The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Biden Actions On Guns, Student Loans

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

The Biden administration unveiled new, targeted student debt forgiveness and new regulations on gun sales this week. The maneuvers appear targeted to boost the president's standing among young voters, who express lower levels of support for Biden compared to older age groups.This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, political reporter Elena Moore, and political correspondent Susan Davis.This podcast was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. 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

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Claire Gregory in Guilford, England, where I'm about to walk across the stage to graduate with a PhD in the psychology of decision making. This podcast was recorded at 1142 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, April 12th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, like me officially being a doctor. Okay, here's the show.

Ooh, congratulations. That's a cool concept. In decision making? Yeah, I think I might read that thesis paper. I would fail that so quickly. I wouldn't even be able to get to class. I would be so, I'd be like, do I go this way? Do I go that way? Congratulations.

That's a big deal. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. This week saw a lot of issues put front and center that Democratic voters care a lot about. Student loan debt forgiveness, gun regulations, and new threats to abortion access.

On Monday, the Biden administration unveiled a new plan to eliminate student debt for millions of Americans. The administration says that if fully implemented, it would bring the number of borrowers who've seen some debt forgiven under the Biden administration to more than 30 million. Obviously, this comes at a time when Biden is really struggling with young voters even more than other groups. So that brings me to you, Elena. You know, there was this big push to try to eliminate up to, for most people, $10,000, but up to $20,000. That's not what this is. It's a much smaller group. It focuses on primarily folks with like longstanding debt and, you know, people who've been paying their payments for a while. But these are for people who have either, you know, recently been in school or student loan debt is still a very big issue for them. That's an issue that young voters care about. We've seen that in the past. It's energized them in the past. It's no secret, though, that for a while, Biden has struggled with young voters.

In our most recent NPR-PBS NewsHour Marist poll, young voters, so under 30 for this, six in 10 disapprove of the job that Joe Biden is doing as president right now. So that's the most of any age group. It's nothing to sneeze at. I mean, we're still far from the election, but not that far. So it's, I think, a very clear sign that the administration is still trying to show young people and all people with loans that, you know, they're still looking at this and they're still trying to make inroads here after the Supreme Court tossed out that initial executive order. You know, sometimes politics can be really complicated and sometimes it's really simple.

And in this event, this feels really simple what the president's trying to do. It's April of an election year. His polls are bad. He's struggling in an election against Donald Trump. Like they are trying clearly. They need the base to be energized. They need Democratic voters to show up. And this has been a core issue for the Democratic base. It is true that Joe Biden will be able to campaign and say no other American president has canceled more student loan debt than me. A couple of caveats here. You know,

this is obviously going to be challenged. There's our existing legal challenges. He's lost in the Supreme Court before. There's two ongoing additional legal challenges where it ultimately ends. But sometimes it's not about the outcome. It's about the fight. And Joe Biden needs to be able to campaign on ideas that are popular within the party. And the majority of student loan debt in this country is held by people under 40. And he has had a hard time with these voters. So it seems pretty clear what he's trying to do. But frankly, he's been canceling student loan debt for a while now. And we haven't seen sort of an obvious poll boost or bump. Like Elena and I before the podcast were talking about like how many people, how many young voters can say affirmatively that they acknowledge that the president's policies has affected their lives.

And it's almost none of them. You said it was like one in 10. The policy disconnect is really real. And like when I'm out talking with people outside of polling, like they can remember tangible things that have happened, like that initial push to eliminate student loan debt, because that affected so many people. But it's a lot harder to attach Biden's name to some of these other extremely big legislative what the White House and the campaign would say are wins for them and apply to things young people care about. It's just a lot harder for them to see those as like Biden wins. Yeah. Well, moving on to the Justice Department, which announced a new rule on Thursday that will require anyone who sells guns to run federal background checks. This is a process that's supposed to cut down on what's been known as the gun show loophole. They say it would affect

roughly 23,000 unlicensed dealers and tens of thousands of gun sales each year. Sue, can you tell us more about this? And let's talk about what this also means on a sort of political level, because this is also an area where, especially Democratic voters, but some moderate voters, there's a lot of like buy-in on this idea. Now, this is one where the politics are really tricky. Gun politics in particular are some of the trickiest in American politics. And yeah, like if you poll questions like this, they get a majority of support in the country. I don't think there's any doubt about that. That's been proven time and time again. It's absolutely going to be challenged in the courts. Whether this actually ultimately

