The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Wants To Change Who Counts When Dividing Up Seats In Congress

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

President Trump gave a more sober briefing about the coronavirus Tuesday evening, though it still contained inaccuracies. He said, months into the pandemic, that the White House is working on a strategy. And President Trump released a memorandum Tuesday that calls for the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national correspondent Hansi Lo Wang.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.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

It's Alicia Abbott calling from the dog park in Levin, New Zealand, where I'm walking my two dogs. This podcast was recorded at 2.06 p.m. on July 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, Mr. Sulu, introduce the show. Speak. Good boy. What a good boy. That was a very good boy. Yeah. Hey there, this is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe.

I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. For the first time in nearly three months, President Trump held a coronavirus briefing last night, and he's got another one planned for tonight. He read from notes and he addressed the spiking cases in the Sun Belt directly. He even said this. America's youth will act responsibly. And we're asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask.

Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact, they'll have an effect, and we need everything we can get. So Aisha, what's changed? I think what changed is that the polls showed Trump tanking really badly against, you know, his opponent, Joe Biden. And I think that a lot of that had to do with his handling of the coronavirus response and what the public was saying that they were not satisfied with his response. And so what we got yesterday was some people, he didn't have a teleprompter, but as you said, he had notes and he pretty much stuck with that. He had a few little things, but he pretty much stuck with the notes and tried to take this kind of serious tone. And he's done this before, right, Tam? Indeed. I remember at least two other occasions, maybe three,

where he came out, he said, you know, we're all in this together, we've got to do it. He expressed concern about increasing deaths. And then within like, I don't know, a week, in this together. We've got to do it. He expressed concern about increasing deaths. And then within like, I don't know, a week, couple of days. Yeah, he would become he would come back out and completely undercut the message that he had been delivering with that serious tone. Look, this was a very different sort of view of the president. You know, you've had people questioning his leadership. And who was there at the White House yesterday at the briefing room? Just the president, nobody else, none of the health experts. And if you look at the polls, I mean, just 30% of Americans in a recent Pew survey said that

Americans trust the information from President Trump and his administration to get the facts right on coronavirus. That was lower than the CDC, lower than state governments, lower than local news, and by the way, lower than the news media in general. In terms of like what his message actually was, I don't know, Ayesha, it kind of seemed like it was like, I'm here, we're here. We acknowledge, yes, that cases are rising and that these aren't just embers. These are fires burning in some of these pretty critical states, Arizona, Texas, Florida. I mean, they're like us political people are like, oh, those are those are key battlegrounds in this coming election. Yes. Yeah. It was an acknowledgement that things are not going well. We are in the process of developing a strategy that's going

to be very, very powerful. We've developed them as we go along. Some areas of our country are doing very well. Others are doing less well. It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better. Something I don't like saying about things, but that's the way it is. But he also said that he thinks it, he still thinks it will disappear one day. Other than talking about vaccines and therapeutics, there wasn't really any like concrete action in telling people to strongly to wear a mask and social distance. There wasn't like a lot of concrete action from the White House yesterday. Yeah. In fact, to me, the most stunning thing was where he said we're working on a strategy. One substantive change here is that health experts have been saying that wearing a mask is one of the

most important things from a public health perspective to not spread the virus because this is a respiratory disease. And the president really, for the first time since saying people should wear face coverings and scarves months ago, came out and said it's important to wear a mask and that they work and that it would be patriotic to do so. And this is the kind of thing that even Democrats have been saying that they want the president to come out and say because his supporters, who are now the most likely to say they won't wear a mask, would follow him to do it. And one thing that sort of belies the serious tone thing is the statistics that the president chose to present during this this briefing. He chose numbers that make things look good, make things look like

they're going in the right direction. He said deaths are down 75% from mid-April. That sounds awesome, right? Like 75%, that's awesome. Mid-April is when the pandemic was at its first peak, when deaths were the absolute worst. If you were to, you know, have a different end, have a different start date, like say, how have deaths changed since July 5? Well, they're nearly double what they were July 5. The trajectory is going in the opposite direction. It's going up. And that's, it's that type of kind of trying to put this gloss on what's happening that the administration has done over and over again, focusing on the numbers that make them look the best, but not necessarily really addressing everything that's happening on the

ground. We have a lot of tests now, but now it takes you like seven days to get your results back. So we still have an issue. Yeah. So where does it go from here? Where does the administration go from here? I mean, you have one briefing, then what? So when you talk to the Biden campaign, you know, Democrats and Democratic strategists, they all believe that this race is going to tighten. They don't believe that it's going to stay this far apart in the polls. And the reason for that is there are a lot of voters right now who are saying that they don't want to vote for president Trump, who they believe are likely to go back to him and are looking for a reason to do so. And this kind of soft reboot, somber approach is something

that his campaign, Trump's campaign has been pushing to say, look, what you've been trying hasn't worked. So to get these people back, you've got to try something different. And I think Democrats are already girding for the possibility that Biden's numbers will soften, especially if Trump keeps this up. All right. Well, Domenico, thank you for being with us. All right.

