The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: January 7th

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

The justices are considering whether the federal mandates governing private employers and healthcare staff are constitutional. And Republicans who back Trump's election lies are running for election administration offices across the country.This episode: politics correspondent Juana Summers, labor correspondent Andrea Hsu, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and voting and disinformation reporter Miles Parks.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, this is Nina from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I'm currently munching on some dried mango because my New Year's resolution is to eat more fruits and vegetables. Did you know we're supposed to have nine servings a day? This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on Friday, January 7th, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show.

Is that true? Nine servings? Yeah, I'm not eating enough of those for sure. It's not going good over here. Yeah, well, you know, it's good to have resolutions. I'm going to kick that one to 2023. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

The Supreme Court is weighing the constitutionality of the federal government's COVID vaccine mandates. And today we've got Andrea Hsu with us who's covering all of this for NPR's Business Desk. Hey there, Andrea. Hey, Juana. Thanks for coming on the show. We're glad you're here. Thanks for having me. So I'm hoping you can just get us all up to speed. We're post-holidays. Remind us all what these mandates actually look like. Talk us through what the landscape is across the country right now. Yeah, so there are two different vaccine rules that the Supreme Court is reviewing today. One has to do with private sector workers, like all of us, affects about actually 84 million

workers in the US, which is about two thirds of all private sector workers. That's a lot of people. You know, this group of people under this rule have to either get a vaccine or be tested every week. And people who are unvaccinated also have to wear masks on the job. The other one has to do with healthcare workers who work for nursing homes or hospitals, clinics that get funding from the government through Medicaid or Medicare. They have to get vaccinated. They don't have a choice about it under this rule. What's happened is that a coalition of businesses, religious organizations, and a bunch of states, more than two dozen states, most of them led by Republicans. They have sued to block both of these rules, saying it's an overreach of government authority, that the agencies did not have the authority to do this. And the Biden administration is there at the Supreme Court defending these rules today.

What's been the counter argument that you've heard from the Biden administration as to why these mandates are necessary, why they should stay in place? Well, they really point to the toll that COVID has taken in this country. You know, the 800,000 people who have died of COVID, they say now, you know, that we're in this Omicron surge and Delta is still, you know, causing hospitalizations and deaths. These rules are more necessary than ever, and they will prevent, you know, more unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths and even just illnesses. And they say they absolutely have the authority to do this, that Congress gave OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that's the federal agency that

oversees workplace safety, the power to, you know, take measures to protect workers when it created OSHA back in 1970. So, Domenico, the Supreme Court nominally weighs in on constitutionality, but we also know that they're incredibly hyper aware about the public opinion on issues when they rule. And I just wonder, what do you know about how the public opinion on issues when they rule. And I just wonder, what do you know about how the public feels about vaccination mandates like the ones that Andrea has just been reporting on? Well, you know, there isn't broad support, I would say, for vaccine mandates. But it's not that there isn't some support for them, right? But it just sort of gets to be very squishy when it comes to talking about

sort of enforcement. If you look at one survey that was done earlier this month from Axios and Ipsos, it showed that if you're talking about employers requiring all employees to be vaccinated. 54% of people agree with that, which is a fairly decent majority. The huge political split, 78% of Democrats think they should, only 30% of Republicans think they should. So clearly a big split. It becomes a little, you know, less clear when it comes to, you know, whether it should be illegal for companies to deny service to people or employment to the unvaccinated, there you've got 51% overall who think that it should be illegal for companies to do that. And it's much closer.

