The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Johnson Ouster Threat, Biden's New App

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

The House of Representatives reached a deal on government funding, but Speaker Mike Johnson again had to rely on Democratic votes to pass the bill. Now, he's facing an ouster threat.And the Biden campaign is trying a new approach to engage hard-to-reach voters as some Americans are trying to tune out politics: an app called Reach, which helps to turn volunteers into trusted influencers of their friends and loved ones.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, senior white House correspondent Tamara Keith, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. 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 Jesse from the Twin Cities, and to celebrate National Puppy Day this weekend, I am currently on my way to pick up my new dachshund puppy, George. This podcast was recorded at 12.45 p.m. on Friday, March 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but George and I will be spending all

weekend together, which will also include introducing him to the NPR Politics Podcast. Okay, here's the show. Yay, George. Nothing like a little puppy love in spring. That's really sweet. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And earlier today, the Republican-controlled House passed the final six annual spending bills. This is after a 10-month-long agonizing fight that ultimately played a role in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy for relying on Democrats to keep the government open.

And now it threatens Speaker Mike Johnson, who also had to rely on Democrats to get these bills over the finish line and avoid a shutdown. Deirdre, shortly after this vote was gaveled down, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership. It's the fight I want to have in the election year because, damn it, I want to win that House. I want to win the White House. I want to win the Senate. And I want to restore this country back to greatness again, back to safety, back to security for every single American, because right now we don't have it. And that's he did it with Democratic support, but they knew from the beginning they would need Democratic votes. So what exactly is the anger towards the Speaker here about? There are a lot of House conservatives that are very upset that this package of six bills, which includes funding for the Homeland Security Department, for Health and Human Services Department, includes funding for programs they vehemently oppose. They don't want to see homeland security

programs that support the current policy at the southwest border funded. They want the border shut down. There are programs in these bills that do support reproductive health services that conservatives oppose. They oppose other programs that support LGBTQ youth around the country having support services. There is money for a new FBI headquarters to be created in the state of Maryland. And a lot of House Republicans want to defund the FBI because they're making this argument about a two-tiered justice system that is biased against Republican nominee Donald Trump. I mean, there are a list of things, specific programs in this package of spending bills, and they don't want any part of it. And they think the speaker should never have agreed.

Yeah. And another sign here is that the Biden White House, I checked in with them. And you know what? They're pretty happy with the way this all turned out, which if the Biden White House is happy, then conservative Republicans in the House should probably be unhappy. It sounds like it's maybe somewhat a different group than the angry conservatives led by Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led to the ousting of Kevin McCarthy. As I understand it, guys like Gaetz are not supporting this effort right now to throw out the speaker. I haven't had a chance to catch up with Matt Gates, but I noticed that he was huddling with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the floor during the spending vote. So he's certainly aware of what's going on and they do talk. There were people like Tom Massey, a Kentucky Republican

who was railing against the bill today. And he told reporters afterwards, you know, look, it gives us time to find a new speaker. He wouldn't say if he would vote for the motion. He said, maybe we just get to the point where we all agree around someone else and it'll all be okay, which I think is sort of not a likely scenario. But yeah, I mean, there were people like Chip Roy from Texas who I have to say is probably like the most vocal antagonistic member against Speaker Johnson's handling of this bill. He sort of did a whole speech last night on the House floor after votes, sort of ticking through it and really denigrating his Republican colleagues saying that they were trying to run on border security.

At the same time, they were funding programs at the Homeland Security Department that he and a lot of conservatives oppose. So it's unclear to me how much support Marjorie Taylor Greene has. She claims that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to go public who do back this effort, but time will tell. So Deidre, I do want to ask you, when Speaker McCarthy was ousted, there was a lot of like, will Democrats bail him out? Will they not? And very quickly, it became clear Democrats were not going to bail him out. Is this time any different? You know, in some ways, like Democrats have gotten some of what they wanted from Speaker Johnson. Right. I mean, this was a negotiation on this package of spending bills. There are a lot

of things in there that Democrats were happy to tout today. I don't know what Democrats will do. A lot of Democrats I talked to and our colleague Barbara Sprunt talked to after this sort of bombshell today dropped were sort of unaware what was going on. They were sort of like, what? Did she file it? What's going to happen now? I don't know. I need to talk to other Democrats. There are already Republicans. Mike Lawler from New York is a moderate Republican who called on Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to say right now that he is not going to work with Marjorie Taylor Greene to get rid of Mike Johnson. I will say the relationship between House Democrats and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a lot more contentious.

