The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Spending Bill Fight Continues; TikTok Ban Looms

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Lawmakers are up against a deadline of midnight Friday to pass a bill to fund the government. What's behind the hold up?Then, a ban on TikTok heads to the Supreme Court, and we go back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, political correspondent Susan Davis, technology correspondent Bobby Allyn, and voting correspondent Miles Parks.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

Since the beginning of women's sports, there's been a struggle to define who qualifies for the women's category. Tested, from NPR's Embedded podcast and CBC, takes you inside that struggle. Listen to Tested, the series that was named one of the 10 best podcasts of 2024 by Apple, Vulture, and the New York Times. It's season 20 of NPR's embedded podcast. Hi, this is Marcy from East Hampton, Massachusetts. I am needing challah dough to bring to a Shabbat dinner with family tonight. This podcast was recorded at 1220 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, December 20, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. But hopefully

this dough will have risen and I will have braided it into the beautiful challah braided loaf. Enjoy the show. I love challah. Me too. Good luck. Shabbat shalom, almost. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. On today's pod, time is running out before the government could shut down. Deirdre, when we last talked, Donald Trump had sent House Republicans scrambling to come up with a new

plan to keep the government funded because he did not like what speaker Mike Johnson had come up with and that killed it. So where are we now? Well, that sent the speaker back to the drawing board and he decided instead of negotiating a bipartisan deal with Democrats like he originally did, he would negotiate a plan just with House Republicans. And he included a new demand that the president-elect air dropped into this at a very late hour, which is a two-year increase to the country's borrowing authority.

That was not something that House conservatives were happy about. So the speaker of the House moved forward and put this deal on the floor, knowing it would fail. Democrats were clear they were not going to agree to raise the debt limit. The new Republican bill that was on the floor last night also took out things that had been agreed to by top Republican and Democratic leaders. Things like reforms to programs that would lower prescription drug costs, money for pediatric cancer programs, a bill that

would restrict China's access to US technologies. And Democrats argued Elon Musk's involvement in torpedoing the bipartisan deal was him ignoring these bipartisan deals. Now you said, Deirdre, that Democrats were never gonna support this. The speaker put it on the floor knowing that. But this was the second deal, was a Republican-led proposal, of course, and still 38 members of the Republican conference voted no. Did he anticipate that? I don't think Republicans anticipated 38 no's.

That was a big number. Their plan, knowing that this Republican-only plan was going to fail, was essentially to smoke out how many House Republicans they needed to focus on to try to pass it the traditional way, just to pass it with a simple majority. You know, sort of seeing who they could pressure with the help of the President-elect, who was active on social media, threatening primary challenges against critics like Texas Republican Chip Roy, it became very clear with that 38 number and the nose racking up during that vote, that was not going to fly and they were going to have to come up with another plan. But Chip Roy sort of represented this sentiment from conservatives in the House Republican Freedom Caucus and others that they just weren't going to go there in terms of agreeing to something that they saw as something

they were philosophically opposed to. I mean, let's take a listen to some of Chipporoy's rhetoric sort of chastising his own Republican colleagues on the House floor. To take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages but increases the debt by five trillion dollars is asinine. You know Sue, as Deirdre mentioned a moment ago, President-elect Trump was calling on Republicans to pass this bill. He said it was a good deal. What does the fact that so many defected say about his relationship to his party and the lawmakers in the House especially?

There's still tremendous loyalty to Donald Trump. But I think to Deirdre's point, it has limits and that there are a significant number of Republicans who are ready and willing to abandon past stated principles about spending and the debt limit for the sake of party unity. Most Republicans voted for this yesterday. Even during the Biden administration, they would never Republicans voted for this yesterday. Even during the

Biden administration, they would never have voted for a proposal that would have just lifted the debt limit without some kind of concessions. Chip Roy is, I think, a good example of someone who was a pain in the side of leadership when there was a Democrat in the White House, and he's likely to be a pain in the side of leadership even with a Republican in the White House. There is still a core group of Republicans who I don't think are going to be just go along to get along. And it's important because again, this House Republican majority, it's so narrow. I mean, they barely control the chamber. You can only pass things unless you have

basic party unanimity on everything, which this entire episode is highlighting is really hard to get. Or you need to bring Democrats into the conversation and they're still resistant to that reality. And I think Donald Trump is a little bit resistant to that reality. Yes, Republicans are going to control Congress in the next Congress, but you simply cannot just force the will of the Congress if you're not willing to at least bring in some element of the minority party to get things done when it comes to things like spending. So we've been talking a lot this week about Elon Musk's role.