So as far as the political split, Republicans, 55% think it should be illegal. And 46% of Democrats think it should be illegal to deny service or employment to the non-vaccinated. So you start to see where this gets a little tricky, and it's not just by politics, it's also by age. What we've seen in lots of surveys is that people over 45 are much more in favor of these vaccine requirements than people under 45. Andrea, as you point out, these mandates impact so many workers across this country. So I want to be careful here not to paint them with too broad of a brush. But I know that your reporting has given you the opportunity to talk to a lot of different

people, different businesses about how they feel about these mandates, how they've impacted the way that people live and work. And I'd love to just know more about what you've been hearing. Yeah, you know, there's a frozen foods company that I've been checking in with, they're in Ohio. And they, you know, their manufacturing workforce really had a fairly low vaccination rate. And so, you know, I think the company kind of in a way welcomed the vaccine or test rule because they could say, you know, hey, this isn't us that's doing this. It's the government is telling you, you either have to get vaccinated or you have to be tested

once a week. But the reality is that it's all very complicated. I mean, not to mention, this has all been stuck in the courts and it's been on again, off again, now on again. But, you know, the government has told companies, listen, you don't need to pay for the testing, you can make employees pay for that. But the company is saying, you know, we're not going to make our employees pay for testing, they could just quit. And we need workers, we've been short workers all year. So, you know, they are right now to comply with the rule, which currently stands pending, you know, this decision from the Supreme Court. They're gathering information on who is vaccinated and gathering vaccine cards, but they're not, you know, they haven't started testing because that's going to be a really heavy lift. And, you know, these tests are really in short supply right now. So it's really unclear. Other companies have said, you know, we've taken measures to protect workers. There's a there's one called Phillips Manufacturing and Tower Company. They make welded steel tubes. They said they've been doing antibody testing on their employees. And they said a bunch of them had COVID already. They don't want to get vaccinated. They think they're protected. And, you know, if we have to impose this vaccine or test rule, then people are just going to leave and we really can't afford to lose anybody. So the Supreme Court has heard these challenges to the administration's vaccine mandates, and we might not know the results for a while now.

But Andrea, I'm curious, as you listened to some of these arguments today, is there anything that jumped out at you either from those arguments or from your reporting that you think it's important for us to know, to understand what's happened here. Yeah, you know, Justice Kagan this morning said, you know, she acknowledged that this is an extraordinary use of power in an extraordinary circumstance. But, you know, the argument that the challengers made in court today, and some of the justices seem to warm to, is that COVID is something that exists outside the workplace. You can be exposed wherever you go. It's not just when you go to work. I mean, Justice Kagan had a comeback to that. She said, yeah, but the workplace is your least

controllable risk. You can go to a baseball game or not. You can decide that, but you can't do that with your workplace, especially for a lot of workers who cannot work from home or don't have the luxury of, you know, having their own office, you have no choice but to go to work indoors with lots of people you don't know, you know, people you don't know what they're doing in their own lives outside of work. And so I think that though, it will really come down to this issue. Does the federal government have the authority to do what they've done in this done in these extraordinary times that we're in? This is another case in which I've said for a long time that presidents can really control two things, judges and foreign policy, in a way that they can't control a lot of other things where they need Congress. This is one of those examples when,

you know, you had a lot of people, especially on the left, saying in 2016, Hillary Clinton and, you know, Donald Trump were the same and weren't that much of a difference. This is a big piece of where culturally a president can make a huge, huge difference in who they pick for judges. Trump got three of those picks through. And, you know, the consequences of that are going to be felt for generations. All right, we're going to leave it there for now. Andrea Hsu, thanks for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, a look at the candidates who are campaigning on the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

And we're back. And joining us now is Miles Parks, who covers voting and disinformation. Hey, Miles. Hi there. So you have been doing some really interesting reporting, tracking candidates who either believe or at minimum, or at least peddling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that former President Trump actually won. And some of these candidates now are running to actually oversee elections. Tell us about all of this.

Yeah, sure. So basically, this year, this is going to be a huge storyline, a storyline that I think in previous elections, probably voters weren't even thinking about people who are running for secretary of state races, which is in most states, the position, the statewide position that oversees elections. Usually, it's a really boring bureaucratic race that doesn't have a whole lot of money flowing into it from kind of the national spotlight. That's completely changing this year. There's going to be a lot of races that we're going to be focusing on specifically because people, there are a lot of candidates.

