The NPR Politics Podcast - The Senate Surprised Itself By Passing A Bill To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

On top of aid to Ukraine and a trillion-dollar budget, Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act and passed legislation which makes lynching a federal hate crime.They also voted to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, but only because some senators who were opposed reportedly didn't know the vote was happening.And Black Americans are mobilizing in support of Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination. If confirmed, she would be the first Black woman on the high court. Hearings begin next week.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, acting congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, politics and racial justice correspondent Juana Summers.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey NPR, this is Thomas Lyons calling from Provincetown, Massachusetts. I'm currently taking a gap year and writing for the local, unchained, and sometimes labeled feisty newspaper The Provincetown Independent. This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 18th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll almost certainly still be waiting for my sources to return my calls. Okay, here's the show. I'm proud to report that some things never change as a journalist. I feel your pain. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I also cover Congress.

And I'm glad that both of you guys are on today with us because Congress has been rather busy lately passing a bunch of legislation that had seemed like it was a long time coming but wasn't actually going anywhere. And I'm hoping that both of you can help us all understand what the impetus was for getting some of these ideas through at this particular moment. Last week, Congress passed a trillion-plus dollar budget, and we talked about that on this weekly roundup last Friday. But within that big budget package, Congress tucked in a couple of other priorities, including something that I don't believe we talked about at that time, which was the Violence Against Women Act. And I want to begin our conversation today by just talking a little bit more about that.

Sue, can you remind us what that legislation does and how it was in fact allowed to expire? Sure. The Violence Against Women Act was first enacted in the Clinton administration, and one of its champions was then Senator Joe Biden. It essentially provides the entire legal framework for which we prosecute domestic and sexual abuse crimes against women. It also provides resources and support systems for the victims of domestic abuse. It has generally been a piece of legislation, or I should say it's been a law that has a lot of bipartisan support, but it is not a law that hasn't been contentious at times in these authorizations in the past. And this most recent one, the bill lapsed in 2018.

It was temporarily reauthorized for a little bit in 2019. But it has largely languished in Congress ever since over one single provision in the bill that would have closed something that has been commonly referred to as the boyfriend loophole. Basically, anyone that is adjudicated guilty of a dating violence crime can no longer own a firearm. But it doesn't apply to partners who don't live together, hence a boyfriend that might not live in your house with you. And Democrats wanted to expand the existing law to say it should include partners that don't live together. And there was a significant amount of opposition from that, from the gun rights lobby. Democrats ultimately backed down from insisting that this needed to be in the bill. And that allowed for a major breakthrough to be able to reauthorize it and let it ride on the spending bill to get it passed. So can I show a quick follow up, which is maybe an elementary question to somebody who's covered Congress for a while, but when you talk about

the Violence Against Women Act needing to get reauthorized, I don't fully understand why a bill that is on the, a law that's on the books has to get reauthorized. This is pretty common for any law that requires appropriated money. The Violence Against Women Act directs money towards support systems to the Justice Department for any number of reasons. And so any law that spends money, highway laws, education laws, often have to come up for reauthorization. It's essentially a way for Congress to look at, is this money being well spent? Does this law need to be updated? How should we be spending the money? The practical impact of the Violence Against Women Act not being reauthorized wasn't really much because they still kept spending the money that was required for these programs. It's good to have authorization for laws in order to spend money, but you can still appropriate money for things even if the law hasn't been authorized. So it wasn't, I don't want people to get the impression that there was this like

three or four year span of time where this law just went into the ether. It was for the practical purposes, it was still getting the money needed and it was still being enforced, but having a full congressional authorization just gives it much more heft and is something that Congress just needs to do. I mean, on a somewhat related note, there's been this period in the last few weeks where Congress hasn't been debating like the big Biden domestic policy agenda that stalled and things like this that have bipartisan support. There was a bill to end forced arbitration in cases regarding sexual assault, sexual harassment. Currently, you know, people who want to pursue legal action against their

