The NPR Politics Podcast - McConnell Announces His Retirement And Trump Signs Another Executive Order

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Sen. Mitch McConnell announced today that he would not seek reelection when his term is over in 2026, ending his 40-year career in Congress. Then, Donald Trump signed another executive order on Tuesday, giving him expanded power over independent agencies. This episode: political correspondents Sarah McCammon and Susan Davis, White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. 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

Hey, this is David in Wichita, Kansas. I'm just leaving an event featuring Sarah McCammon sharing her experience covering politics in the 2024 election. This show was recorded at 1238 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, February 20th, 2025. Let's be honest, things have probably changed by the time you're hearing this. Now here's the show. Love a McCammon fan stamp. That's so nice. Thank you, David. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah

McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And just a short time ago, Senator Mitch McConnell announced his retirement on the Senate floor. Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate. Every day in between, I've been humbled by the trust they placed in me to do their business right here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last. The Kentucky Republican was one of the most influential politicians of the modern era.

Sue Davis, you've been covering him for years. What is he saying about why he's ready to retire now? It is not a surprise. I think that it was long expected that McConnell would retire. He was up for reelection in 2026. He announced last year he would step down as leader of the party, paving the way for John Thune to become majority leader. But he's had a lot of health issues. He's been hospitalized. Even recently, he took a fall. He just physically, I think, is a big driver of it. And also politically, I think that Mitch McConnell, his time in the Republican Party in a lot of ways is coming to an end. Well, Sue, explain the role that he played in the Senate and why he was so consequential and also the

role he played in Trump's return after 2020. Yeah, I mean, I think, and McConnell would be the first person to say this, that he thinks the most consequential thing he did in his time in the Senate, and he is the longest serving Republican leader ever, is that 2016 decision to block Merrick Garland from going through the Supreme Court nomination process under former President Barack Obama. He tactically did that as a move ahead of a presidential election, which frankly, even Mitch McConnell would admit that he thought Hillary Clinton was likely to win in 2016. But the decision to keep open that Supreme Court seat, as the political

history lore will prove, is that it was very motivating to evangelical Christian voters who were skeptical about Donald Trump. And Donald Trump made great overtures to these voters to say he would put conservatives on the court. And so it goes, Donald Trump won that election, which paved the way for him to ultimately reshape the court by getting three conservative Supreme Court justices, which is today a 6-3 conservative court. And of course, it's beware of what you wish for, you just might get it. He got Donald Trump elected and then there was January 6th. And very famously, Mitch McConnell decided not to vote to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House for fomenting

the January 6th insurrection. And he said at the time, famously, the criminal justice system can take care of Donald Trump. And I wonder if Mitch McConnell is both responsible for helping Trump get elected so he could reshape the judiciary, but also helping him come back when McConnell clearly did not think he was fit to be president. I think this is so interesting, and this is sort of the history that was never written, is that there was this moment in time after the January 6th attack where McConnell seemed to open the door to the idea that he might be willing to vote to convict Trump in the Senate trial.

Which would have prevented him from running again. Yes. And if McConnell had been a vote to convict, we could argue this for forever, but there's an argument that he could have used his political power to get the two-thirds needed to convict the president and in that event would have prevented him from ever seeking federal office again. And he chose not to, right? And that was a very, I agree completely with you Mara, that decision to step back and to suggest that the criminal justice system would address any potential criminal activity from Donald Trump was, I would argue, as equally consequential but in a very different way than choosing to hold back Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination process.

