The NPR Politics Podcast - Senator Feinstein's Lengthy Absence Imperils Biden's Court Picks

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

California Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein's months-long recuperation from shingles has hamstrung the Judiciary committee and led some of her fellow lawmakers to push for her resignation. The 89 year-old has not voted on legislation since February.And the Environmental Protection Agency proposed aggressive new regulations that would all but mandate a shift to electric vehicle production over the next decade — and the move is largely backed by the auto industry.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and cars and energy reporter Camila Domonoske.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I think we need to put him on the payroll. He had a good voice for radio. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And California Senator Dianne Feinstein came down with a case of the shingles back in February, and she hasn't returned to Washington since. The 89-year-old Democrat is a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, and without that vote, Democrats haven't been able to move President Biden's judges forward for confirmation. Now members of her own party are calling for her to resign. California Congressman Ro Khanna spoke to NPR

last night. Well, I have not spoken to Senator Feinstein for four years. She doesn't show up to any of the California lunches. She doesn't engage. I mean, it's sort of an open secret in Washington. I would have loved to have spoken to her, but that's partly the challenge. And I think all I said is what people know privately, that California has basically had an absentee senator. Ouch. Wow. You know, a third of the Senate is 70 years or older than that. Senators regularly get sick.

They regularly take leaves of absence. So why is there a pile on for Dianne Feinstein right now? Well, I think right now it's because her absence is having an impact on the Senate Democrats' agenda. I mean, as you know, they're operating in this extremely narrow majority, you know, basically a 51-49 Senate. And the main agenda for Senate Democrats and the White House now with a divided Congress is confirming President Biden's judicial nominees. And Feinstein sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee with a narrowly divided Senate. There's an 11-10 majority. And without her vote, there are nominees that essentially, if they don't have bipartisan support, can't get approved by the committee and ultimately get a vote by the full Senate. Right now, there are 10 Article III nominees, you know, nominees for federal judgeships who are eligible for a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee and two more in the pipeline. So I think that there's just a concern that that main policy agenda can't move forward.

Plus, that committee is involved in a lot of the big debates that are going on right now about abortion rights access, concerns about rules violations by a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, potentially there might be a new rule debate or a bill passed to address that concern. So without her there, bipartisanship on these committees is pretty rare. So they need the full Democratic roster there to get things out of committee. She's trying to find a fix. She put out a statement saying that she will return to Washington until she can. She's asking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to temporarily fill her vacancy on the committee with another Democrat to be able to get those nominees moving. But it's not as simple as that, right? I mean, there's a process in the Senate that needs to work out. Right. It's not as easy as it sounds just swapping

one Democrat out for another. As you know, there's an organizing resolution that assigns senators to all the various committees. So they'd have to pass a new resolution in the Senate. Basically, they need Republicans on board. Right. I mean, they could ask for unanimous consent. It seems unlikely they would get it. But any new resolution would need 60 votes to pass. And Republicans I talked to, you know, yesterday, say they still have a lot of questions about what Schumer is asking for. Who is the replacement going to be? How long is the replacement going to last? Republicans have said they've had absences and didn't ask for people to fill in on the Judiciary Committee. But I also think this is a tricky issue for the Senate. There are a lot of older senators, both Republicans and Democrats, who've had absences.

Including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of late? Correct. He had a fall in early March, suffered a concussion, his office has said, and has been recovering. He did tweet out yesterday he's coming back on Monday. But he's had some medical issues in the past, too. And, you know, he's not as old as Feinstein, but he's in his 80s and she like she's 89. So there are other Republicans who've had medical issues and absences from the Senate. So I think this is going to be a complicated debate when people get back. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, what they can negotiate. But I anticipate it's going to take up a bit of time this week. I mean, this has been roiling for a while, right? Like this is not just about the Judiciary Committee at this point or the kinds of judges that could be gotten through or the Supreme Court. There have been a lot of progressives who have been annoyed that Feinstein has stuck around as long as she has.

There have been questions about her cognitive capabilities, and they've really kind of pushed to have her not be in this seat anymore. And, you know, I mean, what it comes down to at the end of the day, though, is you do have a lot of members of Congress who are in their 80s. You have people living longer, obviously. The President of the United States is 80 years old and the oldest person to serve in that office. At the end of the day, though, you have people who voted for these folks to be in those offices. If voters in California didn't want her there, you could argue they would have voted her out. There have been plenty of older

senators who've been reelected in their late 70s and early 80s. So, you know, I think there's a question about, as Domenico raises, like, can they do their job? That's a whole debate that we've seen for years. I mean, we did see a generational transformation in the House of Representatives after the midterm election when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when Democrats lost, decided not to remain in leadership and basically paved the way for a new lineup of younger Democrats. But there hasn't been that push in the Senate. Dominica, I have somewhat jokingly over the years said that people who are focused on term limits, the idea that people should only be able to serve X amount of years in the House or Senate,