I counted at least 15 Republican candidates running for these races across the country who say the 2020 election was stolen. And when you talk to experts about that, it's a really worrisome trend because by saying that, they're basically saying, no, we are not going to listen to the facts, the courts, all of the audits, all of the data that says, no, this election was not stolen. It was actually one of the most well-run elections in American history. They're not listening to that and instead are listening to former President Trump. So, Miles, when you look at and listen to all of these candidates, how are they talking about the 2020 election? What are they saying? It really varies. I think you've got some candidates who are only saying, oh, there were quote-unquote shenanigans in the 2020 race and they should be investigated. There

are some folks who say, you know, who basically defend all of Trump's actions as a way to kind of be friendly toward the former president and call for audits nationwide. In many cases, it's worth noting, audits are already happening in most of these states. And then in some cases, in the most extreme cases, there are candidates running who just say flat out the 2020 election was stolen and Joe Biden's win was not legitimate. Yeah, you wonder how many of them believe this, you know, or is it, you know, just the thing that they're able to latch on to, you know, because they know that's where the Trump base is at, you know, and this is a thing that we've continued to sort of talk about over and over again, since even when Trump ran for office. Because we've seen the flip,

for example, in Congress. I mean, yesterday, January 6th, the commemoration, it was stunning to see just Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the only Republicans there for a moment of silence. Just so many Republicans who had criticized the president at one point because of his inspiration for January 6th and the incitement of it for better or for worse, to these races for Secretaries of State's Office for top election officials. But they are actually incredibly important because these people play a huge role in certifying election results as legitimate. And they were under so much pressure during 2020, as Domenico kind of alluded to there. Miles, can you talk a little bit about that landscape and what we saw in 2020 and what it might tell us about future elections? Yeah, I mean, I think when you think about democracy and why it still exists today, there's like all of these different

backstops where if somebody wants to overturn an election, election officials are kind of one of the first backstops there behind Behind them, you have the court system. And ideally, it wouldn't get to that point. You know, you want the people who are on the first kind of front lines to be people who are not going to be swayed by partisanship and instead are going to be counting the votes and certifying them as accurate, no matter whether it's the result they were rooting for or not. I talked to Fernita Tolson, who's an election expert at the University of Southern California. And here's what she told me. One of the reasons why Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to

substantiate his claims of fraud. These folks really are gatekeepers. I think when you look at this trend across the country, and we're also seeing a lot of these folks run for offices like state attorney general or governor, which the Washington Post also detailed in an account this week. I think when you look at that whole landscape, experts are just really worried that if a 2020-like event happens, there's just going to be fewer folks who are willing to stand up to it. So, Miles, you say that there may be fewer people who are willing to stand up. If that stops happening, are there other safeguards in place to, I don't want to overstate things here, but to protect democracy from sort of falling apart? Sure. I mean, I'd say there's two things. One is that one of the experts I talked to, Trey Grayson, is a former secretary of state of Kentucky. What he told me is like, if you want people to not be so terrified of this trend, then remind them that secretaries of state follow laws that are written by the legislature.

And so legislatures, state legislatures and, you know, Congress have the ability to write laws that these people must follow. And if they do not follow them, then the courts will intervene and can intervene and make them follow the laws. I mean, their job is to follow the laws. They don't write the laws themselves. And so I would say you've got the court system is one backstop. But democracy experts say it becomes a really, really bad area to get into when you have courts consistently deciding elections or deciding election rules, because you want that branch of our government not to be involved in the sort of kind of nitty gritty of voting. So I'd say the biggest thing is the law,

the writing of the law portion, where this comes back to is Congress – does Congress feel motivated to write laws that at least put some sort of baseline for voting rights for the states across the country? And what we've seen so far is the answer to that is no. passed and reenacted, except after the Supreme Court essentially gutted key parts of it, that it became partisan and Republicans no longer sort of are on board with this for the most part, kind of taking a hands-off approach at a federal level and leaving everything to the states. And Republicans have cleaned up in a lot of states, winning lots of state delegate seats, winning over legislatures. And you've seen a real split system on these kinds of voting rules. And we should note, too, that we're expecting next week to hear from President Biden and Vice President Harris about the issue of voting. They're expected to speak about voting rights in Georgia next week, which has obviously been ground zero for much of the fight over voting rights and trying to get some sort of federal reform. And perhaps some of these issues

