The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: January 14th

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

The Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test rule for businesses with more than 100 employees, but allowed a separate mandate for health care workers to stand. Also, Democrats' push to pass voting rights legislation is unraveling, as moderates in the Senate resist any changes to filibuster rules. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, and congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell.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

Hi, my name is Kayla and I'm a Girl Scout from St. Augustine, Florida. I'm on my way to Girl Scout at the Capitol Day. This podcast was recorded at 11.45 a.m. on Friday, January 14th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Hopefully, I will have used my voice to share Girl Scout mission with policymakers in Tallahassee. Don't forget to buy Girl Scout cookies this season. Okay, here's the show. I have not forgotten. I just put in an order with a friend's daughter. Same, same. I just want to

say I feel like this time stamp was meant for me. One, we just got back from St. Augustine, Florida. But second, I too was a Girl Scout and I'm a big fan of Girl Scout and Girl Scout cookies. Me too. Me three. You too, Nina? This is an a Girl Scout and I'm a big fan of Girl Scout and Girl Scout cookies. Me, too. Me, three. You, too, Nina. This is an all Girl Scout pod. Well, hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Nina Totenberg. I cover the Supreme Court. Well, we have you here, Nina, because the Supreme Court has blocked the Biden administration's

COVID vaccine or test rule. This rule would have required employees at companies with more than 100 workers to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive a test every week. This SCOTUS decision is no doubt a disappointment for the president and his COVID strategy, and it comes as cases are soaring nationwide. But it is important to note the court did allow a vaccine mandate that applies to most health care workers to remain intact. So Nina, let's start with this first decision, the rule that would apply to large companies. What was the court's thinking there? The court said by a six to three vote that this was just way beyond anything that Congress had authorized when it set up the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is supposed to deal with the workplace and people get COVID not just in the workplace, and that this was not a targeted rule for people who were close to each other, that might be okay. This was for every employer who had 100 or more workers, and they either had to be vaccinated by their employers at the federal government's expense, or they would have

had to be tested weekly and worn a mask. And that was the rule that the court said, nah, nah, nah. So essentially what the court was saying is COVID is everywhere. It's not a workplace specific hazard. It is a broader hazard. It's an environmental hazard. It's a everywhere you go kind of hazard. But Nina, I'm wondering, does this have broader implications

than just OSHA and this one particular rule? Well, it definitely could. Four of the justices wrote concurring opinions or signed on to concurring opinions, saying essentially, you can't even do this, that Congress can't delegate this kind of authority, even if it's specifically delegated it to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and said, look, in cases of vaccine where certain things are necessary, you can go ahead and have a countrywide rule. You can't do that. The Constitution doesn't let you do that. Nina, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying there correctly, because we actually had an episode on this

podcast earlier in the year where we spoke about vaccine mandates in a Supreme Court case from about a century ago, about a smallpox vaccine mandate in Massachusetts. And my understanding is that the court deemed that constitutional. So is this about states' rights versus a federal vaccine mandate? Can you just clarify for us what was the difference? Exactly. That case was about a state mandate. And the conservatives on this court say, well, states can do it if they want to, but the federal government can't do it. That's what many of them are seem to be suggesting. And in fact, this court, including the conservatives, have upheld a lot of mandates from states involving everything from medical workers to frontline workers, firefighters, police, and you see that

they actually do work despite a lot of talk about, oh, how everybody's going to quit. They don't quit. You know, the New York Fire Department went from 60 some odd percent compliance with vaccines to once it was a mandate to I think it was 94% very quickly. So you can see that mandates actually do work. But the court says we live in a federal country, that is a states' rights country. That's what conservatives believe. And it doesn't seem to matter that disease can travel across state lines very quickly in the modern world. And not in individual states will disagree about how to regulate that problem. So, Tam, I want to understand what this means in practical terms. What does it mean for businesses, for workers? It sounds like some of them had already told their employees to start getting vaccinated. Right. So President Biden, in his response to this, did basically all that he can do, which was say, hey, states and employers, you can still do this.

Go ahead. Do these mandates. Please, please mandate vaccines for your employees. And the fact is that a lot of employers, big, notable employers, have put in place vaccine mandates. For instance, United Airlines said that since they put the mandate in place, vaccination went way up, and they had previously been having about one employee a week die from COVID. And for the last eight weeks or so, they haven't had any deaths from COVID among their very large workforce. So there's a mixed bag, though, because there were a lot of other employers who were sort of hiding behind the federal mandate and saying, well, you know, the federal government says we're going to have to do this, so we'd better start thinking about doing it. And now they're not going to be able to hide behind the federal

mandate because that went away. So the question is, how many employers will continue to, you know, steal their spine and go forward? And how many of them will say, oh, God, we're having staffing shortages anyway. We can't really afford to upset even 3 percent of people. You mentioned staffing shortages, Tam. And we have heard a bit about staffing shortages within the health care sector. And this is an aspect that actually was upheld here by the courts. The court did say, the justices said, that the rule that applies to the health sector can remain intact. So, Nina, explain to us, what was the distinction there?