There were a lot of personal gripes against McCarthy and the way he treated people like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats. Mike Johnson, I think, gets along okay with the current House Democratic leaders. I mean, they don't agree on much policy at all, but I don't think there's the sort of level of animosity. Correct. Yeah. Well, and I guess the question that I have that comes next is the next thing on the agenda, in theory, if it isn't voting on a new speaker, is Ukraine funding or some of this other international assistance that has been discussed. We've been talking about it for a very long time, but I thought Speaker Johnson was seeming slightly more favorable to actually moving on something. He has. In the last couple of weeks, he's been more publicly saying that it's important to support

Ukraine as an ally. It's important to make sure that Russia is stopped without saying that he was willing to allow a vote on the Senate passedpassed aid package, he has suggested they are looking at all kinds of options for making the package a loan. He even said the U.S. should have access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals in exchange for the money. I'm not sure how that would work, but he's looking for ways to move a package to aid Ukraine. This move by Marjorie Taylor Greene obviously makes that much, much harder. She, even before today, has repeatedly said if the speaker brings up any package to fund Ukraine, she would move to oust him. And on top of all of this, there's still U.S.-Israel politics playing out on Capitol Hill. Recently, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

took a rather extraordinary step of calling for new elections in Israel to oust Benjamin Netanyahu. This prompted Republicans to rally around Netanyahu, and Speaker Johnson has even invited him to address Congress. Deirdre, is that likely to happen? He hasn't extended the formal invitation yet, but he made it clear yesterday in an interview on CNBC he plans to invite him. He has not consulted with Schumer. Typically, foreign leaders who are invited to address a joint session are invited by both the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader. Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader, has not talked to the Speaker about it. He could do it unilaterally and just invite Netanyahu to just address the House. This has caused a lot of

heartburn within the House Democratic Caucus. I talked to a lot of Democrats about this yesterday. There are a lot of progressive Democrats and actually a lot of Democrats who are, you know, traditionally long supporters of U.S. support for Israel who are united in their opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Greg Meeks, basically said, I really hope he says no. He didn't even want to talk about whether there could be a boycott, but that's very likely if Benjamin Netanyahu accepts there could be a lot of members who boycott.

Remember, he came before in 2015 at the invitation of another Republican speaker, John Boehner, at a time where there were very strained relationships with then President Obama over the Iran deal. Republicans on the Hill feel a tight relationship with Netanyahu and want to show support for Israel. But it clearly is going to be a very divisive event if it happens. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a second. And we're back. And Tam, you have some new reporting on the Biden campaign and their digital ground game. What exactly are they doing here and what's so new about it? So they are rolling out an app called Reach. It is an app that originally was created as part of Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez's original race for Congress. And it is an app that the Biden campaign is hoping will allow them to sort of break through with voters who are actively avoiding politics and political ads, who are streaming, are in their own social media rabbit holes and silos, and really aren't getting the messages that they want them to get. So what do you do in an environment where people don't have trust in the media, don't trust politicians, and are actively avoiding all of this? In a lot of ways, it has never been harder than it is today. Well, maybe going back to like, you know, carrier pigeons. But in modern times, it has never been harder than it

is today to actually connect with voters. So they are going to try to use the one thing that people still trust, their family and their friends to get to them. And their phones. And their phones, right. So this app, it's called Reach. They did a pilot project in Wisconsin, and I talked to a couple of people who participated in this project. They're getting people, volunteers for the campaign, to install the app on their phones. Then the app says, I would like to gain access to your contacts. And the volunteers say, OK. And then it matches up the contacts in a volunteer's phone with the Democratic voter database, like the big national database that they use to target voters. And it tells these volunteers, well, this friend of yours doesn't vote in spring elections. This one hasn't voted in a while. This person votes regularly. And then it has a bunch of

questions that they would love for them to ask their friends and family. Next time you see him out at the soccer field, ask how they're feeling about Joe Biden and plug it into the app. Okay, time out for a second. Because I'm thinking like if my best friend called me and was like, hey, can I have all the contacts in your phone? I'd be like, absolutely not. No, ma'am. Can you imagine like getting the call from the campaign and be like, how'd you get that number? But you won't get a call from the campaign because you're going to get a call from your friend or your mom. Is there a significant willingness of everyday people to just turn over the contacts in their phone willingly. I know sometimes data can be mined on our phones unwillingly, but like just to be like, yeah,

here's all my friends and family contacts. It seems like a big ask. You know, even the super volunteer, one of the super volunteers that I talked to, Sarah Harrison, told me that she was at this party where they all installed the app and people in the room, they had pause, which makes a lot of sense. The only thing that I will say is that as creepy as this sounds, it does sound and it does sound creepy. I think that average people and I would even put myself in this category have really no idea how much information campaigns and political parties and companies that focus on figuring out how to target voters, just how much information they have about us already. That's very true. Yeah. It's amazing. I did a story, I think 10 years ago, maybe more,

when political campaigns were targeting ads on YouTube by zip code. And that seemed at the time like, whoa, they can target a house ad by zip code while you're watching a YouTube video. I mean, what they can do now compared to a decade ago in terms of targeted ads to meet people where they are or where they're watching things on streaming, et cetera, is pretty amazing. You know, we're in such a fascinating time because I feel like for campaigns, they still have to have one leg in the old world and one leg in the new world. I was talking to a campaign veteran this week who was saying how, like, you don't really need traditional things like field offices, like hard real estate and yard signs anymore,

like the things that used to define campaigns of the past. But you also can't not have them either because you don't want a campaign that's like, oh, I haven't seen a single Trump sign in Chester County. You're like, there's no Biden's offices in my neighborhood. Like the presence still matters from a I guess I would say vibe sense. But the hard work, the outreach is really happening in a digital way and not in like a door knocking way that it used to not that long ago. Well, what I would say the Biden campaign told me is that it's more of a yes and this is not a silver bullet. They're very clear on that. There are a lot of volunteers who are not going to want to do this. They are not going to want to give up their contacts. They like to knock on doors. They like to make phone calls. So it's going to be just another tool in the toolbox.