will be touched on in that speech. So Miles, we've talked about the current president. And I'm wondering, what have we heard from former President Trump? Has he been involved in publicly backing these candidates? So he has endorsed three candidates so far, one in Michigan, one in Arizona, and one in Georgia. I wonder why he chose those states. Yeah, I can't imagine why, right? Those are states that all had very small margins, states that Trump lost by very small margins. Imagine the effect of a partisan secretary of state. It's not like if an election is decided by a wide margin, the sorts of things a secretary of state could do probably won't affect that. It's not like they would stop anyone and just say, oh, all Democrats or all Republicans are just not allowed to vote starting tomorrow. It's things like, oh, is the secretary of state doing everything they can to reach out to voters who normally wouldn't be reached out to, to explain to them that they can vote by mail if they're allowed to, or are they

not doing that outreach? And those sorts of efforts are the things that, oh, that's a couple thousand or a couple hundred votes here and there could make a huge difference in those swing states. Yeah, you know, I have to say, actually, it reminds me, I've had some conversations this week with Republican strategists about Trump and the future of the Republican Party. And one of the things that one strategist said that is really overlooked by what Trump World has done has been essentially taking over all of the structures in the Republican Party. We're not just talking about delegates at the federal level to the RNC. We're talking about state delegates. We're talking about state party chairmen and women. And now we're seeing Trump's endorsement, you know, trying to as Trump trying

to weigh in, in these Secretary of State races, because again, trying to have those friendly voices so that they can go back to in case some close election like this happens, where Trump runs again, that they'll have allies this time on board instead of, you know, nonpartisan election officials. But I think I do think it's really important to note, this is not a done deal. Like these are candidates that we're talking about who are going to be running in Republican primaries, and it's going to be Republican voters who are going to be deciding in all of these states this spring. In every one of these cases, there's going to be a person on the ballot who says the 2020 election was stolen and they will be running against other Republicans who do not

feel that way. There are candidates all over the place who are local election officials who have experience with election administration. In Georgia, for instance, you've got the Trump endorsed candidate Jody Heiss, who voted on January 6th at the U.S. Capitol to not certify the election results, running against Brad Raffensperger, who is a Republican, who told Trump that, no, I will not go find votes for you in this state. This election we've recounted over and over again, and it was done well. And Republican voters are going to have to decide which way are they going to follow Trump or are they going to follow, to be frank, what experts say, are they going to have to decide, you know, which way are they going to follow Trump or are they going to follow, to be frank, what experts say, are they going to follow the truth? Yeah, many of these election deniers might not win in some of these places, but the effort is real and underway.

All right, let's 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. This is the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about, whether they have something to do with politics or absolutely nothing. And I got to say, I'm going to go first, and mine has nothing to do with politics at all. Good. Okay, good. Yeah, no more politics. Big caveat here. You guys know me, but for people who don't know me, I am a little bit of a gem rat. I'm a pretty healthy person.

I do the meal prepping, the planning. But if we were to go on a road trip together and we were to drive past a Taco Bell, I would absolutely stop and I would make you go eat with me because Taco Bell is probably one of my top five favorite restaurants. And they've introduced something really interesting on their menu that I kind of want to go get later tonight after we get off work. Okay. I have missed this. What is this? So they have introduced crispy chicken wings on their menu. They are a limited time item. You can

only get them in the afternoon, and you can only get them through January 12th. And the way that they have been described according to NBC's Today is these wings are coated in Mexican queso seasoning and served with, quote, spicy ranch dipping sauce. What is Mexican queso seasoning? Like, queso is cheese. Do we think it's like powdered cheese and then you like air fry it? I'm trying to like deconstruct this wing in my head here. I don't know. I'm very skeptical. I want to be supportive of your dreams and goals, but I also think that fast food restaurants tell you what they do. We've got Kentucky Fried Chicken. We've got Chick-fil-A. There are chicken places. Popeye's Chicken. There are chicken places if you want chicken. Taco Bell. I think you've got to take their word for it and stick to what they do. That's my opinion. It's been a long pandemic. Do not steal my joy. I need something to look forward to after what the last two weeks have looked like. The other thing they've introduced, just as an aside, you can also now get a taco lover's pass. And if your heart so chooses to get a taco every day for a whole month, you could have a taco every day for a whole month.

