The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: May 13th

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sat down with NPR's Deirdre Walsh for a conversation about the leaked Supreme Court draft that would spell the end of Roe v. Wade, his success at reshaping the federal judiciary, and what his relationship with the Biden White House will be if Republicans gain control of the Senate in November.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, acting congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, national political correspondent, and White House correspondent Tamara Keith.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics 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 Shauna and Audie and the newest member of our family calling from Campbell, California Where we just brought baby Nyla home from the hospital Her initials happened to be NPR, which was not intentional, but is definitely a happy accident This podcast was recorded at congratulations. It is 12 26 Eastern on Friday the 13th May 13th Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will still be learning how to be a brand new family of three. Okay, here's the show. NPR Politics Podcast is great to listen to at three in the morning, at two in the morning, at 1am, at any time that you are awake for the coming months. Congratulations. Hey there,

it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And Deirdre, we are going to spend most of today's episode on your interview with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. You spoke to him yesterday. I did. I sat down with him in his office in the Capitol. And he made a lot of news. There's a lot to talk about, obviously. And let's begin, probably not a surprise, with the Supreme Court. It is on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade,

largely because of several key decisions that McConnell made. This is a decades-long goal for many Republicans, but it is also, as we have talked about on the podcast, out of step with how the American public feels. Polling consistently says a majority of Americans want some form of abortion access to be legal. And that's something you asked McConnell about. I did. I mean, I started working on a profile of Leader McConnell following the leaked draft decision. A lot of allies I talked to of McConnell talked about how they worked with him to elect more conservative lawmakers to confirm more conservative judges. And Senator McConnell is very proud of his role in this effort

to sort of reshape the federal judiciary. But I did ask him about how the leaked opinion is at odds with the majority of public opinion on the issue of abortion. He compared it to a Supreme Court decision about flag burning from 1989 and basically said he thinks it's just a feature of the system. If you took public opinion polls on that issue, people would overwhelmingly support a legislative prohibition of flag burning. But the Supreme Court interpreted that as a violation of the First Amendment, freedom of speech. So for the Supreme Court to, on any issue, to reach a decision contrary to public opinion is exactly what the Supreme Court is about. It's to protect basic rights even when majorities are in favor of something else, it happens all the time.

So I don't think that's particularly unusual. As someone who's focused on the court for so long, and we just talked about public opinion polls, trust in the Supreme Court as an institution has declined. The latest Gallup poll I saw recently has trust in the Supreme Court as an institution hitting an all-time low, around 40 percent. Does that concern you? It does, and I can tell you why. I mean, my counterpart, the Democratic leader, went over on the steps of the Supreme Court a couple of years ago and started calling out the justices by name. The political left is talking about packing the Supreme Court, adding members. Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer publicly opposed court packing.

Now they're harassing judges at their homes. It's no wonder that by politicizing the Supreme Court like the political left has, including the Democratic leader of the Senate, it would affect their approval ratings. That needs to stop the president, who knows better, set up a commission to study the composition of the court. The Supreme Court is not broken and doesn't need fixing. The leaked opinion that was released rests on some legal reasoning that has been cited for other issues. The leaked opinion on abortion rests some of the legal reasoning on privacy issues. And it's been cited in other opinions by the high court on issues like same-sex marriage, contraception. Do you think that opens the door for the court to set aside precedent on those issues? Look, I don't have any advice to give the Supreme Court. They shouldn't take my advice.

Their job is to interpret the law as best they can. And so I occasionally complain about a Supreme Court decision. I don't go over on the steps of the Supreme Court and single out justices by name. I'm certainly free to do that, and that's perfectly appropriate in our country. But I'm not going to start second-guessing their decisions. They are the best lawyers in the country trying to do the best job they can, all nine of them. That's part of Deirdre's interview with Mitch McConnell, which we're going to keep hearing more of. But Kerry Johnson, let's pause and talk about this for a moment.