And I would also note that when Donald Trump, when it became clear that he was gonna be the nominee in 2024, Mitch McConnell endorsed him. He said that he saw his role as a leader in the party to stand behind whoever the party nominated, but it had always been a relationship of convenience and never one of personal warmth or like. I mean, what did McConnell say about his relationship with Trump? Because you're both getting at

something I think is really interesting, which is he had a complicated relationship. He was never a never Trump-er, right? I mean, he would work with him on many things. But McConnell also represented kind of the old Republican guard, the wing of the party that is almost non-existent in today's GOP, you could argue. Yeah, I think it's very apparent today that Mitch McConnell is increasingly an outlier in the Republican Party. The couple of things I'd point to

is the series of votes against Trump's cabinet nominees. I never thought I'd see the day that Mitch McConnell would vote against a Republican president's defense secretary. It just shows you how much of the MAGA movement stands at odds with the type of people that Mitch McConnell thinks should have the caliber to be in a cabinet. And also right now, which I think is happening under our feet as we talk, is Donald Trump's

realignment in the Ukraine-Russia war. Clearly not as much of an ally to Ukraine as Mitch McConnell has been. Mitch McConnell has been one of the loudest and most powerful people to continue U.S. funding and support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And the parties just move past him. McConnell is not the leader of the party anymore when it comes to the view that the U.S. should play a robust role in foreign policy. And so do you think that McConnell has felt emboldened to push back against Trump in some of these confirmation votes, as you mentioned, because he's on his way out the door? Do you think he would have done that anyway?

No, I don't think. And he said this in his speech today. He said he had two constituencies. One was the Senate Republican Conference and one was the people of Kentucky. And I think McConnell, when he was leader, was of the view that you don't get to break with the party. The leader has to be where the consensus of the conference is. It is only because he is now sort of this independent operator that he would take these votes. Mitch McConnell is only voting against nominees now because he's not the leader. And he has always been very clear that when you are the leader, you have to vote with the party, which means that sometimes being a leader means

voting for things you might not necessarily agree with. One last question. Who might we see running to replace McConnell representing Kentucky in the Senate? He's already running. There's a candidate by the name of Daniel Cameron. He's a former attorney general for the state of Kentucky. He's already announced. I think it was within seven minutes of McConnell announcing his retirement. So it tells you that this is pretty orchestrated. McConnell has been his mentor. He has served statewide in Kentucky. He is a black man. He would certainly be the first black senator in Kentucky history. And he comes from that McConnell school. I also think he has credibility with

sort of the MAGA wing of the party. And he has been a popular figure at places like CPAC, the annual conservative gathering. So I think he certainly enters this race as someone who could be seen as a bit of a front runner. Interesting dynamic here is there might be some pressure among Democrats to try to get Andy Beshear, the popular Democratic governor, to run. He and Cameron have faced off before and he's defeated him. I think voters see governor's races and senators' races very differently. I can't say with a straight face that I think Democrats, as we sit here today, could make a serious run for Kentucky, but Beshear is going to make that conversation interesting.

And also because Beshear is someone that might consider himself someone who might want to run for president someday. So Kentucky will just be an interesting place to watch politically. So yeah, lots to watch. We're going to say goodbye now to Sue. Thanks for being here. You're welcome. It's time for a quick break.

And when we come back, President Trump's new effort to exert control over independent agencies. And we're back. And we're joined now by White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Hey, Danielle. Hey, Sarah. On Tuesday, President Trump signed yet another executive order giving him power over independent federal agencies, which have, by design, long been at a distance from the president's power.

Danielle, let's just start with the basics. What is an independent agency and why should people care about them? Well, even if you don't know what an independent agency is, you probably have interacted with one in some way. Let's start with that basic fact. There's, for example, the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, that insures your bank deposits in the US. There's the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which issues those recalls on products you

see when you see that some baby crib is determined not to be safe. That's the CPSC that puts that out. They underpin so many areas of American life. Now what these all have in common, there's no set legal definition for them, but they were set up by Congress to be insulated in some way from the presidency. The leaders, for example, can't be fired for political reasons. A president can only fire one by law for doing something really wrong, like misconduct. They're often headed by boards or commissions of people with staggered terms.