employers when they're alleging sexual assault or harassment are forced into this sort of closed door process. And there's been this sort of five-year effort to end that practice, to do away with those kinds of clauses and employment contracts. And there was one issue that was like a sticking point, similar to the boyfriend loophole that Sue was talking about in the violence against women. But in this law, it was just sort of like, how broad should it go? And once Democrats agreed to keep it narrow, there was huge bipartisan support and the bill after five years of languishing was passed. So I think there's just sort of like this space right now where Congress is doing some things that members of both parties wanted to do but have

been sort of stuck. There was also recently some legislation that Congress passed that it had not been able to do for, I believe, more than 120 years, and that is make lynching a specific federal crime. So what happened there? This was a case of, you know, Congress for decades, obviously for more than 100 years, as you mentioned, reintroducing this legislation time and time again. So the passage of this anti-lynching bill is somewhat of a capstone to the career of Illinois Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush, who's been a longtime proponent of this bill. But basically what happened is the House passed it recently, and it was brought up by a group of bipartisan sponsors in the Senate, including South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, who's African-American, along with New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker, who had been pushing this bill over the last few years.

And it passed unanimously. The debate over this issue had a moment after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. And there was a real effort to push it through then because there was a lot of debate about, you know, going back and examining racial discrimination and trying to right some of the wrongs that Congress has, you know, not acted on in decades. But at the time, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul argued that the way the bill was written, it was too broad. But he actually worked with the sponsors of the bill and was a sponsor of this version of the bill that passed unanimously in the Senate. So I have a similar question here for either one of you, which is, I mean, this is a piece of legislation that Congress has, in theory, you know, discussed or has been brought up in many, many previous sessions of Congress. Why now? What was the impetus? You know, in this case, I think sometimes there's ideas that time have just come.

This bill has been described as symbolic in a lot of ways. But I also think, as Deirdre noted, the murder of George Floyd was sort of an impetus that sparked this conversation in Congress. And I think a lot of lawmakers see this as an act to right a historical wrong, that it's never too late to acknowledge the horrors of America's past racial crimes. And so after failures earlier this year to move, you know, voting rights and police reform has just sort of been completely backburnered. I think this was one of the times where the House was like, we can pass this. And we know the Senate has revised the language. So it was just the path for it to get to the president's desk was much easier than a lot of these other bills that are a much heavier lift. So there's one more story I want to ask you both about. You know, we talk about bipartisanship and

things moving through Congress. It seems like the Senate may have surprisingly put the country on a path to stopping clock changes for good in terms of making daylight savings time permanent. And I admit this is a story, a storyline that I feel like I hear people gripe about every time we change the clocks, right, every season. But it's not something you realistically thought would get changed in any way, at least politically. A lot of senators didn't either. I have fallen so far deep down a daylight saving time rabbit hole in recent days that I could go on and on about this. I'm doing a story on it. I've been reporting on it all week. So I will try to be as brief as possible. You know, a couple of senators basically surprised the Senate in a

lot of ways. They passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent by unanimous consent, which essentially means nobody showed up to object. The bill was sponsored by Marco Rubio. Essentially, any piece of legislation, a senator can go to the floor and say, I ask unanimous consent that we pass this law. And if no senator shows up and says, I object, that is equivalent to the Senate passing a law. Now, some senators have since been on the record saying they were a bit surprised by this. They were not entirely made aware that this was going to be moving through the Senate. So I don't think it's fair to say it has unanimous support in the Senate, but it is passed. There is competing bipartisan legislation in the House. The White House has

aggressively not taken a position on it just yet. But what I will tell you my reporting has revealed is that 50 years ago, America tried this. Congress passed a law that made daylight saving time permanent for a two-year trial period. I did not know this. And apparently the country, I did not know this either. And apparently the country hated it. The country disliked it so much that Congress had to repeal the law before the two-year trial period was up.

