side. So what he's saying here and now is that in this particular moment, it seems likely that there is this disconnect between reality and the views of many, many videos in the case of Minnesota, but the views of people, just depending on what political,

affiliation they have. And many of the experts we talked to said they don't know what's coming next. It almost feels like connected in some way to how people feel about social media more broadly on where this heads. Because I do feel like if we had in a situation, you know, in 10 or 20 years down the road where people have really soured on the concept of being terminally online, then having a leader who is posting this sort of stuff or driven by it, I think it feels like that would be a, little bit more disqualifying or at least a turnoff for people. Well, and I think one of the key issues with being terminally online is that, of course, you know, the algorithms reward, you know, divisive, you know, rage baity content that makes us angry, that makes us feel motivated to share it and kind of divides us further. And this coarsening of the rhetoric is really the key here to think about because the risk here

is that it becomes such a turnop, not just the online. onlineness, but the kind of rhetoric that, you know, being online encourages is what could really turn people off from tuning into politics to tuning into political news, that it could just feel so toxic that they have to tune out. And so I think that's what everyone has to be thinking about right now, is how do we kind of get out of this cycle that we're in? Well, I would just push everybody to go read Stephen and Jude's story. We can leave it there for now. But thank you guys so much for talking about it. Thanks, Miles. Thank you. All right. One more break, and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And so are Sam Green Glass and Daniel Kurtzleben. Hi, guys.

Hello. Hello. So it's now time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot let go of politics or otherwise. And I'll start a politics story that broke last night that I covered that I feel like I had been waiting for for months. It's one of those in the weeds voting reporter stories that no one else is talking about. So here I am. talking about it. I'm on pins and needles. I know. I'm sure you are. I'm sure Sam is, too, for the past six months. I've come on the podcast and talked about it a bit, but I've been reporting a lot with Jude also about the federal government's effort to try to acquire voting lists from states. This is something where the states for many, many, many, many years have maintained their own elections lists. States are in charge of running their own elections. The federal government has had very little role in that department. Since Trump came into office for a second time. His government has really wanted more oversight. This kind of stems from

Trump saying during the campaign a lot that non-citizens were all over voting lists. And so he wanted to have a bigger role. His Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security both said they want a bigger role in oversight here. And so they have been suing a bunch of states, all at this point Democrats and states Trump lost in 2020, trying to acquire this voting data for the first time. And so last night, we got our first ruling in one of these cases where a judge in California said, no, this is not how this is going to go and dismiss the lawsuit completely. This is the first ruling out of more than 20 lawsuits that are floating around across the country. But it is really interesting just to see a judge actually weigh in and say, no, this is a place where the federal

government does not have a role. Well, does that affect the other lawsuits or probably not? That is one of the outstanding questions. And Judge in Oregon also on Wednesday in court said, I'm thinking about doing the same thing and dismissing the lawsuit. And so it's a little bit unclear. I will say the judge in California also said he expects it to get appealed potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court. So this could definitely be something we're talking about for the next couple of years. I'm hoping you guys have more fun things to talk about potentially, Danielle. Do you have fun here?

I'm going to be sneaky here and sneak in. Two can't let it go is the first one. It's going to be very short. But like, I used to live in Minneapolis. My real can't let it go is like, it is my favorite city in this great country. With apologies to D.C., I love Minneapolis. It is an awesome place. Great live music, great theater. And so it just has been breaking my heart this week to watch things fall apart there. I have a little more to say, but I hope everybody and all the good people of Minneapolis are doing okay right now. That said, during this week where I've been kind of bummed out, I had a little glimmer of warmth because, you see, I have a small, child in my life. My little toddler is obsessed with K-pop Demon Hunters and all I get all the time are the songs. And I know they're good pop hits, they're bops, but I've heard them all 90,000 times and I can't handle life anymore. I'm so sick of them. That is, I was sick of them until I caught a

little clip from the Golden Globes this last week because the song Golden from K-pop Demon Hunters Kim June Jay accepted the award for Best Song from a Film at the Golden Globes. And she gave this, I'm such a softy now, but like she gave this really heartwarming speech about rejection and going after your dreams. Here's a little cut of it. I worked tirelessly for 10 years to fulfill one dream to become a K-pop idol. And I was rejected and disappointed that my voice wasn't good enough. And she goes on to talk about how like, yeah, she was rejected, but she's, just kept writing songs and kept singing. And now she has like the biggest, most pervasive

musical on the planet right now. And so maybe motherhood has turned me into a softie, but I was just touched and I can handle this movie a little bit more now because, you know, good for her, good for them. And I feel like every time you stream the song now, you know that you're supporting a good cause basically, right? I mean, that is like, if you're going to stream a song 6,000 times in the car, it might as well be supporting it artist you support, right? Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, hey, podcast listeners, reach for your dream. I got to say, Senator Cory Booker delivered a similar message on the Senate floor this week in the form of a poem. So second time I've heard this week, don't give up on your dream.

Like Lori Booker was saying that he was like, he kind of rose up. He did not want to be a K-pop star. Oh, what? I would pay to hear that. Sam, what can't you let go off? Okay, so I want to talk about doppelgangers. I feel like I hear voice. doppelgangers of people all the time, and maybe that's because we are radio people and we're always thinking about people's voices. Do you guys feel like you have a doppelganger out in the world? Like someone that looks or sounds like you? Honestly, no. But there is an actor who is a doppelganger, a voice doppelganger for Domenico.

He was on community. Danny Pouty. Danny Pouty is a voice doppelganger for Domenico. I will stand with this. Anyway. I used to get that me and Ari Shapiro, now, RIPR. He's not what he's not right. But he's no longer at NPR. But I used to get that when we would do conversations on the radio, people would feel like we were talking to ourselves. It was what

people would tell me. Okay. I see that. Okay. So the reason I bring this up is this week I was looking for an ear doctor. Sorry if that's too much information. But I was going through the names at the doctor's office and I came across a guy who I swear looks just like me, like, eerily so. And I cannot stop showing it to people. And now I'm like, do I make an appointment with this guy? Do I walk in and look exactly like the doctor? Is this a good way to choose a doctor? I need answers. Can you tell us the doctors? No. I mean, not on the radio, but can you tell? And I just Google it. I'm going to slack it to you right now. Okay. Who? Wow. No, you're not kidding. Hold on. Hold on. Loading, loading, loading. Oh my goodness. Dr. Sam. Wow.

See, that's good audio right there. Me and Miles both kind of losing our minds. That is... So that is what I cannot let go up this week. Have you decided whether you're doing it or whether this is a sign you shouldn't do it? I don't know. You make an appointment with him and just freak him out. Or walk in with the doctor's coat and be like, I'm here.

I will say, Sam, as a radio professional, it is very important to keep your ears. Everything all good there. So please get on this regardless of what you choose, okay? I-I-I. That's all for today. Our executive producer of Mathony Maturi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay.

Special thanks also to Dana Farrington. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.