goes into effect, I think is very questionable. You already have opposition in Congress where Senate Republicans are saying they're going to use something called the Congressional Review Act, the easiest way to explain it, they probably don't have the votes to get it done there, but they could force a politically uncomfortable gun vote in Congress on this that some Democrats, I'm thinking of people like John Tester of Montana, might not want to take a gun vote in the lead up to this election. And also, frankly, look, yes, proposals like this are popular nationally, but this is not a national popular election. And what I think is interesting about Biden doing this is that I understand why it makes Democrats happy and centrists happy and independents happy. But when I look at the states that are going to determine the presidential election, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada are four states that have a lot of gun owners that have a lot of Democratic gun owners and where the politics don't cut as cleanly as if you were in a blue state like California or New York or Washington or places that have advanced much more aggressive

gun control laws. So I think for Biden, like I get why he did it, but I don't think that this is, there could be unintended consequences of this because one thing we do know about gun politics is that there are single issue gun voters in this country, and they more likely than not tend to be on the side of the gun rights movement. And these kind of moves from a Democratic president can also have the inverse effect of really rallying and giving a reason on the right for the gun rights movement to show up and vote against him. Yeah, I think Sue's point is really good because it almost gets at this like boomerang in some ways where like you see the administration do this thing that has a clear political motive. So obviously there's going to be a political backlash in some way, shape or form. I do think

though it's a different group, this is another nod to young voters we've seen over the last- And parents in suburbia, women in suburbia, which is a big issue for kids. Exactly. Exactly. And while there are single issue voters on protecting gun rights, there are single issue voters on curbing gun violence. And I think that especially seeing the priority it's been for officials like Vice President Kamala Harris, you know, she just went down to Parkland, Florida, the site of one of the most major school shootings in history, to talk about additional moves on curbing gun violence. So I think that this is a conversation that might be tailored at specific groups of people and might not be the subject of a rally in certain parts of Pennsylvania and Arizona. But it might be a subject of a rally in a purple, you know, district where there are more young people or more suburban women. So I think like any political conversation, it's going to be a tailored message. And so let's not forget, abortion is still an issue that is motivating a lot of voters, particularly on the left and

more moderate voters. And, you know, what happened this week in Arizona, I think, is a really interesting case for why this topic is even still in the news. Look, like the best thing that Democrats have going for them right now is the thing that's completely out of their control. And it is these conservative rulings in states like Arizona, which is now set to implement essentially a total ban on abortion in a state that is critical to the presidential race, critical to control of the Senate and has competitive House races. And time and time again, abortion, when put to voters, and it's going to be on the ballot in

Arizona, has proven to be a voter mover and on the side of the abortion rights part of the equation. Democrats couldn't control that this was going to happen in Arizona, but they might be able to politically benefit for it. And more broadly, across the country, I don't think there's a single Democratic campaign that would tell you that they don't believe that abortion and abortion access is going to be a central focus of virtually every competitive race in this country. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk more in a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit

wise.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. Annalena, you're out with a new story that takes a look back at the so-called unity task forces between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden's presidential campaigns after the end of the 2020 presidential primary. Can you tell us what those were about? Yeah. So I looked back on this kind of like anniversary. I don't know if anyone else is like celebrating it. But four years ago this week, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race. He was the last, you know, remaining presidential opponent in the primary to then candidate Joe Biden. And I remember it, you know, covering the election as kind of a big deal because there was this unity moment and there's always a unity moment among candidates at the end of a primary. I always think now our producer Casey pointed out that,

you know, in 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton literally did their rally in Unity, New Hampshire. Like it always happens in some dramatic way. But this was really interesting because they made these policy task forces. The politicians and their allies kind of worked together to make this big document of proposals on a bunch of different issues that progressives care about and kind of, you know, presented it to Biden ahead of the election. And he ended up adopting a bunch of the policies into his platform and acting on a bunch of them during his first term. So, you know, it had a big effect. So I wanted to look back on this because Sanders had a big poll with young voters. He was super popular in 2016 and 2020 among young voters. Comparatively

to Biden, he did way better among them in early primaries. Although we should say that some of those Bernie 2016 and 2020 voters aren't so young anymore. Exactly, exactly. So I kind of just wanted to like commemorate this moment that the two, you know, big longtime political figures had together? And if there's any sort of unity moment now, or like, if not, how divided is it now? Yeah. And Sue, I think Bernie Sanders is a really interesting character. You know, even though he's an independent and he comes more from like the more progressive wing of the party, and so he does butt heads with some of the more moderate members, he's actually remained like a really steadfast supporter of President Biden. You know, even though President Biden is struggling with some of the core base of his supporters. I mean, what do you make of like what Bernie Sanders sort of

