The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: New Orleans investigation; Biden's last days in office

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

The FBI continues investigating the motivation of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year's Day, killing at least 14. Then, a look at President Biden's to-do list as his time in office winds down, and Can't Let It Go. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, national justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by 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

Hi, this is Michael calling from Amundsen Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Wow. This podcast was recorded at 1205 p.m. Eastern Time on January 3rd, 2025 We just celebrated the new year here at the South Pole with a ceremony where we moved the geographic pole marker Since we are on a giant glacier and the South Pole actually shifts about 30 feet every year Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be very proud to have submitted the southernmost NPR Politics podcast timestamp ever since I am standing directly over the geographic pole marker.

Okay, here's the show. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] All right, dude, you win. Who can compete with that? That is amazing. You win. I learned so with that? That is amazing. You win. I learned so much in that brief time stamp. Oh my God, I love that time stamp so much.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. The New Year started off with some horrible news.

We want to bring you the latest on that attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day, where someone drove into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street killing at least 14. Here's the FBI's Chris Rea talking about the perpetrator, Shamsa Deen Jabbar. He posted several videos to an online platform proclaiming his support for ISIS. In the first video, Jabbar explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the, quote, war between the believers and the disbelievers, end quote. Additionally, he stated he had joined ISIS before this summer. He also provided a will and testimony.

Okay, Ryan, let's just start with the basics. What do we know so far about Jabbar? Well, as you said, his name is Shamsuddin Jabbar. He's a US citizen. He was born in Texas, raised in Texas. He served in the US military. He was an army veteran. He had started several small businesses

over the past couple of years. Several of those failed. So there was problems on the personal front. The FBI says that it believes as of now, the information that it has thus far that Jabbar was acting alone in this attack on Bourbon Street, which is very important because earlier on they said there was the possibility that he may have had co-conspirators or worked with someone. They say that's now off the table. They also say that Jabbar was, as we heard in that tape, they're inspired by the Islamic State. And we heard that in part because of the videos that he uploaded before the attack in which he declared his allegiance to it. And also there was an Islamic

State flag that was found on his truck there on Bourbon Street. The FBI has said that there's no indication at this point that he was directed, that he had direct contact with a foreign terrorist organization. And President Biden explained he had a briefing yesterday with his homeland security officials, and he explained that one of the reasons that they had initially thought that there might be other conspirators is that there were these two improvised explosive devices found in cooler chests in another area on Bourbon Street. They said that they actually found a remote detonator in his truck and that further reviews of the surveillance video indicated that this was in theory supposed to be a multi-pronged attack by him.

And Ryan, I mean, what is known about any potential links between Jabbar and any kind of foreign terrorist group? I mean, he had the ISIS flag as we've talked about, but do we know if there's any outside connection there? I think what we're getting at here is a question between inspired by the Islamic state and an attack that was directed by the Islamic state. And it's a very important distinction. A directed attack is where someone would be in direct contact with someone who is a member of the Islamic State who's telling them to, for example, go attack this target, bomb this, go conduct a shooting in location Y. That's not what we have here according to the information that we have thus far. Right

now what the FBI is saying is that this appears to be an individual who is inspired by the idea of the Islamic State. Remember, there's been a lot of Islamic State propaganda out there, and so there's no direct connection to someone with the Islamic State, but they're kind of taking in the information and the worldview, the ideology that's propagated by the Islamic State and then taking action on their own. I also want to talk about what happened in Las Vegas on New Year's Day when a veteran died by suicide

in a Tesla cyber truck that exploded right outside of President-elect Trump's hotel. Is there any link between what happened in Las Vegas and what happened in New Orleans? So you're talking about the death of master sergeant Matthew levels burger, who was the authorities say the man who was in that truck. The authorities at this point in time say that there is no connection that they have found between the events in New Orleans and what happened in Las Vegas. At this point in time, frankly, there are still a lot more questions about what happened in Vegas and what drove that incident than there are answers.

