The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: July 17th

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

Congress has a lot it wants to take on when lawmakers return to Washington next week—police reform, Confederate names on military bases, and coronavirus relief. How likely are they to get any of it done? And the president has asked a new international development agency tasked with countering China to expand its responsibilities to include the US emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment. This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, election security editor Philip Ewing, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi NPR Politics Podcast, this is Klervo in Montreal. I'm just cleaning out my broken old fridge because our new one is finally coming tomorrow. You guys did ask for mundane activities, right? This podcast was recorded at... It's 1215 Eastern on Friday, July 17th. Some things may have changed by the time you hear this. Like I'll have cold food again for the first time in a week. All right, here's the show. Wow, losing your fridge in the pandemic, that's a crisis.

But he's got a new one. He's okay. I know, right? Congratulations. That's not mundane. That's a game changer. God, what if he has like one of those new ice makers that can make round ice cubes? You know, those ice balls? Wow. Yes, fancy. That changes everything. Not mundane. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign.

I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Phil Ewing, election security editor. And it's Friday. We have collectively made it through another week of 2020, some of us with brand new refrigerators to show for it. Congress is coming back to Washington, D.C. next week after a two-week recess. And as usual, there is a lot to tackle. Claudia, that includes the National Defense Authorization Act, which, as it often is, seems to be about a lot more than authorizing money for defense. Exactly. There's a very big scope this year, as there is every year. But this year, they're going to be looking even deeper into issues of racial injustice and concerns of discrimination and even police reform. And this is going to keep both chambers very busy

next week. It's kind of creating a traffic jam, actually, because members also are looking at trying to push through another relief bill to address this coronavirus pandemic. And so they're having to try and work on both a little bit, if you will. And then in the meantime, they're going to try and move this defense bill through both chambers, maybe as early as next week. And we're going to talk more about that latest attempt to provide some coronavirus relief in a little bit. Can you talk about how this defense bill has really gotten wrapped up in the national conversation about racism that we've been having all summer? Well, it comes on the heels of attempts in both chambers to pass police reform bills. And this came in the wake of national protests and national outcry for reform of police

after the death of George Floyd. He was killed at the hands of police in Minneapolis. And so with that, they came up with some proposals, Democrats in the House did, Senate, Republicans had their own, but neither moved out of their chambers. And so this defense bill comes on the heels of that, the heels of that conversation and the heels on the heels of that, the heels of that conversation and the heels of the failure of that bill to move. And so what folks see, some Democrats I talked to see this bill as an opportunity for a must pass legislation to be able to carry some of these concerns that they had when it came to the militarization of police, for example, limiting the kind of, quote, weapons of war that are passed down to police. Some folks think there

should be a limit on that. We're going to see a debate on the Senate floor for that issue. And on the House side, we're seeing a lot of members moving towards concerns of erasing symbols of the Confederacy and addressing discrimination in the ranks, creating panels to address the demographics among their members who gets promoted. And on the Senate side, we're also seeing a really big debate as well on this Confederacy issue and trying to erase these tributes, especially when it comes to these 10 army installations that still carry the name of Confederates. You know, Claudia, the president has made a really big deal out of this this year in terms of his political messaging about

Confederate flags and Confederate statues. Where are Republicans in Congress more broadly on those issues as you're looking ahead to this debate with the NDAA that's coming up? Yeah, we've seen a lot of twists and turns with this conversation, kind of bouncing off President Trump's reactions to these movements. You're familiar with it. You've reported on it as well. And when initially the Senate Armed Services Committee, this is who handles the defense bill, approved their legislation, it included a provision by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to ban these Confederate names. It would remove these kind of tributes within about three years. They negotiated a compromise.

She wanted to see it done in about a year, she and other Democrats. And so soon after that, President Trump, he had already raised some concerns about the changing of names. But soon after hearing that Warren, one of his key nemesis on Capitol Hill, was pushing for this and got it in the bill, he threatened to veto it. So, Phil, one other thing that's going to be happening during this next bout of congressing is that there's going to be a high profile hearing with a lot of big tech companies. The heads of Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, the parent company of Google. It's not like there wasn't a lot to talk about with

these groups anyway. You and Miles Parks and our other folks focusing on election security have written so much about the various warning signs coming from the world of social media. But now this week, we've had a massive hack of Twitter that affected lots of high profile people, including the likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden. So what's the focus of this hearing? So there are questions about their business practices, about potential antitrust implications from the House Judiciary Committee. And then there are also the things that our team has focused on this year about the way social media, especially on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, has changed the way Americans talk with each other

and created this huge avenue for false information, misinformation, disinformation, and social agitation to come into the U.S. information ecosystem in a way that we saw in the 2016 presidential election and which has never stopped, which continues to this day. And these platforms with lower level officials make regular reports to Congress about how they're doing with that. But this upcoming hearing will be the first time that their CEOs will have appeared together. And these aren't just any CEOs. These are the biggest dogs of all time, Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which, as you mentioned, is the company that owns YouTube and Google.