How does he emerge from this? I mean, I still think that Musk is as powerful as he was before now. I think he has helped in some ways. I think about like the metaphor of like he kind of helped start the bar fight, and I'm not sure he's going to help end the bar fight at this point. It was his opposition that sort of snowballed this into the mess that it is now. But he is still very publicly on social media supporting this sort of confrontational strategy, trying to frame it as a Chuck Schumer shutdown, Chuck Schumer being the Senate majority leader

who is separately saying, look, we need bipartisanship. Let's get together and negotiate a deal. He clearly still sits at the right hand of the president. He has a tremendous amount of money. He has a tremendous amount of ability to sway conservative opinion on these matters. So it does feel like he's taken a little bit of a backseat in the sense of where things are on the Hill. But I don't think anyone should dismiss how much power and influence Musk has in the party at this moment.

Soterios Johnson I do wonder though, whether some House Republicans feel like they successfully push back a little bit at him. One Nebraska Republican I talked to last night, Don Bacon, said that once Trump and the speaker sort of went through what was in the package and sort of got through the like what Bacon said, all the false information that Musk was tweeting about the original deal that President-elect Trump, you know, wasn't as opposed to the original deal as obviously Musk whipped up this firestorm about. He's also providing a bit of a political gift to Democrats in this moment.

It's really not hard to make the richest man in the world a boogie man for Democrats We'll see how that plays out but I think Democrats are starting to grasp a strategy around how they're gonna use someone like Musk in these debates going forward because as Deirdre noted he's gonna be a factor in these spending debates in the next Congress. All right, lots more that we'll be following Thank you so much Deirdre. Thank you time for a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allen is here now. Hey, Bobby. Hey, guys. Bobby, you've been covering the long running fight over whether the popular smartphone

app TikTok will be banned in the U.S. and whether that may come to a conclusion soon. A ban on the app is set to take effect in mid-January, unless the Supreme Court intervenes or unless TikTok is sold to an American company. So Bobby, just remind us, how did we get here? So for as long as most can remember, TikTok has been in hot water, right? Trump, in the first Trump administration, tried to shut down the app over its Chinese ownership.

That didn't work. Jump ahead to the Biden administration. Those same concerns have persisted. And there is lots of back and forth that ultimately led to Congress passing a law in April that said exactly as you just mentioned, that TikTok has to shed its Chinese owner or it will be effectively banned nationwide in the U.S. TikTok sued, saying they have a First Amendment case that the 170 million Americans on the app

go on there to express their political opinions and that shutting it down would suppress their speech. A federal appeals court heard that lawsuit and said, no, actually the China threat is real. We're affirming this law. TikTok appealed again to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court just said they will hear arguments and they're putting in on a really fast expedited track. So just three weeks

from now, I'll be going to Washington and sitting in the Supreme Court and hearing oral arguments between lawyers for TikTok and the Department of Justice. I mean, there's been a lot of debate about TikTok for a long time. Some of it that I would sort of describe as ideological debate about the content, the nature of the content that gets pushed to TikTok users. This also seemed to be really focused on national security. I mean, how did this ban come to be? Well, TikTok has come to embody a lot of larger fears about China. And because the theory is TikTok's parent company, Byte in Beijing that they are answerable to the Chinese Communist Party The fear is that the Chinese government can use the app to spy on Americans or use the app to covertly

Manipulate Americans opinions by pushing this information or running Influence operations on the app. So because of that fear, which has been hypothetical, right? There's no solid public evidence of that. But because of that fear, there's been a huge bipartisan crackdown on TikTok. And TikTok has been fighting for its life ever since, but users haven't cared much. Half of America is on TikTok, right? 170 million Americans, that's nearly half the country.