So I just say to people out there who are maybe cheering for permanent daylight saving time, you might not like it as much as you think because America tried it and they did not like it. Well, I have a lot more questions actually for both of you about this story. But I look forward to listening to your radio story, Sue. Is that tomorrow morning? It'll be on Weekend All Things Considered. Tomorrow afternoon. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. Sue and Deirdre, don't go too far away because we're going to do something a little different in the next block. And we will talk to you all again in just a bit when we get to Can't Let It Go. See you in a few. I'll be back. It's a little foreshadowing. Do you see what I did there?

Yes, I saw what you did there. And we'll be right back. And we're back. And now we're going to turn to something a little different from our colleague, Juana Summers. She's been reporting on Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Katonji Brown-Jackson, and the prep underway for her Senate confirmation hearings that begin this coming Monday. We will, of course, be covering that on this podcast, so your daily episodes might come

out a little later than usual. You know, as we've talked on this podcast before, Jackson would make history by becoming the country's first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice, and Juana has been reporting on that. In Washington and around the country's first black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. And Juana has been reporting on that. In Washington and around the country, black women are working to share Jackson's story and preparing to be her first line of defense against any anticipated attacks from Republicans. And Juana went to talk to some folks gathered outside of the Supreme Court building last week. Melanie Campbell led the group in a call and response. Who do you want confirmed?

Devani Brown Jackson! Say it one more time. A group of seven Black women posed for a photo on the steps in front of the Supreme Court building. They were all wearing these matching shirts with Jackson's photo in the center. I asked one of the women to tell me about them. The shirt is, Biden has nominated a woman who is supremely qualified for this position. She has, her whole life has been in preparation for such a time as this. This is Petey Talley from Toledo, Ohio. She said she wanted to support Jackson because she expects that Republicans may try to discredit her during the confirmation process, despite the fact that she has been approved by the Senate three times before. Well, we just, again, want it to be fair. She's qualified. She's supremely qualified. And we just don't want to hear any foolishness about anything because it's not there.

Some of the women were wearing bold colors, pink and green, royal blue, crimson, representing some of the historically Black sororities that are part of the Divine Nine. Dressed in the brilliant red of Delta Sigma Theta, Betty Ann Hart said she wasn't sure she'd ever see a Black woman nominated to the court. I'm 73 years old. I'm a child of the 60s, and this is just a dream come true. Hart is a former state legislator from Atlanta and has been practicing law for more than four decades. I asked her what she'd be doing during the confirmation hearings. I think that she's in for a very contentious and rude process, and I will just be there in spirit and watching and covering her with prayer.

What makes you expect that the process will be rude and contentious and challenging for her? History. And let's face it, what, everything that she stands for, everything she represents. She motions behind her toward the court. Everything she represents is something that was never designed to be in the Justice Halls. And so she doesn't expect an easy ride, and none of us expect an easy ride for her. That idea, that this process could look different for Jackson, is why Black women say they began to strategize

even before President Biden announced that he would nominate her. Biden promised as a candidate that he would nominate the first Black woman to the court, and he reaffirmed that when Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement. Shortly after, the Congressional Black Caucus set up what it's calling a war room to mobilize around the president's nominee, whoever she would be. This is Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty. We wanted to make sure that we were positioned, we had a voice, and that we wanted the hearings to start immediately, and that we were going to be dealing with anything that was not above board

in the hearings and in her confirmation. As the hearings kick off, Beatty says that members of the caucus, particularly the 28 Black women who are members, will be visible. We will be present in the first day and second and third and fourth days of her confirmation hearing. We will be on every national platform, whether invited or not. We will impose ourselves there because the nation will be watching. The effort by Black women to mobilize around Jackson underscores the history that Jackson