So, Claudia, we're like two years or so into this new political framework where it seems like Congress is out to make it clear that they are not approving of all of these big companies rather than, you know, the decade or so before that, where it was like a rush to see who can be the coziest with Apple and Facebook and things like that. But we still haven't had that big sweeping regulation that has been talked about so much. Is there any sign that Congress has any interest in moving past the confrontational hearing point of this? In terms of addressing this concern, we have seen members here and there try to tackle this issue. But what they're facing right now in an election year is such a long list of to-dos that it's a difficult moment for them to try and tackle it. This is something that we could see maybe more traction come after the election when they can focus more on these concerns. You know, the other thing, Scott, is these companies are popular because they're popular. Americans love Amazon. People love their iPhones. People love talking with their grandmother on Facebook. And how many of us haven't wasted more hours than we'd like to admit watching

videos on YouTube? And so the political challenge for Congress is not only for old lawmakers to kind of get what technology is and figure out a way that it might be able to regulate it, but overcoming the political barriers that come from their own constituents, from users themselves, for whom these companies and their platforms are actually pretty popular. That's a good point. Even as public opinion has changed on things like Facebook and Twitter, for instance, we're still mostly, most of us are on it every single day using it, despite what we tell pollsters and emote on those actual platforms. Right. And, you know, the premise for a lot of antitrust law in the United States is harm to consumers. But for those of us who are Amazon Prime members and who can get,

you know, paper towels in two days or whatever, it's very hard to demonstrate that Amazon has hurt consumers by making them pay more or limiting the amount of choice that they have. That's a whole other thing that members of Congress and Amazon and Jeff Bezos will litigate. But it just addresses the fact that, as you said, this thread has been playing out in Congress for a long time without any result, because from the perspective of lawmakers, there's a lot of hurdles for them to overcome to actually get the point of legislating. So, Claudia, last question on this. In a normal election year, which we have well established this is not, you usually have, you know, this is the time of the year in an election year where Congress is trying to get the rest of the big stuff done so that they can spend late summer and fall trying to keep their jobs. And you're basically done legislating effectively from this point forward.

Is that the case this year? No, this is such an aberration from what we're used to. This is when things are supposed to be winding down for the year. And it has been quite a year already, but it feels like it's actually winding back up. They're getting closer to this confrontation on whether to provide any more relief to address the pandemic. Meanwhile, they're trying to push through this defense bill. And there's a very long list of concerns that they're trying to tackle as all of these crises are underway. There's even talk of the police reform bill possibly getting revived. The Republican

Senate sponsor, this is Tim Scott of South Carolina, said he's been keeping up with House Democrats over the break. And he says maybe there's a chance they could restart talks when they return. So it's a very busy time. It's only getting busier. All right, we're going to take a quick break. Phil, always nice to talk to you. Thanks for being on the pod. Thanks for having me. Claudia, hang out. You and I are going to talk to Franco Ordonez about a story that he has about how the federal government is trying to snap up the latest round of emergency protective supplies. From Miss Anne to Becky to Karen. Our very own Karen.

Not that Karen. Karen Grigsby Bates shares the evolution of the nickname for a certain kind of white woman. I'm looking forward to the next iteration. I want my name back. That's coming up on NPR's Code Switch. And we are back and joined by Franco Ordonez. Hey, Franco. Hey there.

So the coronavirus pandemic has, of course, continued to get worse in the U.S. We have now passed 75,000 new cases a day. That means once again, we're starting to see shortages in protective equipment that health care workers need. And Franco, you have been doing some reporting on a surprising agency that the president has asked to try to fix this problem. What have you found? That's right. I've been looking into the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. It's also known as the DFC. It's this agency that provides loans for U.S.-supported projects overseas.

It's kind of a new agency, really just started rolling in the past year. The idea is to counter China's growing influence in the world. But Trump decided a couple of months ago that it should also be helping with the pandemic. Here's what he said in Pennsylvania. This federal agency normally invests in economic development projects in other countries. I said, how about investing in our country? In this case, it's basically operating as a bank. The DFC is providing loans for projects that help supply the national medical stockpile. That could include loaning money to a company seeking to convert a factory to manufacture items like masks, gloves, or gowns, or pharmaceuticals.