So while there's been a lot of hand-wringing and concerns and legal maneuvering to try to do something about TikTok, it has just grown, grown, grown, grown in popularity. Bobby, I have a kind of a practical question in that, especially because as you noted, the decision in this could come in short order. What happens if the app is banned? I have it, I admit I'm not a big TikToker,

but I do have it on my phone and I'm one of the people that goes on and lurks on it occasionally. Would it just like stop working? Yeah, so if TikTok is banned, under the law it will become illegal to host TikTok. So the web hosting backend services would be cut off and Apple and Google would have to boot TikTok

out of the app store. So it's not like the government can reach into everyone's pocket, grab their iPhones and delete the actual app. But eventually over time, we're talking many, many months, the app's going to get glitchy, it's going to get buggy, and it's eventually going to be rendered unusable, but it would die sort of this slow death. It would slowly wither. It wouldn't just disappear overnight, but that's effectively how it would work. Now, Sue, this bill that could ban TikTok, it passed with significant bipartisan support. Now, we know there's increased skepticism and antagonism toward China and Chinese technology,

especially from President-elect Trump. Do you expect to see more of this with the incoming administration? You know, it's really interesting because U.S.-China policy is probably one and maybe if only major areas of foreign policy where there is broad bipartisan agreement. There has been the creation of new committees on Capitol Hill looking at the US-China relationship. As you noted, this legislation, which I think falls under that umbrella, passed with a big bipartisan margin. But I think it's unclear in the next Congress. Donald Trump is really hard to pin down on these things. And while he has been very tough on China,

he has also made some comments recently about TikTok specifically that seem more friendly to the company. He recently met with the CEO of TikTok. He has suggested that he might want to save TikTok because it's a very popular app among young people. And he believes that he had strong support among young people in the election, although not as strong as he suggested publicly.

So I don't think anyone can be hyper predictive of what Donald Trump would do. I don't think it's going to move a lot of Republican opposition to China on Capitol Hill where there is still deep skepticism. I don't think that it's going to soften from a legislative perspective where lawmakers are on this particular company. You know, Bobby, the other way, as we mentioned, that this could be resolved would be for an American company to essentially buy TikTok. Is there still talk of TikTok being sold and who might want to buy it? So there's two answers to this. First, TikTok says it is not for sale and that's been its position for a long time. That's its public position. But behind closed doors, you know, I've talked to people

who are close to the company and say they might be warming up to the idea of TikTok US being spun off and potentially purchased by an American company or a group of investors. And the current thinking is sort of tied to larger trade negotiations, right? So the idea is that Trump, of course, we President-elect Donald Trump, likes to see himself as this kind of deal maker that maybe he can convince Chinese regulators to sell the algorithm, to sell TikTok to a US company or group of investors and then in exchange for doing that, China can get some kind of tariff relief. And again, I don't know how in the world this would pass muster with all of the China hawks

who are close advisors to Trump and all the China hawks who are expected to be cabinet members in his administration, but that is the sort of current thinking. And in terms of who would potentially buy, I just think we're too far away from that being reality to even speculate. But I mean, this is a company that could be worth in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. So there's very few companies in the world that would have the wherewithal to acquire this company.

It's also seems pretty clear that the way that Donald Trump is maneuvering as he wants to be seen is trying to cut a deal here to save TikTok. And politically speaking, if he were somehow able to broker something like that, I think it'd be a huge political win for him. There's lots of national security and other policy reasons

why people have concerns about TikTok, but in just a popular street level place, people like it. And Trump would love to be able to say, he saved TikTok for you America. Oh, absolutely. And another layer to this Sue is that, while ByteDance is TikTok majority owned, there's a minority stake

from SoftBank CEO Masayoshi San. Oh, interesting. He just pledged a, you know, a huge investment in the U.S. You know, Republican mega donor Jeff Yoss has a minority stake in ByteDance, which controls TikTok. And so, you know, those two have been making more and more inroads into Trump's orbit. So will they somehow influence Trump's thinking on TikTok? I think it's a real question. And how significant, Bobby, is America to TikTok's bottom line? If the app was banned in the U.S., would they be fine? TikTok is a global juggernaut of a social media platform.