The idea there is that no president can totally change the leadership, him or herself. And they don't have to submit new regulations to the White House. When the DOD comes up with a new regulation, they have to submit it. These agencies don't. But this new executive order would change that part in particular. Okay. Tell me more about this order, though. What does it mean these agencies will have to do differently? And how might the president be involved? Well, in short, this order really rips out that insulation I talked about that these agencies have tended

to have from the president. So let me make up a very simple hypothetical. The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, has a new regulation about what words you can and can't say on television or the radio. They haven't had to run that by the White House so far. Well, now they would. But there are a couple other related things this order would do. It says each agency has to have

a White House liaison. What they do has to be consistent with White House policy and that the Office of Management and Budget Director, a guy named Russell Vogt under Donald Trump, he has power over their apportionments, over their money, so he can adjust what they have and how they spend it, quote, to advance the president's policies and priorities. So this gives the president so much power with these agencies. I do wanna add one important thing here though. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors

and the Federal Open Market Committee, both at the Fed, the central bank, they are exempted from this. The Fed's independence has long been seen as a fundamental part of the way that it stabilizes the economy. So many things, Danielle, that Trump has done in his first month in office were things he talked about on the campaign trail. But this one wasn't exactly a campaign slogan. I mean, did he telegraph this move at all

ahead of time? I mean, there's definitely the fact that Donald Trump in his first term very much sought to have as much presidential power as possible. So, I mean, the fact that he broadly wants to expand the power of the presidency, yeah, we kind of knew that. But this in particular, he never on the campaign trail that I heard, and I went to a lot of his events, said anything about independent agencies. But there's another move he has made this year, which is he has fired the heads of some of these agencies. Commissioners at like the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that is something that

presidents just haven't done. Like I've said, the idea is a president shouldn't be able to fire those people for political purposes. That goes hand in hand with what he is doing here, claiming this power. And the idea of claiming power over these agencies and being able to fire those heads, that is in Project 2025, that conservative blueprint for government. And Russell Vogought, the head of OMB that I mentioned who's in charge of all of this, after Donald Trump was elected, very much said, hey, independent agencies ain't going to be independent.

We're going to try to get rid of that. You know, Mara, I do want to talk about the politics of this. I mean, these, as we've said, are independent agencies. It means they were set up to be checks and balances for the president, independent from the president. How does this move to control them fit into Trump's larger governing strategy? Well, it certainly fits into his larger governing strategy, which as expressed by people like Russ Vogt, believes in a all-powerful executive with no checks and balances. They believe in something called the unitary executive. They believe in something called the

unitary executive. If an agency is in the executive branch, that means it in effect belongs to the president and he's in control of it. What the implications are of this, it offers tremendous opportunities for corruption and self-dealing because the president has business interests. Elon Musk has tremendous business interests and a lot of government contracts, and this means that they can decide if an investigation is moving forward into Tesla or crypto, they can squash it. So this executive order on independent agencies is part and parcel with almost every other thing that Trump is doing,

and eventually it's going to go to the Supreme Court, because some of these agencies were set up by Congress, and the Supreme Court will decide. And we know that several members of the conservative majority of the court that Donald Trump built are very receptive to this idea of an all-powerful executive. And what about legal challenges? I mean, how is the Supreme Court likely to react to this? Right. I was asking a legal scholar as I was reporting on this, okay, let's say I am the head of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, and I don't want to do what Trump

has told me to do in this order. Can I take this to court? Is that how this could reach the Supreme Court? And he said, well, he doesn't know of how that would work in terms of me being able to take that to court. But either way, under this president, this particular president, if I don't want to do what he tells me, he's going to fire me, right? And he has already shown that he will fire the heads of these agencies. And at that point, I might sue and say that my termination was unlawful. The thing is that has already happened. We've had a commissioner, for example, from the National Labor Relations Board who has,

who is suing and saying, you can't fire me, but you just did. When those cases, should they, and I want to stress should, make it to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to clarify what they think about the independence of these agencies. But as Mara just said, this particular Supreme Court has proven itself very willing in the last few years to chip

away at that independence via a whole range of rulings. Danielle Pletka And don't forget, there's a third branch of government here, Congress. Congress created these independent agencies. And so far, what we've seen is that especially the Republican Congress under a Republican president, this president has pretty much abdicated its role as a co-eagle branch of government. So you've got left, the only check left is the courts, and we're going to see how willing they are to let Trump's new very expansive view of the executive prevail.

Right. Okay, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.