Bye, guys. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we will talk all about the census. Don't miss the national conversation with me, Jen White, every weekday on NPR's 1A. News, views, and insight for the relentlessly curious. A space for those willing to share what they know and ready to hear the other side of the story. Subscribe to 1A now and leave a review. And we are back and we're joined by census reporter extraordinaire Hansi Lo Wong. Hey, Hansi. Hey, Tam.

So when this story broke yesterday, I just told everyone to follow you on Twitter because you have all the answers. Thank you. But let's catch people up. We have not talked about the census in a very long time on the podcast, but there was some news on this yesterday related to the president signing a memorandum. But to understand why this memorandum matters, let's go back to the beginning. There's this thing called the census. It happens every 10 years and it determines how federal funds are allocated and congressional

seats and all kinds of other stuff. Yeah, it's very foundational. This forms the basis of how this country determines how it shares power and money. So how is the count going? I mean, there is a pandemic happening. There is. And just like every, just about every aspect of each of our lives, it has completely upended the 2020 census. And I think some people may think the 2020 census is over. It is not.

It is still happening. I was there when it first started officially in January. And in March, right around when lockdowns started happening around the country, especially here in New York, I'm in New York City. That was when the census really launched nationwide, when the Census Bureau was trying to tell people to go to my2020census.gov, fill out your form, call a toll-free number. And they got completely upstaged by this pandemic. And later on, they had to delay their major operations. And the Bureau is giving itself until October 31st at this point to finish counting.

Ayesha, yesterday, President Trump signed this memorandum about the census. What was it? What's he trying to do there? It is basically so when you the purpose of the memo is so that when he gets the census numbers, he wants to take out of those out of that count the people who are in the country illegally, so that they will not, those numbers will not count towards the way that we apportion out our representatives. And so that in for states, and so that is the idea that you would not include people who are in the country illegally in the count for states when they are getting their representatives to U.S. Congress. So, Hansi, can he do this?

Well, the Constitution says the final authority over the census lies with Congress, not the president and the constitution also says if you take a look at the fifth sentence of the constitution which lays out the instructions for who counts its persons not no distinction about citizens for example and the 14th amendment which was enacted to stop the counting of an enslaved person as three-fifths of a person that then specified the counting of the whole number of persons in each state in order to determine the numbers for reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives. And this memo that President Trump has issued really goes against more than two centuries of precedent where the census count has included both citizens and non-citizens, regardless of immigration status. And I'm watching right now to see which civil rights groups and possibly some states might file legal challenges against this memo to stop the administration from doing what many people are saying is unconstitutional.

Why would the White House want to do this? Clearly, they must think that there's a political benefit for Republicans in this. Well, again, whenever we're talking about the census, we are talking about power and money. And, you know, take a look at this focus on congressional seats and apportionment, you know, word that, you know, probably the wonkiest of the wonks are thinking about and talking about apportionment. It's just so hard to get out of my mouth. But this is a key, key process. Happens only once every 10 years. It determines not only how many congressional seats, but electoral college votes each state gets. So this is a linchpin of determining who wins presidential elections and

determining who has control over the House of Representatives ultimately. And it is all at a time where, you know, every 10 years, we essentially take a giant, the country takes a giant portrait, a snapshot of where the population is. That's, you know, one way to think about the census. And at a moment where demographers are projecting that the demographics of this country, especially the racial and ethnic demographics, are just shifting beneath our feet, where younger generations are becoming browner, and the white population is seeing decreases in the birth rate. This is a major turning point for the country that the 2020 census may capture. There is a lot at stake at what the census captures and then how that translates into who has power for the next 10 years and that balance of power over the next 10 years. All right. We will keep watching this. You especially will keep watching this and even just whether the census can get done in the middle of this pandemic.

Thank you, Hansi, for your reporting. You're welcome. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.