Why was that part of this all allowed to remain? Well, part of it was that, as the unsigned opinion said, probably written by Chief Justice Roberts said, the medical profession's ethic is first do no harm. And this regulation was aimed at making sure that healthcare workers would stay safe and thus not infect their patients, some of whom may come in with COVID, but others of whom are just coming in with an appendicitis or are an old person in a nursing home. That's one part of it. The other part of it is, this wasn't just a regulatory measure. This is conditioned on the fact that the federal government is funding Medicare and Medicaid patients in just about every health entity in the country. From ambulatory services to hospices to hospitals to you name it,

there are Medicare and Medicaid patients, and these institutions could not survive without that money. And so that is the big hook. The courts have long held that when you get money from the federal government, the federal government can impose restrictions. Ah, got it. Okay. And the other one was a sheer regulation of the economy under the Commerce Clause because these are interstate employers,

et cetera, et cetera, and these are products that go from state to state. And believe me, this kind of a regulation from OSHA in these sorts of circumstances, 10 years ago, would have been upheld by a very different Supreme Court. But this court now is a super, super conservative court, dating probably more conservative than we've seen since the 1930s. You know, at the start of this podcast, we mentioned that COVID cases are reaching record highs. And these vaccine mandates were no doubt a key part of the president's strategy in combating the virus. They would have covered more than 80 million people in this country.

So, Tam, where do you see the White House's strategy going from here in terms of just dealing with a pandemic? The virus is still spreading. Now, the vaccine mandates, or I should say a portion of the vaccine mandates that the president had envisioned have been struck down. Yeah. So the White House is focused on other things other than mandates. They had been sort of reluctant for a long time to even move in the direction of mandates. But so now they are working on shipping tests, at-home rapid tests to anybody who wants them. are talking about sending out high quality KN95 or N95 masks, you know, better filtration masks. And they're also sending surge teams to hospitals around the country that are just overwhelmed, overwhelmed because staff are burned out. So they were already short staffed. Now staff are getting Omicron because it's breaking through vaccines. And so this is sort of like a triage moment. I think once they get past the triage moment, they're going to get back to having questions that they've gotten before, which is, well, why not mandate vaccines to fly

domestically, for instance, which is something they had said they didn't want to do because, hey, we've got this other mandate that's going to reach so many people. But now that they don't have that mandate, I think these questions about vaccine requirements for domestic flights might increase. Let us take a quick break. And Nina, thank you, as always, for coming on the pod. Always a big fan when you can come and join us. Nice to be here, Girl Scout. On my honor, I will try. And when we get back, the latest on the congressional fight over voting rights. And we're back. This week, President Biden called on the Senate to take

urgent action on voting rights legislation, but already it seems like that plan, if it was a plan, is unraveling. Here to talk about this with us is NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell. Kelsey, glad to have you on. Hello, I'm so glad to be here. So to quickly recap for our listeners, on Tuesday, President Biden gave this speech in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was forcefully urging the Senate to pass voting rights legislation. You know, he even threw his support behind amending the filibuster to do this, which we should point out is something he had been hesitant to say in the past. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there would be Senate action on this all by Monday, which is notably Martin Luther King Day. How is that looking now, Kelsey? Well, they're not going to be doing that anymore. Well, Schumer sent out a notice kind of later in the evening

yesterday saying that they were going to move votes to Tuesday in part because of a winter storm that's coming and in part because of COVID. We know of at least one senator, Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is currently quarantining for COVID. So they are putting things on hold right now. But they're also putting things on hold right now because they don't have the votes. Democrats want to try to pass two bills. They would make changes to federal rules for elections that include making mail-in voting easier and more universally accessible. It would make Election Day a holiday, and it would make other changes that Democrats say would make it easier for people to access voting. The problem they're running into right now is the whole idea of passing voting rights legislation is, you know, predicated on the fact that there would be enough votes to

change the Senate rules in some way. And Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema came to the Senate floor, even before Biden came to Capitol Hill to talk to Democrats, she went to the Senate floor and said, you know, I'm not changing my mind. And I don't think we should make any amendments to the filibuster, even if she says she agrees that these voting rights bills need to pass. These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease. But they do not fully address the disease itself. And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. And that was before Biden came to try to persuade them. So it was kind of

like, hi, hi, I'm unpersuadable. It's a pre-bottle. She went and made that speech an hour before Biden got there. So it was, he hadn't even left the White House. He was not even headed over yet. So he was walking into a room where he knew that his message was not going to be received in a way that would be productive. I mean, I have so many questions about this. And chief among them, though, Tam, is that this president really prides himself on his years of legislative work in the Senate, that he is a man of the Senate.