are trying to solve the wrong problem. That maybe age limits in politics is actually the way that you get at, you know, entrenched incumbency. Because yes, while a lot of these people are older, what they're really benefiting from in a lot of ways is incumbency and the power of incumbency. And I think Feinstein's a great example of that. People like Chuck Grassley in Iowa, even Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. I mean, yes, they're older, but they've been in power a really, really long time. They have. And there's some advantages to having somebody who represents you who's

been in power for that long. They get prime committee assignments. They can move legislation more easily. At the same time, you have some of the difficulties that you're also seeing on the other side of this with people who some of the base feel are not in touch anymore with where the heart of the party is, for example. And there's been this political tension are going to vote for those folks. But how smart is it to put forward people of a certain age to be the person who represents the party when you're trying to appeal to a younger base? Deidre, I also have to ask, is there just like a little sprinkle maybe of sexism in here? I mean, Dianne Feinstein, a woman, obviously, but there have been male senators who have had cognitive questions around them, who have been removed from committees because of their inability to do the job.

People like former Senator Byrd of West Virginia, former Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi. This isn't a new phenomenon, and yet it seems to be sort of more pointed towards Feinstein. It's not. And with those examples you were giving, Sue, I mean, remember, it took like years of people in hushed tones talking about the competency questions around some of those committee chairmen before they were essentially sort of forced out. I mean, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised this issue the day before yesterday when she was asked about the push for Feinstein to resign. And she praised her accomplishments and said no one has ever argued or tried to push out a sick male senator. So she's clearly been raising the issues of sexism. I do want to get back to the thing that Ro Khanna was saying about, you know, it's an open secret. People have been talking about Feinstein. I do think it's accurate that there have been some

concerns about her health issues before her shingles diagnosis. But people haven't been really going public with it. I mean, Khanna was sort of the first person to really, like, go aggressively out there and push for her resignation. But I do think it's really notable that last night, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Amy Klobuchar, did a television interview on CNN and raised her own concerns. I want to see what happens in the next month or so.

You give her that time to be able to come back. But if she can't come back month after month after month with this close Senate, that's not just going to hurt California. It's going to be an issue for the country. That sounds like a pretty mild statement, I think, to a lot of listeners. But if you understand the Senate

and the club that is the Senate, that's a really provocative statement from a female senator about another female senator of the same party. And I think I think it opens the door for other people to feel more comfortable almost giving Democrats cover to start adding pressure to Feinstein. You know, part of the hand wringing bordering on antipathy from a lot of Democrats toward Feinstein is also because she's from California. You know, you could easily appoint somebody who's younger, there's a deep bench there, and probably somebody more progressive. You know, there were protests at Feinstein's office, if you remember, when the Green New Deal was being considered being put through because she had a more, you could argue, pragmatic or moderate stance, and a lot of progressives from

California wanted something more. Certainly a crown jewel in the Democratic Party to be a senator from the state of California. All right, let's take a quick break. Deirdre, don't go far. We're going to bring you back for Can't Let It Go. All right, we'll be right back. And we're back with Camila Dominovsky. Hey, Camila. Hi. So the Biden administration is proposing historic new climate regulations that would essentially revolutionize the car industry. Camila, you cover the car industry for NPR. Exactly what is the administration standards for vehicle dill pipe emissions. This includes both pollutants that make people sick and also significantly the greenhouse gases that are released by cars, right? And so this is something that the EPA has regulated for a long time. But the new proposed regulations for model year 2027 and forward are a lot more stringent than they have been significantly. They are, in fact, so stringent that the EPA expects the only way that automakers can meet

these requirements will be to make about 67% of their total production be electric vehicles by 2032. And right now it's less than 10%. So it's a huge change that they're picturing. And these are proposed regulations that if finalized, you know, would come with actual teeth behind them. Is that even possible, Camila? I mean, can you turn an industry around, any industry around that fast? What the EPA says is, look, we're not just requiring that this happen. The government, the Biden administration is, look, we're not just requiring that this happen. The government, the Biden administration, is also putting a lot of money on the table.

There are a lot of incentives. There are grants. There are loans to folks in the battery supply chain. There are big tax credits for manufacturers to make electric vehicles. We're throwing money at this. We're not just having this mandate. And significantly, the federal government is also putting billions of dollars towards building out that charging infrastructure. I also wonder, Domenico, I mean, I think of Americans'

relationships with their cars is so unique, and we can't really compare it to what it's like in Europe or other places. They have a deep personal connection to their cars, especially in a lot of parts of this country where it is the basically only mode of transportation. And I wonder if you have any sense of, aside from the policy implications or even the red-blue politics, do people actually want this? Is the country ready to have their cars be regulated in this way? Yeah, I think there's been a lot more support for electric vehicles. You've seen more electric vehicles on the streets. But you're 100 percent right that there are parts of this country where they do not feel like moving to electric is a great idea. And we've seen a lot of pushback from Republicans to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, grilling him in Congress over the cost of electric vehicles, which he had a pretty fiery exchange and pushed back against with them.