signifies in the party right now? Bernie Sanders was squad before there was squad, right? Like he's like he has been the sort of ideological father of this movement in the Democratic Party. But you have to give Bernie Sanders credit for this. Like, he has both been able to maintain his sort of philosophical worldview and the policies he advocates for. But when push comes to shove in Democratic politics, Bernie Sanders has always gotten inside the tent. And even in this election, I think it was the night or immediately after it was clear that Biden had clinched the nomination, although it was clear that Biden was going to have the nomination, Bernie Sanders put out an extended video making the case for why progressives should vote for Joe Biden this year and framing it in these terms of democracy being on the ballot, even though he knows as well as any progressive in the movement right now how frustrated they are at Joe Biden, how they want to see the country move in a different direction. But I think that Bernie Sanders is a pragmatist. He's a very pragmatic populist progressive.

Right. And I think that at the end, he understands that, like, your ideas don't matter if you don't win elections. And ideas are lovely and philosophies are important. But if you lose elections and you can't implement any of it, then what's the point? But the question I have for you, Elena, when you're talking to these people is does Bernie Sanders still engender as much goodwill on the left or is he seen as maybe becoming a bit of the establishment in 2024 politics? Well, I mean, in some ways, things are just so different now that there are so many caveats that have to be said before even getting to that question. Like, Sanders isn't running for president.

He likely will never run for president again. He is running for re-election this year, though. That's true. I think he's safe. I think he's going to be chill. I think we can predict that Bernie Sanders is safe in Vermont. I think we can almost make a race call. But Sanders is not in the same like political position he was

four years ago. He doesn't have like a like a tangible base in the same way. He has people who follow him. And like you said, he has like a legacy in progressive politics. But like he's not you can argue he's not in lockstep with the progressive wing in the same way he once was. I mean, after the Hamas attack in Israel, some progressives actually criticized his response because he did not immediately call for a ceasefire. He's since become much more critical of the administration and how Biden has dealt with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He wants to stop U.S. aid to Israel. So I think just even in that example, Sanders is not embodying the same

level as you would think of like Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and how vocal she's been in calling for action from the president. That said, I do think Bernie and his allies still uphold this message of like, these men come from different ends of the Democratic Party, but understand the pragmatism of politics and what it means to meet the majority of the Democratic Party where they are. And so I think this is this really unique thing I found in this piece, which is, you know, allies of Sanders will point to Biden's ability throughout his entire career of acknowledging criticism and knowing when to shift. I mean, you can't deny that the progressive left has dramatically influenced the Biden administration. Joe Biden, on everything we just talked about, student loan forgiveness. Biden was really reluctant to this idea. It took a huge lobbying effort from members on the left to get

him to a degree on that. On guns, he has moved to the left. I mean, he's always sort of supported tougher gun rules, but he's gotten even more aggressive rhetorically and on policy behind that and on abortion, which is an issue that the president in the course of his political career had been sort of reluctant to speak about. He has become a more progressive Democrat. And I don't think any of that would have happened without the efforts of people like Bernie Sanders. And I think that is how you connect the dot where it's like, well, Bernie Sanders is all in for Joe Biden and other notable progressives in Congress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she has also been very public and very vocal in saying she's going to support Joe Biden. It has not been, you mentioned Rashida Tlaib. There is a wing of the party that is more skeptical, who has even flirted with the idea that they could not support Joe Biden in November. And they're not part of that part of the progressive wing of the party. All right. Let's take another quick break. And when we get back, it is time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And now it is time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk

about the things that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Sue, I'm going to start with you. What can't you let go of this week? The thing I couldn't let go of this week is the death of O.J. Simpson, which is a name that I think that most Americans probably recognize. But for those of us of a certain age, the trial of O.J. Simpson back in 1994 was like one of the most seminal moments in American cultural events. And part of why I can't let it go is like, I honestly, I'm thinking about this now because Elena, I'm not even speaking of young voters. I'm not even sure you were alive at the O.J. Simpson verdict. So it's let me let me take you back in time. Yeah, I'm going to take that question and I'm going to speak with my team and get back to you. Yeah, you don't need to comment on that,