will make if confirmed, as well as its importance to Black women, who have long been the Democratic Party's most reliable voters. We've spent a lot of time talking about how Black women voters are a powerful voting bloc, but we also organize our house, our bloc, our church, our sorority, and our unions. That's Glenda Carr. She runs Higher Heights for America, a group that supports Black women in politics. She says now the same women who have boosted Democrats at the polls for years are organizing behind Jackson. You know, I was on a call the other day and there are Black women who were like, I am coming to D.C. I might not be able to be in that hearing room,

but it is something about, you know, just being in this moment. Biden's promise to name the first Black woman to the court brought with it critiques from some Republicans that the choice should be solely based on merit without considering race or gender. This is Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on a recent episode of his podcast. If he came and said, I'm going to put the best jurist on the court and he looked at a number of and he ended up nominating a Black woman, he could credibly say, OK, I'm nominating the person who's most qualified. He's not even pretending to say that. He's saying, if you're a white guy, tough luck. A comment that has resonated among Black women came not from a member of the Senate, but from Fox News host Tucker Carlson. So it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Kentaji Brown Jackson's LSAT score was. What else are you doing the LSAT? Why wouldn't you tell us that? That's the type of of misogyny and otherism that Republicans often,

often apply to women of color, particularly Black women. And it's just indicative of the old tropes that they trot out, unfortunately. And I think they need to shy away from that. Now, this is Tara Setmayer. She is a conservative, but broke with the Republican Party several years ago. She says Republicans should zero in on Jackson's judicial record.

They should focus on her rulings and her interpretation of the Constitution. That's what matters. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to go that way. Some Black women say they hope to see the White House and the president himself play a prominent role in supporting the first Black woman named to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Juanita Tolliver, a Democratic strategist, said she was surprised Biden didn't talk more about Jackson in his State of the Union address. I did a double take. I said, oh, is that it? I felt like it warranted a lot more space, not only for the historic nature of it, but also the political

implications, right? Tolliver said she hopes that next week, the White House makes a point of forcefully elevating Jackson's profile. This is the first Black woman being confirmed to the Supreme Court, someone who the president selected. And he absolutely should take every opportunity to not only defend her from racist and misogynistic attacks during the confirmation hearings, but to celebrate her once this confirmation is complete. Back outside of the Supreme Court last week, Gwendolyn Thompson of Maryland said she wanted to send a signal to the Senate that Black women care about what happens in the confirmation process. I remember when we didn't have a man on the moon, if you understand what I'm saying.

So it's a step. We're not living on the moon, but we got to step. You understand what I'm saying? So that's what it means to me. For Judge Katonji Brown-Jackson, the next step is a four-day confirmation hearing that begins on Monday. And we'll be right back. All right, we are back and we are joined again by Sue Davis and Deirdre Walsh. Hey, guys.

Hi there. Hey there. Glad to have you back because it is now time to end the show like we do every week where we talk about the one thing that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Deirdre, why don't you kick it off? So the thing I can't let go of this week is a Cinderella story, and it's the Cinderella story of the St. Peter's Peacocks. It's a basketball team from a small Jesuit college, St. Peter's, in Jersey City, New Jersey. Full disclosure, I went to high school in northern New Jersey, so I actually knew about this college that not a lot of people watching NCAA basketball last night knew about. Including myself. But the St. Peter's Peacocks knocked off the Kentucky Wildcats,

who were seeded number two in their bracket. They are sort of always favored in the March Madness tournament, and so a lot of people who fill out their brackets are very upset because many had them winning it all, or at least getting to the final game. But I love a good Cinderella story, even though my own alma mater has not been in the tournament in some time. I'm sort of a fair-weather basketball fan. But I love the fact that this small college that almost no one had heard of before. So the total basketball budget for St. Peter's men's basketball program was like a little over a million dollars compared to the don't have a team in the tournament, you can get sucked in by the stories of these sort of David and Goliath matchups. I mean, that was me last night. My husband and I watched that game and I was like jumping on the sofa and I don't even care about college basketball. It was like a nail biter down to

the end. Yeah, overtime win. It was an overtime win. And watching this team where I was the person literally Googling, like, where is St. Peter's College? Because I know that Kentucky basketball is like the behemoth in men's basketball. So, Asma, what can't you let go of this week? Okay, so I know we often try to have this space be a place where we talk about all the fun things that we can't let go of. But sometimes I will say what I legit cannot let go of is just the stuff that is really like weird. You cannot make sense of it.