And President Biden said that he has urged his teams to accelerate their investigation to try to figure out what may have been going on in both of these cases. But in the case of Las Vegas, talk to the soldiers, colleagues and others to see what he might have been saying or what might have led him to this place. President Biden heads to New Orleans next week, Tam. What do we know about his plans for that trip? Yeah, the first lady is going with him as well. This is one of the difficult jobs of a president of the United States, which is to go to the site of a tragedy and to be the consular in chief. And we've seen President Biden do this in natural disasters and other cases. And so

he will be there to be with the people of New Orleans and show support for the victims of this terrible attack. You know, Ryan, it's been a long time since we've talked about terrorist attacks on US soil that have generated this kind of attention. What happens next here? It has been a long time since terrorism dominated the front pages in the United States like it did for a long time after 9-11 and up through the Islamic State 2015-2016. It kind of became an issue that many Americans forgot about because other things kind of took center stage. What I would say is that for people who focus on these issues is that this issue, this threat

has never disappeared entirely. It's faded from headlines. Yes, but it's always been simmering under the surface. It's something that the FBI consistently says we are tracking, we're concerned about. There are still things going on. And I will say, you still see people arrested from time to time for attempting to provide what's known as

material support to a terrorist organization, often it's the Islamic State. And so this is an issue that has disappeared for the public to a large extent, but remains for people who are focused on it, something of concern. And certainly after the October 7th Hamas attack in Israel, the FBI director has said that there is a very different, very dangerous dynamic going on in which there is a heightened increase of, or heightened potential rather, for terrorist attacks that they are monitoring right now.

I think it's important to note that Jabbar was an American citizen. He was born in the US, but some public figures, including President-elect Trump, have falsely suggested that this had something to do with immigration. How do you expect this incident, Tam, to feed into the larger conversation around immigration that we know is coming when Trump takes office? Trump put out a social media message very early on in the knowledge around this incident based on a false Fox News report that had suggested that the perpetrator came across the border to commit this act. And that just wasn't true. But the fact that Trump put that out so quickly is in part because it feeds into a narrative

that has been huge in the campaign and is inevitably going to be part of the way he governs. There is a lot of concern, especially on the right, warnings that terrorists could be coming across the US border or could be here already as the result of lax immigration policies. Trump is certainly going to tighten up the border, tighten up immigration policy. That is a day one promise. Whether this round peg fits into that square hole or whatever, which it doesn't, I think that those sort of

alarms are going to be continued to be raised by Republicans and President Trump. Well, Ryan, thank you for your reporting. Thank you. Let's take a break. We'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. Joining us now in PR's Domenico Montanaro. Hey there.

Hey, how's it going? So Joe Biden is leaving office in just over two weeks and he still has a few things on his plate to tackle, which is what we're going to talk about next. Tam, what's next? He's almost out of time. He is racing to the finish. The Biden administration under the direction of Chief of Staff Jeff Zientson has been doing everything they can to lock in Biden policy positions, trying to fortify the big bipartisan legislation, trying to push all the money out the door. Every day there's like a new announcement of another couple billion dollars

going to Ukraine or just today, President Biden blocked the merger between US Steel, which is a Pittsburgh based steel manufacturer, the largest in the US, and Nippon Steel, which is a Japanese-based steel producer. He cited national security concerns. I would just say broadly, he is doing all the things he can do with the limited time left and no control of Congress. Yeah, I mean, this is the, you know, we're right at the end now, the beginning of the year. This is a week when, you know, certainly not speaking for myself, but many people don't want to work. There's, you know, it's a lull, it's a quiet time, and yet they're doing all these things in very short order. Isn't there an argument to be made that, you know, even if Biden didn't think Trump would be back, the administration should have been doing

this all months ago, trying to kind of future-proof their accomplishments rather than cramming it in at the end? The Biden administration has been working for the last two years on its implementation agenda, which sounds super boring and we haven't been talking about it much. But in fact, that is what they've been doing. And some of these regulations that they're announcing or expected to announce, a lot of these things take 18 months to make happen. So, you know, every administration does this. Every president signs a flurry of executive orders and creates new national monuments and does all of these things to try to lock in their agenda. And then the new president comes in and, assuming they're from a different party, does everything they can along with Congress to try to undo it as quickly as possible. So we're in that cycle right

now. You saw the president do a series of pardons and commutations. We may see more of that yet still. And this week over at the White House he is giving out medals. So Domenico, this is all pretty par for the course. This is what presidents do at the end. Yeah sure sure. I mean, they do. But I think what's different here is that you have the incoming Trump administration and the Biden administration obviously having a completely different approach to policy, to the direction that they want the country to go. And I think that there are a lot of people, Biden included on the Democratic side, who

want to be able to sort of insulate the government, government workers, the executive branch from the potential changes that the Trump administration might try to make, and they want to make it as difficult as possible for the Trump administration to just make these big changes that they're proposing at this point. You know, one thing I want to ask you both about, Biden gave commendations throughout his term to Capitol police officers who defended the Capitol during the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