All right. Let's leave it there. When we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time now 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. Tam, what can you not let go of this week? Well, what I can't let go of is an email that I got on Tuesday at around, let's see, 3.19 p.m. Tuesday was the day of the primary in Ohio. And the email says, Derek Myers concedes congressional race. Polls hadn't closed yet.

I know. It was a little early. This was immediately followed, though not that immediately, eight minutes later by an email, all caps in the subject line, disregard concession email. The great thing about the original email is that it included a video of candidate Derek Myers conceding the race. So tonight didn't go as we'd hoped. But as we know, this race is decided in the primary. So I want to give my congratulations to the congressman elect. I'm looking forward to uniting behind him and working with him to get President Trump reelected to the White House in November in evicting Joe Biden. Listen, I'm in my 30s. I feel very bad for the campaign staffer that clearly accidentally hit the send button. It's like your biggest nightmare. Instead of the save draft button.

Yes. The secret's out, right? We have to pre-write stories. It's your biggest nightmare that somehow that ends up getting put out into the world. And this is like the campaign staffer's version of that. Did he lose? Oh, yeah. Well, you can't say he wasn't prepared. He came in in the definitely in the bottom third of a field of 11 or 12. And at 8.58 p.m., the campaign sent another email. Derek Myers, all caps, officially concedes congressional race.

It does pull back the curtain a little bit on something that like this isn't weird in politics, right? It's weird to send it before you've actually lost. But most campaigns write like the victory speech and the concession speech. And, you know, they know exactly what they're going to say, regardless of the outcome ahead of time. But you don't you don't send the email before. Deirdre, what about you? What can you lick of? You know, it's that time of year, guys. It's March Madness. I confess my alma mater, my team, Boston College Eagles, did not make it to the big dance. They are playing this Sunday in the NIT tournament. Go Eagles. But I still get sucked in every year to March Madness,

even when my team isn't playing, because I think the NCAA basketball tournament is sort of a regular, never-lets-you-down story that has drama and the underdog beating the, you know, former national champion. And we had that in the first round of the tournament again last night. The Oakland Golden Grizzlies, who I had never heard of from Rochester, Michigan, knocked off Kentucky. No! And let's say I'm not a big Kentucky basketball fan because, you know, in my school's history, we haven't fared that well against them. The Golden Grizzlies, I think, were seeded like 14th in their part of the bracket. Kentucky is, I think they've won the tournament eight times.

They have a very high profile coach who was very upset. And just the sound of the end of the game, the upset to me is my favorite part of March Madness. Reeves puts up a three. No good. And Oakland with a March memory of a lifetime. Amazing. And we're only in the first first round. So I think we should all stay tuned. I think there's a lot more drama to come. And I can't wait to see who ends up in the final four. Oh, so many busted brackets just in the first first day.

There always are. There always are. But I don't know a lot about college basketball, but I often do a bracket as well. But I'm like, you never bet against Kentucky. Kentucky always makes it to the final round. So I just can't imagine the small number of people who picked. What did you, I don't even remember the name of the team you just said. Oakland? Oakland Golden Grizzlies. And their coach has coached the team for 40 years. It's my favorite Cinderella story so far of the tournament. There might be more. Sue, what can't you let go of? The thing I can't let go of this week is Lil Nas X running the New York City Half Marathon. But I think I can't let go of it for reasons different

than other people because so much of the focus has been on the fact that he ran this race in high top coach sneakers, like a fashion shoe that is not meant for running long distances. Tam, I know you're a runner. Yep. The type of shoe you wear matters a lot. And that is part of the tale that I can't let go of. But what I personally can't let go of is that he didn't train for a half marathon.

He, like, decided on a whim the night or day before the race that he was like, oh, I'll run a half marathon. And then he did it. It's amazing. I will say youth is an amazing thing. That is true. It's all mental, right? No, it's physical. My very best half marathon time happened when on a whim I did a half marathon. I ate Taco Bell the night before. But was it the first time you'd ever run a half marathon? No. And my time wasn't that great. I also, he apparently had never run more than three miles prior to running. That is wild. That is wild to me. You're right. He is young. Young people are capable of, but even like when I was more aggressively running when I was younger, I don't think I could

have just run a half marathon without at least several weeks of training leaning up to it. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on him to do a full marathon now. Little Nas X, do not listen to Deirdre Walsh. Do not take her advice. That is it for us today.

Our executive producer is Mathoni Matori. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung-Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimor and Ben Swayze. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.