He understands that institution, that he could get legislation passed, that he can cut deals. And after Sinema gave those remarks last night, the president met for over an hour at the White House with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, as well as Kyrsten Sinema. I don't understand, given the reputation that he has tried to build himself on as being this dealmaker, somebody who understands the institution, like what is going on here? Because it does not seem like he can even get his own Democratic caucus behind him. So let's start with the White House readout, you know, the explanation of what happened in that meeting. Not a lot of details. They said that it was a candid and respectful exchange of views about voting rights. Translation, no progress. even, a high regard for his ability to get legislation done throughout his time in the Senate. But at times he takes the long view, like this is an urgent matter because it's a midterm year and his approval ratings are in the dumps and Democrats are risking losing a lot in the

midterms. But he has often taken the long view, For instance, the Brady bill, the gun control bill that he was integrally involved in getting through Congress in the early 1990s, it took something like six years to get that legislation through. So sometimes it seems like the president is thinking like a legislator. You know, another thing is, why doesn't he just twist arms and strong arm people?

Well, he has said, well, I wouldn't have liked that if I was a senator and the president came in big footing telling me what to do. I mean, beyond that, Senator Manchin, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has made very clear that he does not want to respond to that kind of tactic. That's part of the reason why we've seen senior Democrats in the Senate kind of try to take a soft approach with him, come at him from the side, because every time people come at him, you know, try to push Manchin into agreeing to something, or as he calls it, bullying him into something, that makes him push back even harder. He digs in much deeper every time that that is the tactic Democrats have used in the past. And, you know, Biden is viewing the Senate in a way that I think may not necessarily apply to the modern Senate. He's viewing it from his experience of what legislating used to look like. between former leader Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell over judicial nominees and the

way that seats in the Supreme Court were filled. And people are just not legislating and agreeing the way that they did before. This is not the same Senate as it was 20 years ago. Kelsey, I have a question for you too,, which is like they were working on getting Build Back Better passed and it was not going super well, but it wasn't like impossible. Like it seemed like the potential existed to pass that big presidential and Democratic priority in some form. But then they came back from winter break and were like, no, we're doing voting rights first. It was like they took this thing that was really difficult and chose to instead prioritize something that they had to have known going in was basically impossible. I don't understand. I don't necessarily understand either, to be totally honest with you. And you know, some of it goes back to the song that never ends that we were talking about and singing earlier this week, which is Joe Manchin is objecting to both of these things, right? And so we wind up back in the same

kind of circular conversation that I feel like we've been having for the majority of Biden's administration so far, which is Democrats promise something on the campaign trail. Biden makes a speech, promises that he will get it done. And then it falls apart in the Senate because there's opposition from one or two senators who just don't agree with the rest of the party. You know, we talk a lot about the intra-party fight among Democrats on voting rights. But Kelsey, you had some reporting this week about the fact that even though Republicans do not support these specific bills around voting rights that we've been discussing, that this conversation is forcing Republicans to reckon with themselves and reckon with some of the lies that we've heard repeated from former President Donald Trump about the 2020 election? Yeah, Senate Republicans and particularly led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have kind of consolidated around this message that the 2020 election was fair,

people felt like it was easy to vote. And so there's no need for this, you know, legislation to have federal rules for voting, that states should be able to make up their own minds. But one of the reasons Democrats say they need to pass these bills is that beyond that message from McConnell and from, you know, some top leaders in the Senate, you still have former President Trump out there saying that, you know, even on our air and on NPR, saying that the election was stolen and promoting the lie that the 2020 election was plagued by fraud. So there is this tension within the party about how do they move forward and away from 2020 if the biggest name in their party keeps on pulling them back in. You know, one good example of this is that over the weekend, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota was asked whether or not he thought the election was fair

during an interview on ABC. He said that it was. He said Republicans lost. And then Trump immediately turned around and began attacking him and then attacked any Republican senator who agreed with him. Now, that may just seem like Trump doing what Trump does. But Democrats say that it's another example of why they need to pass voting rights bills. They say that President Trump is still actively advocating for stricter changes to voting laws that would make it harder for people to vote. And pushing for changes to election laws based on the lie that 2020 wasn't fair. So it's creating this tension for Republicans that they really have not figured out yet how to address. All right. Well, we are going to take another quick break.