neither confirm nor deny. But it was this moment where like everyone in America watched this one event happen. And I'm not sure anything in my life has happened since then. And like, yes, there's been big events where people turn on the television, but this was like a scheduled news event that America was tuned into. And I was in 10th grade ecology class. And I remember literally every classroom in my high school stopped and everybody put their TVs on and the entire high school watched the verdict. And that happened all over the country, like employers, high schools, everyone was like in airports, like the stories of people tuned into this verdict was such a, like, I will always remember where I was type of moment. And it was like the beginning

of insane cable news coverage and so much of what's become normal about our media environment now. Like, I feel like it all, the origin story goes back to, a lot of it goes back to the trial of O.J. Simpson. It does feel like the way that that played out has totally influenced every moment where now we sit in front of the, like, watch cable news for a week straight on, like, a crazy thing that has happened. I have, like, a very clear memory of my mom getting, like, into big debates with other parents in the pickup line at school with this and getting so annoyed because I just wanted to go home.

It was like that. And this was like a week straight of, like, just all the parents wanting to talk about this nonstop. It was like everybody had a take and it was and people were arguing about it and divided on it. And it was this like it was just a very crazy moment in time. Ashley, what about you? What can you let go of? All right. Well, I can't let go of this week is this story from the Associated Press about the Mexican government, particularly the office of the president declaring 19 feral cats that roam on the National Palace's property as living fixed assets. They're the first animals to get such a designation. And according to the AP, this investment term fixed assets usually applies to the buildings and furniture. But now that this like cluster of

cats has this title, the Mexican government has now been, quote, obligated the country's treasury to give them food and care for the rest of their lives. Did a cat write that? Right. Wait till the other cats hear about this. Big cat has a lot of influence in Mexico. Anyways, apparently what I love about this article is that they mentioned that these cats apparently have a habit of walking in front of the cameras when the president is giving speeches, which I think is pretty fun and very on brand for cats. You start putting out food for 19 feral cats. You're going to get more cats. That's like one thing I know about feral cats.

I don't think people realize how dangerous a feral cat is, too. Like if a cat was like, feed me or I'm going to claw you. Like I would feed the cat. I would put it in the constitution. And these cats are getting fed by like everybody who comes to the palace.

It's like there's these fun pictures of someone like giving them like a cat, like an ice cream cone. I'm just like, this is a recipe for disaster. But you know what? I also kind of love that they're designated, you know, something like a fixed asset. What a crazy difference to American politics where all the dogs in the White House have been

sent to farms. You know what? I bet, though, I bet this pays for itself because I bet that the feral cats become such a drive of tourism, right? Like you do this stuff and people are like, I want to see the cats. I want to take my picture with the cats. I want to go there that, you know, the cost benefit analysis, maybe it's a moneymaker in the long run. Yeah. And the rat population is probably pretty low. Well, what about you, Elena? What can't you let go of this week? Okay. Well, for me, I am, I guess we're ending on kind of a bad, like a sad note, but like the golden bachelor um abc's been off of the bachelor bachelorette and uh it features contestants and a bachelor who are over 60 years old but some updates for us um at the end of last year uh gary turner who was their bachelor um he he proposed to theresa

nist and it was like this big beautiful kind of like wholesome series, unlike some of the other Bachelor series that are like a little bit raunchy. Raunchy is a good way to say it. They're getting divorced. They married three months ago. They're getting divorced. It was a televised wedding. I think the thing that I can't let go of, and this is like kind of mean, but like our good friend and colleague, Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent, was like really convinced they were going to work. He was like really excited about it. He's a big watcher of the series and they don't.

They don't work. And I don't know if this is a possible thing there are many resident scholars on the bachelor on the washington desk of which i so i i would defer to their wisdom on this but my um secondary feeling about the bachelor series and all its spinoffs is like when they end in marriage it's either like forever or six weeks later like there's no like median bachelor marriage. Like who's the first bachelor or bachelorette? Like they're still married.

Like some of these people have been married for like decades now. But again, no social media when The Bachelor probably started, right? Fact check me. That could be part of it. Like there are things about today's world where like it is harder to have love. And maybe it's... Don't give up on love. Let's end the podcast on that.

Don't give up on love, America's end the podcast on that. Don't give up on love, America. And that's all for this week. Our executive producer is Mithoni Mathuri. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung Yoo Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalamer. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.

I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.