But another thing he did this week, he issued some more commendations for members of the House committee that investigated January 6. What does his objective seem to be in doing this just as he leaves office? Yeah, so he gave the second highest civilian honor to former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Congressman Benny Thompson. And they were the co-chairs of the January 6th committee investigating President Trump's involvement in and around

the riot at the Capitol back in 2021. And this is the Presidential Citizens Medal. Biden awarded it to a bunch of other people too, but they made all the news because Biden was trying to send a signal there. He was saying that the work that they did to expose what happened on January 6th matters, that it is worthy of honor rather than worthy of condemnation. And that comes in contrast to President-elect Trump, who has falsely accused the committee of destroying evidence and says that that is a crime that should be investigated. It is setting up this contrast. It's also Biden essentially trying to put something in the historical record, right? Like if history is revised, then there will be this footnote that says, but wait, those two people also got the second highest civilian honor.

And I think that that's a big piece of what President Biden is trying to do because this is somebody who does think about a long arc of history. I mean, at 82, he's the oldest president to serve in the office. He was around in Washington for quite a long time. So these kinds of commendations and honors are not something that he kind of takes lightly. It's not just something that he wants to put out there for friends and allies, but he's trying to make a point with this. The fact is, Monday is January 6th, and it's a real stark reminder with Trump coming back into office, the fact that he has promised to pardon people who participated in January 6th in storming the Capitol.

This committee's work and effort and time that it took, while this entire incident has now become partisan. It's not something I think a lot of us thought was possible, watching it evolve either on TV or in person, seeing people storm the Capitol to disrupt what was happening in government, the certification of the votes and tallies in 2020. And to see that become partisan, I think is a real black mark for the country and has been and the fact that it's become this very polarized issue, you know, it's one of those things that I think people are going to look back on and wonder just how the country got to

this place. We've been talking and in coming weeks, we will continue to talk about Biden's legacy. But just one question before we move on, you know, Biden's legacy will be defined not just by being president for four years, but also being in Congress for close to four decades, being vice president. How much is he going to be remembered for his four years as president versus all the things that came before it? I was talking to a presidential historian named Tevi Troy, who, and he's a more conservative voice, but he said, presidents, if they're lucky, get like one or two sentences. And

presidents are very conscious of the fact that they're only going to get a couple of sentences in the summary. And he said Biden's sentence flipped. When Biden ran in 2020, he was explicit that he was running to make Trump a one-term president. And now Trump is on his way back in. And, you know, it is going to be hard for President Biden to get past that one sentence, which is he was pushed off of the ticket in this unprecedented moment. And then ultimately his party lost the election and Donald Trump came back into office. So now Trump is going to be a two-term president and two-term presidents are remembered in American history much more fondly than one-term presidents.

Now the other side of that is Biden allies who say, you know, in his first two years in office, he actually got a lot done along with Congress. And these policies, though people aren't feeling it or seeing it now, in the long term could reshape the country and make for a better America. And in 40 years, when historians start writing these books, he will look less like Jimmy Carter and more like Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, when he left office was deeply unpopular, but ultimately, through time, was seen as a better, almost great president for some of the legislation that was passed and that he signed while president, like the Civil Rights Act.

You know, I think Tam mentions Carter there, and I'm struck by the parallels in some respects to Jimmy Carter because while Jimmy Carter has become something that the right uses to throw around to say this is a prime example of one of the worst presidents in history. I think there's been more revision on Jimmy Carter's legacy as president, not just his post presidency in the years since. And I think that one of the parallels that is interesting to me is how neither man while being president dealing with similar kinds of crises, when you think about inflation or foreign policy crises, weren't really able to break through to inspire people, as opposed to looking moralistic