And when we get back, it's time for everyone's favorite part of the show. Can't let it go. And we're back. And it is time now for Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about all the things that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. This week, I think we all are in agreement that what we cannot let go of is rather personal and important. Our all-star producer, Barton Girdwood, is leaving us. He is leaving us for a new opportunity at NPR after more than, I think it's been, gosh, three years on the show. So we all wanted to take a moment to bid him farewell. Barton, this is Aisha.

I'm going to start this out by complaining, as I always do. I need more time. I want to say more. But being that I have to keep this short, I would just say you are a delight to work with you have taught me so much about audio that I did not know before and you've helped make me better and I appreciate you and best of luck to you

Barton I have known you since you were like a baby you weren't even a producer you were in undergrad and I You weren't even a producer. You were an undergrad. And I met you because I was visiting one of your professors. Oh my God, how did you know that? And I was so excited when you came to NPR. And I was thrilled when we stole you away from Morning Edition and Up First to come work on the NPR Politics Podcast.

And you made us all better. And you got me really into Taylor Swift. It's very exciting. Barton, I am going to miss having you as a desk neighbor so much, but I am so glad you're staying at NPR because it means that you and I can maintain our relationship as people who just completely ignore each other when we're working out next to each other in the staff gym. Que viva, Barton! Bart, we're going to miss you so much. Have a great time on the new show. Hi, Barton.

It's Keri Johnson. I'm going to miss you so much. Who else is going to bring such a spark to our lives every time we record the podcast? Who else is going to remind me to turn off my air conditioning? I don't know. I'll be lost without you. Wish you all the best. Hey, Barton.

It's Danielle. We are going to miss you so much. You have been such a patient and even-keeled leader of this pod through COVID and all sorts of other very worrisome developments. So thank you, and we are going to miss you so much. Barton, who will I scream at during podcast tapings if there's a Taylor Swift development? I will never forget in the before times freaking out after hearing she was coming for Tiny Desk and the race to win wristbands. I was truly more excited about you going than her coming.

That's my fave memory. Finally, Barton and Taylor Swift together as it should be. Bye, Barton. This is Mara. I loved working with you. You totally understood me in every way. You were the best, super producer, great human being, and a fearless leader of the pod. Good luck. We'll miss you.

Hi, Barton. This is Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. You brought a new spirit to the pod. You brought a fresh set of ideas and a sense of what listeners really wanted to hear and learn. And we all benefited from that. So here's a toast to all you've done and a toast in advance to your next triumph. Vaya con Dios, Barton.

Barton, we are going to miss your chill vibe and your radio magic production skills more than you can imagine. But I will say I feel this moment is kind of bittersweet because I'm also really excited for you for this new opportunity. So anyhow, good luck. And I personally am going to miss having another IU Hoosier alum on our podcast team. Barton, my former cubicle mate, you have taught me so much about patience and pop culture. But when it comes to patience, I think it's mostly patience with me, considering my lack of technological awareness sometimes.

And, you know, he's also just a sunny, good person to have around who's enthusiastic about the news and about life. Barton, we'll miss you, buddy. And I know that you're going to do a great job with your next venture. Thanks a lot. Okay, Barton, let's get real. When you first started out producing an early politics podcast, I remember thinking, oh my God, will this kid ever realize what's important and what's not? Well, that very supercilious evaluation lasted about 14 nanoseconds. And soon you were telling me what to do, how to do it, what's important, and what you would put up with. And most of the time I was agreeing with you 100%. You can teach an old dog new tricks,

and you've certainly done that with me. We will miss you terribly, terribly. But we will come visit you if they ever let us back in the building full time. Love, Nina. Hey, Barton, it's Scott. I said it in a tweet, which was a cop out. So I'll say it in the street or rather, you know, in this podcast, even though sometimes it felt like we had bad blood in the end, working with you felt like slipping on an old cardigan. You made sure this podcast was never just a blank space. I will always return

your scarf. I will really miss you on the Politics Podcast. And C. Barton, look what you made me do. Barton, stay, stay, stay. Now, we're really excited about you having this opportunity to grow and to find new challenges and fund new things and to, for once, not have to check Twitter all the time for the news. Am I supposed to speak? It's like a little speechless at the moment. Are you speechless? fun new things and to for once not have to check twitter all the time for the news am i supposed to speak it's like a little speechless at the moment are you speechless oh my god you guys um thank you i will miss you guys terribly um you guys have taught me so much and i am incredibly grateful for the uh amazing podcast that we've, all the evolutions that it's gone through.

And this is our baby. And I am so excited to see you guys take it to the next level and do even more. And I'm going to miss you guys so much. We're going to miss you, Barton. Yeah. Well, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers, well, one last final

time is Barton Girdwood and Elena Moore. Thanks to Lexi Shapiro and Brandon Carter. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.