Only 10 percent of its user base is in the U.S. So, you know, some who are close to the company say another potential outcome of all of this is ByteDance just cuts their losses, says goodbye America, and has 90% of their user base enjoying viral videos every day. Okay, Bobby Allen, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. One more break and we'll be back with Can't Let It Go.

Hey, it's Sarah McCammon. It's almost the end of the year, and it's that time when NPR, which is a nonprofit news organization, asks for your support. Maybe you're already an NPR Plus supporter, and if so, thank you so much. But if you've never given to public media before, or maybe you haven't in a while, please consider doing so now. NPR's mission is to create a more informed public. For the Politics Podcast, that means sorting through all the noise coming out of Washington to focus on the news that matters. It means breaking down

proposals and policies so you understand what they do and who's affected. It also means holding institutions and people in power accountable. In 2025, as a new administration takes over, we can keep doing this work with your help. The easiest way to support the Politics Podcast and NPR is to sign up for NPR Plus. A small recurring donation gets you special perks for more than 25 NPR podcasts, like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, and even discounted items from the NPR shop. It only takes a few minutes to sign up, and you can do it right now at plus.npr.org. And thank you. 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 from the week we We just can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. And we have a special guest joining us. It's NPR's Miles Parks. Hey, Miles. Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me. Good to have you here in studio. But Sue, I'm going to start with you. The thing I can't let go this week is both politics and otherwise. Some fresh polling data I have in my hands right here that I am delighted by. YouGov has new polling out that is all about dinosaurs and how Americans feel about dinosaurs. But the element of this polling that I think crosses into our

lane is that they have data that suggests that people who pay more attention to politics are much more likely to be the type of person that has a favorite dinosaur. And I laughed when I found this because I am 100% one of those Americans who has a favorite dinosaur and I clearly follow political news enough. So I think I'm evidence that this polling data is absolutely correct. Apparently 55% of Americans say they do have a favorite dinosaur. If you follow the news, 62% of Americans say they do have a favorite dinosaur. If you follow the news, 62% of Americans say they have a favorite dinosaur. People who don't follow the news, 42% of Americans say they don't have a favorite kind of dinosaur.

Oh, that's a big difference actually. That's like a statistically relevant difference. What is the mechanism here? I want to go on record saying that my favorite dinosaur is a Stegosaurus, which is in the minority of favorite dinosaurs. I think it should come as no surprise that one of America's favorite dinosaur, take a guess. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Boring. The most obvious of dinosaurs, but velociraptor, brontosaurus, triceratops, pterodactyl. I might put pterodactyl as my second, but I'm a Stegosaurus American and I'm proud of it. And I want that on record in this podcast. Miles, do you have a favorite dinosaur? I was just thinking about it. I think probably I was thinking about like, which dinosaur gives me the most joy? I think triceratops is probably it. It's like it like Kelly's in the studio just like raising her hands triceratops. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I don't know if I have a great reason why

you don't have to. They just like, I would like to see the polling data though on like eight year olds. I feel like they would be to see the polling data though on like eight-year-olds I feel like they would be like I wonder if it'd be vastly different from like does your taste in dinosaur change I think it's probably a higher percentage of them that have a favorite dinosaur generally Yeah, but they're not they're following the news As the one woman proof of this polling data My favorite is a stegosaurus because it stems from my childhood and I can very distinctly remember a fifth grade project in which we Had to make our favorite dinosaur out

of clay. And I made a stegosaurus. And I just remember being like, this is the best thing I've ever created. So maybe I was so good. It's one of those things I wish I would have kept it. Do you have a favorite, Sarah? I'd have to say triceratops.

I mean, it's the one that flies, right? No. That's a pterodactyl. That's a pterodactyl. Pterodactyl. Pterodactyl. Triceratops is, oh, yeah, that's the one with the bumps on the back, the ridged back.