And that is where my little nugget falls into that bucket this week. It's your niche. It's my niche. So this past Sunday at the Critics' Choice Award, the director behind the movie The Power of Dog, Jane Campion, took to the stage when she received her award. And she was in this stream of consciousness. And I don't actually want to paraphrase and put words in her mouth, so I will let you all hear what she said. Give my love out to my fellow, fellow, fellow, the guys. The nominees.

And, you know, Serena and Venus, you are such marvels. However, you do not play against the guys. What? Like, I have to. And at that moment, the cameras just like panned to, I think it was Venus Williams' face. And you could see just the reaction that was there. You know, I do not even need to tell you all. Those comments launched a thousand memes, if not more so.

I am on the internet. I am aware. Jane subsequently apologized. But I will say the thing I have not been able to get out of my head is that when you have, you know, seconds on stage and you have this platform that so few women directors have ever had, why give a backhanded compliment to the women who have ace backhands? Like, that just makes no sense to me in that moment. Who have also broken barriers. If you're all about, I'm breaking barriers and I'm in this category, These are women who have broken barriers. I mean, come on.

It also is like physical cringe. When she said it, it was, I mean, I think she was speaking on the fly and you want to kind of give her, be kind and give her a benefit of the doubt. But when you heard those words, it was like that physical cringe feeling you feel when someone's doing something that you're like, oh God, please just stop talking. I mean, Venus and Serena, I will say as like somebody who has, they have been my heroes, right, as a tennis player since I was God knows how old. I mean, they've played mixed doubles against men. They have fought to make sure that

women get as much prize money as men do in these competitions. So it was also just, you know, factually not the most accurate statement either. They are legends. All right. With that, Sue, what can you not let go of? The thing I can't let go this week, or I should say the person, is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, my gosh. The former governor of California, Hollywood superstar. He posted a video on Twitter yesterday, on St. Patrick's Day, on Thursday, however we want to say which day it was. And it is him speaking directly on the camera, straight to camera for about nine minutes. And it is a really moving sort of impassioned appeal to the people of Russia about the invasion of Ukraine.

This is not the war to defend Russia that your grandfathers or your great-grandfathers fought. This is an illegal war. Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world. Now, to those in power in the Kremlin, let me just ask you, why would you sacrifice this young man for your own ambitions and i can't let it go for a couple reasons uh one i watched the whole thing last night and i found it like really moving in a way that i would don't think i would have expected of myself watching an arnold schwarzenegger video but um the things i i didn't really know about him as i read more about it is he is like hugely popular in russia hugely popular not partly because of popular, not partly because of not entirely, but partly because of sort of his Hollywood movie superstardom. And he's an American movie star that

Russians just think very highly of. But also a little factoid that listeners of our podcast might find as interesting as I did. Apparently, Fiona Hill, who was a fixture in the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, but also served on the National Security Council and is like one of our national experts on Russia, apparently during the Obama administration lobbied to make Arnold Schwarzenegger our ambassador to Russia. Wow. in Russia and thought that he was like one of the few people that could break through to Vladimir Putin, because apparently Putin also thinks highly of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or at least he did until he posted this video on the internet. Where would we be today? Where would we be today?

If there were an ambassador Schwarzenegger. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mithoni Mutturi. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishna of Calamer. Our producers are Lexi Schapiro and Elena Moore. Thanks also to Brandon Carter. I'm Asma Khalid.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I also cover Congress. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.