So we're seeing this huge transition and it's going to be hugely impactful potentially to politics. And it's interesting because a big part of what the Biden administration is promising with the switch to electric vehicles is actually about manufacturing jobs. And so they've got this proposal where they're trying to get labor on board. They're trying to get actually a lot of red states to have skin in the game with battery plants that are being constructed across the South with the promise that because these incentives are tied to domestic manufacturing, that there'll be jobs brought back to the U.S. And then the auto industry itself having these huge financial incentives that are being tied to this transition in addition to the regulations. That's the pitch that they're making.

That's the sort of coalition of support that they're trying to build here. still really entrenched opposition, including states like Texas and the oil and gas industry has come out and challenged the EPA's right to set regulations that are designed to promote electric vehicles. Camilla, can I ask you a question about cost? Because I think that's the number one issue from a consumer level. You know, electric cars are still more expensive. And even if you give financial incentives, even if you have a $10,000 tax break on a $60,000 car, you're still talking about luxury car prices that a lot of Americans

just simply can't afford. So how realistic is it to make these as ubiquitous as the administration wants to make them? And how do you do it with cost controls to actually make people want to buy them or be able to buy them? I think about vehicle affordability constantly. And right now, the average new vehicle in America costs about $48,000. That's not the average electric vehicle. The average electric vehicle is $59,000, significantly more expensive. But the average vehicle is 48 grand, which to me is totally wild. And the entire industry is going to have to look at whether it is actually serving the market for

people who need an entry-level vehicle. They haven't been for years. And so if they're going to make more affordable electric vehicles, which is the promise. That is what people say up, down, and sideways that they plan to do. They just, they haven't done it yet. The price needs to come down significantly compared to current electric vehicles. Frankly, it also needs to come down compared to the current large, fully featured, very nice SUVs and pickup trucks that the U.S. auto industry is primarily selling. I also have to imagine there's going to be a lot of legal fights here. This doesn't seem like something either the industry or Republican attorneys general are just going to say, OK, let's everybody get on board.

Yeah, I think Republican attorneys general certainly keep an eye on that. The industry, it's interesting. There's this lawsuit that is challenging the EPA's right to set these kinds of standards at all. It's actually challenging the current standards, which are nowhere near as strict as this, right? But in that lawsuit, the trade group representing auto manufacturers has actually weighed in on the side of the EPA. They said the auto industry is going electric anyway. They actually used the word inevitable. So it's not wrong for the EPA to factor electric vehicles into their calculation. Companies do like consistency

in their regulations. So they tend to want things to be stable over time, which is another political question, right? Because administration to administration, support for climate policies, I'm going to make a gross understatement here. It can change, can't it? All right, Camila Dominovsky, thank you so much for this. Yeah, thank you all. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about, politics or otherwise. And Deirdre Walsh is back with us again. Hey, Deirdre. Hey there.

What can't you let go of this week? I can't let go of this documentary I watched this week. It's about Brooke Shields. I'm not sure if everybody knows who Brooke Shields is. A lot of people in our podcast... Oh, this podcast knows who Brooke Shields is. This current crew does. We do. So it's called Pretty Baby. Brooke Shields is a few years older than me, but we grew up. I went to high school in northern New Jersey and so did she. She almost went to my high school.

Is that your claim to fame? I almost went to high school with Brooke Shields. Well, there's a whole story behind that. But the Pretty Baby documentary is about her life. And I think I knew some of her life. I actually saw her at the movies with her mom once with my friends, and I actually felt bad for her. I was like, wow, can't she just hang out with like kids her own age? And this documentary basically details her life. And I sort of knew who she was.

She was famous. I wanted Calvin Klein jeans because of the famous Calvin Klein ad campaign that was very controversial that she was in. But the documentary to me was kind of surprising and super honest about the way the media treated her in the 80s. She was kind of like the face of the 80s. It detailed a lot of things about her career and her mother as her, you know, then momager. And to me, it was just this weird, like, throwback documentary about the time. And it's kind of disturbing how hyper-sexualized she was as, like, an 11- and 12-year-old girl by the industry. But as you follow her career, I mean, she really went through the ups and downs and sort of the crazy, like, before times, before there were social media influencers. There weren't that many super,

super famous people because we didn't have all these social media platforms. So she was kind of like the face of that decade, I guess the 80s when she was a teenager and super popular. And to me, it sort of had a redemptive quality in the end because she goes through a lot but ends up sort of coming into her own, facing the kind of childhood that she had and sort of dysfunctional situation she went through and did some good things with her life. She wrote a book about postpartum depression that helped a lot of people. And she's very open about, you know, what the industry was like. And now that she's a mom of teenage kids, you know, sort of I think came out on the other side. And to me, it was just a