or lectury about how the country should go or what they should do. But the broader picture, when the apertures widened, I think for Biden, it's not just going to be about giving Trump a passage back to the White House, but also just getting the country back to normal on the right foot post-COVID. I think that that's a really important thing and had been lost during this political campaign. And I think that's a product of the fact that the country has gotten back to mostly normal post-COVID that you can have these kinds of political debates and arguments about, you know, prices being too high as compared to the pre-pandemic. Of course, there are things that, you know, Biden, his team and people will look back on as there being real difficulties, obviously. And that started with the Afghanistan withdrawal that really undercut the idea that Biden could

do things more competently. That's why Trump had to be thrown out in the first place because he mishandled the COVID pandemic and that then you needed to have a democratic governance, big D democratic governance with someone like Biden. Because that competency narrative was undercut and because inflation continued to be high, which is not something that really a president has much control over, but because that competency narrative was undercut, that allowed passage for Trump to be able to return to the White House.

So I think it's a complicated legacy. All right. One more break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. 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 from the week we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Tam, we'll start with you. Yeah, so mine is, you know, a cute family moment.

At some point earlier this week, my younger son, Gibson, who is six, ran off with his iPad and disappeared. And the next thing I know, he has texted me from his iPad a video of him singing and dancing to Chappell Rhone's Hot to Go. I love it. And like really dancing and really singing and like very much like something you would see on the internet. It was um it was adorable. He does not know the meaning of the lyrics. He is he is not hot to go in that way but he is hot to go dance. You know I'll never forget my probably then three-year-old

singing that Tuve Lu song Habits. You know the one with that hook about being high all the time around the house. You know also not knowing what that hook about being high all the time around the house. You know, also not knowing what that meant, but it was very catchy. Sarah, what can you not let go of? So mine is from New Jersey, and it's about drones. If you've been paying attention to the news at all. Been following? Yeah. You know, a lot of New Jersey residents have been confused and concerned by the drones

sighted in the region in recent weeks. Authorities have said everything is safe, but nonetheless. This week, though, there was a hopeful story in which a drone was part of the solution. So puppies are curious little creatures and prone to wander, including a 20-month-old named Brooklyn, who ventured onto thin ice on New Jersey's Lake Parsippany. According to UPI, a neighbor attached some chicken to his drone to try to lure Brooklyn off the ice and back to shore. And it appeared to work for a little while, that is until Brooklyn ran back out onto the lake because, you know, it's fun. Ice skating is fun.

Wait, tell me there's a happy ending. Just wait for it. Okay. Well, then the neighbor used his drone to try to help a police officer locate Brooklyn. There was a lot of back and forth, but ultimately the dog was found safely on a local porch. Okay. Thank goodness. So using drones for good. Yeah, really. I mean, we've, we've heard so much about drones in New Jersey, like, you know, maybe this is the, uh, the way to do it here. We need to need to save the dogs. Yeah. I mean, I just love the drone thing. Maybe aliens or something terrible, or it could just be mass hysteria.

And that actually seems to be the most likely choice, is that it's stars and airplanes and not alien life or foreign interference. Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's not. Alien life? Not aliens, yeah. Yeah, well, Scott Detro is not here to defend himself, so it's OK.

Well, you know, we all have to dream, right? Aliens, like so many things, are so polarizing. I feel like they're people that really want them to exist, and then they're people that just really don't care. Listen, this is a whole other podcast, but with all the stars out there and all the planets that go around those stars and how far away they are, there's probably life out there somewhere.

But I have a hard time believing they're just like hovering over New Jersey. Danielle Pletka Why there? No offense to New Jersey. Okay. Domenico, what can't you let go? Domenico Well, I want to take us to Africa and to the country of Zambia because I saw this headline and just almost spit out my New Year's Eve champagne, because a drunken police officer in Zambia apparently freed 13 suspects from custody so that they could go and celebrate the new year, officials said.

This was from a BBC report that I'm reading from. So this detective inspector apparently was himself arrested after stealing the keys, getting drunk and stealing the keys from another police officer, letting them all free and saying, go and enjoy the new year. And they are now all on the run. Oh my goodness. Oh, still? Yep. 13 of them are on the run and there's a manhunt after these folks, people accused

of things like robbery and the rest. But you know, just kind of calm things down, people. Keep it under control. Yeah, keep it under control. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Casey Morrell edits the podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelly Wessinger.

Special thanks to Christian Dev Kalimer. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.