What could go wrong? Yeah. No, I'm actually more in favor of that one than the chicken wings. I hate to say it, but I have very fond memories of Taco Bell tacos. I will tell you my one of my favorite childhood memories is I have a picture of my mom when I was like a kid. And she had two huge bags of Taco Bell for the two of us. We managed to spend like $50 at a Taco Bell for two people. And that tells you a lot about my choices that I probably shouldn't be sharing with our listeners. But you know what, I am who I am. I've owned it at this point.

Domenico, what can't you let go of this week? I, you know, I was kind of surprised to learn this week about Mike Pompeo and what he's up to. And I started thinking about him because I was talking to some Republican strategists about Donald Trump in 2024. And I'm googling around and I see Mike Pompeo and he talked to the New York Post about his weight loss. It's really kind of shocking. In the last six months, he's dropped 90 pounds. So he hasn't been to Taco Bell right here. You know, he was talking, he actually mentioned that him and his family, they're Italian, and they love to go to IHOP.

And he said, just instead of getting the big stack of pancakes, he'll get egg whites and turkey bacon now, but they still go to IHOP. And I might admit to the fact that this story made me think of stack of pancakes, and I may have gotten some, but we'll just leave that in the rumor range. But one of the things that's interesting to me about this politically is there have been other people in the past who have dropped weight and have then gone on to run for office. And they did it because of running for office. Think about Mike Huckabee running marathons and things like that. And this became like a bit of a social media rumor with Pompeo.

And he dismissed this. And, you know, a little bit, I'm sort of like good for him on this. He said, the truth is I'm getting ready for 2044, hoping I'll be around in 2054. Wanting to be around with his family. That's actually kind of cute. Oh, that's good. If he's feeling better and he's feeling good, then, you know, more power to him. I think that's really interesting from the political angle.

I would not have thought of that, but I guess that's what Twitter is for. That's whatever. Yeah, but he said that his routine was just kind of doing something for half an hour, five, six days a week. He kind of built a home gym in his basement, but nothing crazy, no crazy diets, just kind of being a little more active. So I thought, you know, in these COVID times, who among us? Easier said than done for sure. Miles, bring it home. What can you not let go of this week? So what I can't let go of is a music thing. I went home for the holidays the last couple weeks. I was in Florida and got to spend a lot of time with my dad, which was really nice.

And one of the things we did together one of the nights, I think this was either Christmas Eve or the night before Christmas Eve, is I had never seen the Scorsese movie The Last Waltz, which is like considered one of the best concert movies of all time. It's like this movie that is one of the last concerts that the band ever performed. It follows them, has interviews with them, and they bring on a bunch of superstars from the 60s and 70s. And you would think, oh, wow, so Miles got really into the band after watching this movie. But in reality, they bring on Joni Mitchell for one song, and that one song has been on loop in my headphones for the last week and a half. I've probably listened to it like 40 or 45 times, and now I'm obsessed with it. I'm on a huge Joni Mitchell kick from this. And so I just wanted to play a little bit of that song for other listeners who either have not gotten into Joni Mitchell or appreciate her. This is

the first time I'm really kind of getting into her discography. And it's really awesome. He's got another woman down the hall He seems to want me anyway Why'd you have to get so drunk? And what I love about this song, I really love songwriters who can use, like, humor in their songwriting. And this whole song is, like, five minutes of Joni Mitchell just, like, rolling her eyes at a guy trying to pick her up. And it's very funny, and it's cool,

and it's, like, upbeat, and I don't know. It's just been a blast. And seeing her do it live, I would recommend folks go look it up on YouTube as well. It's really kind of breathtaking. I'm here for the Miles Rolling Stone biography. I'd be up for it. Somebody call me. All right.

That is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood and Elena Moore. Thanks to Lexi Schipittel and Brandon Carter. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks.

I cover voting and disinformation. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.