fascinating look at her life. It is really hard to believe that if you look back at Blue Lagoon, which was like the big movie that she, you know, became famous for, it was in 1980. She was 14 years old. She was so young. And it showed like she just didn't really understand what she was doing in that movie at all. It's kind of crazy. It's wild to me. And I think this is one of the like cultural changes that happens over time. But I also think the Me Too movement and a lot of the awareness about this stuff has changed the conversation. But when you watch old interviews of the way that female starlets, especially beautiful young female starlets or pop stars have been interviewed not even that long ago, it is sometimes like shockingly sexist and inappropriate.

Barbara Walters asked for her measurements. Yes. Stood next to her in a national interview with her mother sitting there and asked for her measurements. Right. Like it was so disturbing. Jaws on the floor sometimes when you watch these old interviews and the things that were like totally acceptable in late night talk or a Barbara Walters interview

that you just couldn't even fathom asking someone today and all for good, right? Like that change is a very good change. So, Sue, what can you not let go of? What's the transition on that one? On a completely different topic. The thing I can't let go of this week revolves around the arrest of the guardsman Jack Teixeira, who was obviously arrested for allegedly leaking national security documents online. But the thing about this story that I can't let go of is the amount and intensity of civilian sleuthing that went into discovering the identity of this man. And, you know, I don't think it comes to anyone's surprise that the federal government has immense resources to be able to figure out who leakers are, especially in a digital age. But the ability of just regular people and the intensity by which people were trying to figure out his identity and doing so in real time was

pretty amazing to me. Both the Washington Post story in which they found and interviewed somebody who was part of his Discord video game chat that had all of these details about his identity and his life and knew who he was. And then also the New York Times had this fascinating story how they have a whole visual investigations team

who was able to piece together images on the internet from the documents that were posted online, like matching up to the kitchen counter granite in his kitchen. That was an amazing detail. Thought they had his identity. They were like searching his social media profiles and like finding pictures of his family's kitchen from a close family member who took a picture and were able to piece it together in almost real time as the federal government. And I'm like, we're just in a whole new era of civilian saluting.

And I think sometimes, you know, there's a lot of potential negative consequences to that. But it happens so fast and so intense. And it just blows my mind at how much people were able to piece together and find out about this young man so fast. It was fascinating to see also that the FBI and others are looking at these gaming channels, these gaming platforms, because they see them as places that are ripe for foreign agents to try to recruit the very kind of person who leaked this kind of information.

There's going to be a lot of questions about who should have access to this kind of material. Should a 21-year-old National Guardsman be able to have that kind of access? Dominico, what can't you let go of this week? Definitely very different, but we're talking about rats. One thing I can let go of when it comes to New York City is the rats. I've been in D. in DC now for 16 years. And I saw this article this week that Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has now appointed a rat czar to New York City.

And this person has said she's going to get rid of the rats. She tried to do that as part of the education system when she was working at the Department of Education. And it's kind of remarkable that we're at this point where they're having to do that because the problem has gotten so bad. Here's Kathleen Karate when she was introduced as New York's first rat czar. You'll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats. Pizza rat may live in infamy, but rats and the conditions that support their thriving will no longer be tolerated in New York City.

No more dirty curbs, unmanaged spaces, or brazen burrowing. There's a new sheriff in town. And with your help, we'll send those rats packing. She might be underestimating rats. If there is one creature on this planet you should not underestimate, it's rats. Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses a slice of pizza. You might remember the video that she's referring to went kind of viral of a rat in the subway that dragged a piece of pizza up the stairs. Like cutting it with a knife and fork. Well, that was Trump and Sarah Palin. The rat knew to eat it with its teeth. As a proper New Yorker. But I got to say, I agree with you, Sue. This is a lot of bravado from Miss Karate when rats have

been around for thousands, if not more, years, and they have figured out how to burrow through steel and mesh. So she might want to temper expectations and figure out how quantitatively she's going to be able to say she's made any improvement. She might have broken the cardinal rule in politics, which is under-promise and over-deliver. She might have just over promised. So she better go find some rats or she's going to have some problem, especially in New York politics, which is, you know, it's not beanbag. I'm going to be an optimist and I'm going to hope that she succeeds. Let's all root for the rat lady. Because we all love New York and we all

think that there needs to be less rats in New York. And if she can figure it out up there, maybe they can import the technology down to D.C. All right. That's a wrap for us today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Motturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and Casey Morrell. Research and fact-checking by our intern, Devin Speak. He ends his time with us today and is off to grand new seafaring adventures. Thank you and bon voyage. Thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimar and Lexi Schapittle. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.