Looks like a rhinoceros and a dinosaur. No, we've got horns. We've got like a tri-threhorn situation. I'm doing it in the studio. This is my Triceratops. 10 years ago when my boys were little, I would have. You would have nailed this. You would have rocked this.

What can't you let go of this week? Yeah, so there was a story I saw from the Associated Press. It was about a guy who had an experience I think we can all relate to. So there's this guy Chuck Hildebrandt. He's now 63 now living in Chicago He was going through some of his old books We've all done this right packing moving cleaning whatever and he discovered a library book from 1974 when he was just a young teenager who loved baseball But he said, you know,, you're moving around with a bunch of books, you're not looking at every book, you realize he had this book, and he decided

to keep it and return it after 50 years. So December 4th, 1974 was the due date, according to a little slip that was still inside this book. 50 years later, he returned it to the library. Were they like, sir, you owe us $17,859? I was going to say, what are the fees on that bad boy? Can he pay in installments? Then he was promptly arrested. And a librarian had to bail him out. No, they were very kind because they're very kind at the library.

Yeah, they're generous about these things. And they forgave the whole death. And they let him keep the library book, which I think is very sweet because we've all misplaced things. Miles, how about you? Mine, also sports related, not dinosaur related, I'm sorry, Sue. But the college football playoff starts today.

Part of them. I don't know if you guys know, I'm a huge sports fan generally. I kind of, as a kid, was definitely obsessed with every single sport. As I've grown into adulthood, I've kind of like shed sports here and there in terms of, and I feel like this year is the first year I'm out on college football. While I was on parental leave this year, they rearranged the conferences, like just changed the teams up on me and I came back post baby and I was like, I'm in.

All right, let's just see what's going on here in college football. Went to look at the standings. It is so jacked up. Have you guys monitored at all what they have done to the college football went to look at the standings. It is so jacked up. Have you guys monitored at all what they have done to the college football conference system? Absolutely not. Cannot say a single little thing. This is great.

All right. I'm glad. I'm happy to bring you guys into this world. Enlighten us. The thing I've always been drawn to with sports my whole life is that they make sense. OK? Now we have conferences in college football that just do not make any sense.

The Atlantic Coastal Conference. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Did you hear about this? Now features two teams from California. What? Yes. Okay. I am just begging college football, if you want me back, just change the names. I really don't care what conferences any of these teams play in. I just don't want them. The cognitive dissonance is not why I come to sports and I really can't get over it. I literally took the standings and I was like, no, I'm out on this. If you want me back, make your sport make sense. That's all I'm asking.

Do you think it's also just the, I can't even imagine how complicated it is to rebrand things that have been so built into the psyche. I know, but it's like this idea that like, oh, we have to keep the names for tradition. And yet, like, we're just changing the teams that are part of these conferences basically every year or every few years. You can't say that tradition is important. But then if I dip out for six months, because I had a baby

and I dip back in, and none of this stuff None of it matters. I'm not going to say. I'm like, this is hitting me at a deep level clearly. I don't know why. I probably need to investigate that. I don't know if we're talking about college football here at Miles.

But I should be able to dip out and dip back in if tradition is that big of a deal. That's all I'll say. I'm someone who is periodically saying to everyone in my life, I need to get into sports because politics are so toxic and ugly, and I need to think about something that really, sorry, but fundamentally doesn't matter in a good way.

Totally. But how am I supposed to get into sports if they're not even telling me the truth about who they are? And they're going to change every single year. I 100% agree, Sarah. So we, I think we should just like, I'm registering a complaint on behalf of the NPR Politics podcast, college football.

Get your stuff together. I just say that, Miles, you often, and I say this in the best way, you always bring so much joy to the podcast and to Can't Let It Go. And I'm here for like an occasional Miles Rage Fest. Like I'm into it. I like this side of you. I hope people take it more seriously, right?

I think you should say like, if he's not doing it all the time, this is a thing that's really getting in his gears. If Miles is mad, it matters. It matters, all right. I agree. And with that, happy holidays, folks. All right, that's all for today.

Our executive producer is Mathone Maturi. Our editor is Casey Morrell. Our producer is Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Kelsey Snell. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.