So it's interesting, this is this new agency with a specific task, and that task is something a lot of people have worried about, especially in the past year as America really recedes from the rest of the world and China steps in to fill that development role. That seems like a pretty big job already. So what's the response been that the president is now asking this just off the ground group to also tackle this other enormous problem? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of concern about this agency, particularly in Congress, because it took them some work to get this done. And it's got a big job already.

And the concern is throwing this additional responsibility, as important as it is, and how it could undercut that main mission that you just discussed, kind of countering these authoritarian governments. That concern includes the attention of the leaders, people, resources, all of that important stuff that an agency needs as it gets started. Frank, what is the agency's response to your reporting and what their role is here? Well, Adam Bowler is the chief executive of the DFC. He came over from HHS. He's also a good friend of Jared Kushner. He said Trump didn't change the

mandate, as some of these members of Congress are concerned about. He says Trump just added a domestic element and a temporary one to help fix a critical problem. And, you know, my view on this is these are extraordinary times. Hopefully it's once in a lifetime. And I think everybody, for the most part, understood why we would look to invest domestically. What Bowler says is that the DFC is basically a bank. That's the core function, and that is what's needed right now to get these projects off the ground. And he says the DFC being involved allows the Defense Department to focus on national security, the things that they do best,

while the DFC can concentrate on getting the funding for the projects so they can get running. The fact that you mentioned that he's somebody who's friends with Jared Kushner jumps out to me. I think Jared Kushner obviously played a big role in the federal government response this spring and got a lot of criticism for big holes in that system. And Bowler was part of some of those efforts this spring. He's worn a few different hats in this pandemic because of his HHS healthcare background. He's been pretty involved with Kushner on these things. And he says that's part of the reason, you know, his background is why it was helpful for him to kind of take on this role

in helping out with the funding, because that's what the DFC does. So, Claudia, let's broaden this out a little bit. We mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that obviously one of the more important things on Congress's plate right now is some sort of next step of relief funding for this ongoing pandemic and the economic crisis that is going along with it. How is that conversation going in Congress? And what are the fault lines at this point for what exactly it should be focusing on? Well, right now, they're very far apart. And they're coming up on some critical deadlines.

For example, at the end of this month, we're going to see this extra unemployment insurance payment that is $600 on top of what unemployed workers get, that will go away by the end of this month. And that was a big struggle between Republicans and Democrats, and it continues to be so. It's part of what's fueling this division between the parties on trying to meet in the middle. Republicans are emphasizing a plan to create a legal shield for businesses impacted by the pandemic. Meanwhile, Democrats want to see some significant aid once again for families, for state and local governments, for businesses, and Republicans are pushing back on that plan. The Democrats already passed their proposal, the HEROES Act is what they've dubbed it. That is another large bill, about $3 trillion. Meanwhile, Republicans have been pushing back, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying, no, let's stick to a trillion. Let's not go past that. And that's going to be a very difficult task for both of these sides to meet in the middle. And we expect as they come back next week, we're going to hear a lot of spinning from both sides, and perhaps they can meet for some sort of negotiation in the days to come after that.

And Franco, for months now, the Trump administration has tried to downplay any sort of second wave. It is very clearly here. Again, we passed 75,000 new cases a day this week. Have you seen any sort of shift in how the Trump administration is now dealing with this? You know, Scott, I can tell you this. I mean, certainly the president has pulled back from, you know, kind of leading this effort as he did in the first few months. Vice President Mike Pence is kind of leading the charge in this effort. And I think a big reason why is the politics of it. It is not a happy story. The president is very focused now on his reelection campaign.

His goal is to get things back to normal. And he wants to present that image, that narrative. But it's very hard to do when schools are not open, when people are still working in back bedrooms, and there's still just so many challenges and health risks involved, especially as these cases, as you know, continue to rise. And before we take one more break, some news that happened while we were taping this podcast. In a statement today, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says her cancer has returned and that she has begun a course of chemotherapy. She started it May 19th, and she says it's yielding positive results. Obviously, there's a lot more to that story. You can follow

along at NPR.org. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, can't let it go. What do you do when you have too many pickles in Alaska and not enough pancake syrup in New Jersey? On the next episode of Planet Money Summer School, we send supply and demand to the rescue. It's the economics education you always wanted but never got around to. Every Wednesday, listen now to Planet Money from NPR. We are back and we're going to end the week

like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things we can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. So I will go first. Throughout the spring, one of the hallmarks of the coronavirus crisis was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily briefings, which had a lot of information. He got a lot of praise. But to be honest, there were some weird moments where he would just kind of say whatever was on his mind and he he had paused the daily briefings but he was back and this week cuomo unveiled something that fits into the weird category for sure apparently andrew cuomo likes to design posters for fun. What? And he decided to commemorate New York's fight with the coronavirus. And after seeing that enormous spike in cases, New York does seem to really have it under control, even over the last month or so.

He decided to commemorate it by designing a poster. And it's like, to me, a mix of like a Dutch Renaissance painting where there's all sorts of stuff going on and different people in it. And like a psychedelic 60s rock poster. It's very strange. Have either of you seen it? No. I just pulled it up on my computer. I think it's kind of neat for a governor.

So I asked my friend, Jimmy Veilkind is the reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Albany. He has covered every single day of the Cuomo administration. It was a long time at this point. He has a physical copy of this poster and I asked him to roll it out and describe it for us. So he sent this in. So Governor Andrew Cuomo's new poster, it's a takeoff inspired by William Jennings Bryan, the politician from the turn of the century. It's centered around a big mountain, which is based on the curve of coronavirus infections in the state. It's a sort of a big peak and then a slow playing down. So in Governor Cuomo's mind, and he says he designed this poster, there's a rope that represents the curve. It's

being pulled on by a group of people, including New Yorkers, health care workers, the governor's daughters, his dog, Captain. And also in this poster, there are pictures of the governor, a picture of Donald Trump sitting on the moon, a rainbow, as well as a devil figure blowing the winds of fear and economy falls, waterfall leading to the sea of division. So it's busy. There's lots going on here in this poster, including some tidbits into Governor Cuomo's sense of humor. Favorite part is probably Boyfriend Cliff, which shows a young man with brown hair hanging from a cliff near the governor's daughters. And the boyfriend cliff, which I don't know if either of you heard this at the time, when Cuomo just started talking at one of those pressers this spring about how his daughter's boyfriend had joined them for dinner.

Yeah, I love that. I guess he wasn't wrong, but like this whole riff about how as the parent, you need to, if you say you don't like a boyfriend, it'll make them like him more, but he does actually like this boyfriend. And it was like, it was a lot. Yeah, it sounded like the boyfriend was in deep trouble. So maybe the boyfriend is not in trouble or he's still in trouble. I can't tell.

But isn't that something that you would expect from a guy like Cuomo? I mean, he's a New Yorker. You gotta be a little bit New York-ish. I mean, I guess I would definitely expect like weird mind games with a boyfriend from someone like him, but maybe not graphic design of a poster. That threw me.

Yeah, it's a new level. It is a new level. All right, Franco, what about you? What can you not let go of? The thing that I can't let go of, which may not be as interesting and colorful, but is definitely significant to me, is this question of whether kids are going to go back to school again in the fall and whether my own kids are going to go back to school again in the fall. I mean, just like so many people in the country, I'm waiting on what my school district is going to decide. I'm trying to prepare myself to figure out whether I'm going to be ready for the answer, whichever way it goes. There's just so many questions. You know, it's a

month away before schools start. It's not that long ago, but, you know, remember when we were thinking about the two weeks to stop the spread and we thought everything would be completely different after two weeks? Now it's like, man, I just hope we can get through this this year or something. I mean, there's just so much uncertainty. It's a lot. And it feels like every outcome you've seen school districts announce feels impossible in its own unique way, right? Yeah, we had a deadline for our school district to put in whether you want to do in-person or remote. There's revolts going on with teachers and students are confused and trying to make

decisions in mid-July for what happens in September. It's tough and everyone's facing some major questions there. It's kind of like the can't let go of for the year for a lot of people. For the kids. Claudia, what about you? So my can't let it go is focused on the Twitter hack and all of the fallout from the Twitter hack. It actually goes to a very dark path for me, which is my struggles when I didn't have a blue check mark.

And for a year, I complained on Twitter. I tweeted at verified. I tweeted at people who were verified saying, I'm jealous. How come you have a checkmark and I don't? I harassed our social media manager with standard messages. I tried to start a revolt in our newsroom. Finally, within about a year, I got that blue checkmark. And I thought, oh, my God, I've made it.

My nightmare is over. But no, that nightmare returned this week. And so in the midst of all this confusion, Wednesday night, Twitter locked down verified accounts. So we couldn't tweet. All these blue checkmarks were worth nothing at that moment. All the people who did not have blue checkmarks were having the times of their lives. It was like the French Revolution for a while on Twitter. Like the people rose up. Exactly. There were moments when that was happening Wednesday night that I thought,

maybe Twitter will just be over forever and we can all just go away. Alas, it was back a few hours later. And the haves and the have-nots were switched again. All right, that is a wrap for today. You can check out all of the ways to connect with us by looking at the links in the episode description.

Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathani Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producer is Barton Girdwood. Our production assistant is Chloe Weiner. Thank you to Lexi Schipittel,

Elena Moore, Dana Farrington, and Brandon Carter. And thanks to you for listening. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.