McConnell seems to not want to get into it here. But is it fair to say the question of what other major rulings could be overturned is pretty real at this moment? First things first, the leaked opinion by Justice Samuel Alito takes pains to point out that in his view, abortion is different and that the draft that has been leaked applies only the logic as it relates to privacy and the right to privacy could have implications down the line, maybe not this term of the court or next term, but down the line, not so far down the line, to all kinds of rulings that relate to privacy rights and privacy interests, from the rights of married couples to use contraception, to the right for same-sex couples to be married, to a number of other rights that rest heavily on some of that privacy logic that dates back decades. And so I'm not so sure that what Justice Alito says in his draft opinion and Mitch McConnell has proffered to Deirdre is really going to give a lot of people comfort on those issues. Yeah. And Deirdre, let's shift gears for a moment and talk about how we got to this point,

right? So McConnell, of course, blocked Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016, so that Donald Trump came into office with an empty Supreme Court seat to fill. Then Justice Kennedy retired and Trump got a second seat to fill. And then, of course, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September of 2020. And despite all of McConnell's 2016 reasoning about not wanting to fill a seat on the court in an election year, McConnell went ahead and held a Senate vote just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Everybody listening to this podcast knows all of that. On the flip side, though, it was President Trump who nominated all three of those judges,

and he is taking a victory lap right now. How did McConnell talk about this? What did you ask him about all of those dynamics? Well, I asked him about the fact that he and former President Trump really weren't on the same page on a lot of issues, but on the issue of confirming conservative judges, conservative justice to the Supreme Court, they were close partners. And Senator McConnell really didn't see it that way. I mean, he saw this as an effort that he worked on closely with two White House counsels that worked for President Trump, and that the president wasn't really all that involved at all. Well, I think he took good advice.

Honestly, he was not familiar with this issue at all. But as I have said, I'll repeat again, he had two good White House counsels in a row who took recommendations into him of people of like mind who came out of the Federalist Society network around the country. And so it was like a farm team of potential judges. And he deserves credit for signing off on them. I don't think he fundamentally knew much about this before he got elected, but I give him credit for signing off on good recommendations. Kerry, how would you contextualize how Mitch McConnell reframes the last six years of this? Yeah, fact check true. Remember that one of the major reasons Donald Trump kept evangelical voters on his side in 2016 is that he was convinced to release a draft list of potential Supreme Court nominees by people close to the Federalist Society and conservative senators.

And that helped draw people to him as a candidate. And those promises were promises that were kept. Remember those gone into your truck? President Trump was able to nominate and confirm over 200-something federal judges to lifetime tenure jobs is because Mitch McConnell basically did a blockade of President Obama's open vacancies in the last year or two of his presidency. So McConnell played a critical role, and I'll never forget, the Federalist Society celebrated Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump's first White House counsel, Don McGahn, with one of its most prestigious awards, in part because of the judicial record that they accomplished, one that we are now seeing the Supreme Court bear fruit on in this term and

next term, too, possibly. I mean, a lot of the people I talked to that were close to McConnell and people who opposed a lot of the nominees that President Trump appointed or nominated, point out that a lot of those nominees were really young, white male attorneys who are going to serve on the court and have a lasting impact potentially for decades. Lasting impact for decades. A couple of recent examples, the very young woman federal judge out of the state of Florida, who basically imploded the Biden plan for the mask mandate on public transportation. Or earlier this week, two Trump appointed judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who voted to overturn a ban in California on selling semi-automatic rifles to people under age 21. So two major, major rulings that affect people's lives in some of the biggest states in the country. Kerry Johnson, thank you for joining us to talk about this. It's always good to talk to you. Oh, happy to be here.

All right. And Deirdre, stick around. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more from your interview with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. All right, we're back. And now we've got Tamara Keefe with us from the White House. Hey, Tam. Living it up in the basement. Hey there. So, Deirdre, let's talk about the midterms. How does Mitch McConnell think the likely overturn of Roe v. Wade will affect the midterms? Well, he did acknowledge that abortion is going to be an issue in many races. He pointed mostly to those at the state level. But he downplayed what he thinks is going to happen in the congressional races. I think we'll find out what kind of an

impact it is. I think one thing for sure, if this becomes the final decision of the court, and by the way, it may not. I mean, we're talking about a hypothetical here. I've got three former Supreme Court clerks in my conference here in the Senate. They tell me the first draft is almost never where they end up, but we'll see. In terms of the politics of it, if in fact this becomes a final decision, I think it will be certainly heavily debated in state legislative and governor's races because the court will have in effect returned this issue to the political process. My guess is in terms of the impact on federal races, I think it's probably going to be a wash. that I noticed that the hundreds of fundraising emails that I have somehow ended up on and I desperately tried to never actually get into my inbox but fail, Democratic fundraising emails lit up with that McConnell promise.

So it seems to me Democrats view this very differently when it comes to how it could affect congressional races. Those emails really do metastasize, don't they? So, yeah, Democrats have very quickly said, as Vice President Harris put it, we need more pro-choice Democrats elected to Congress, elected at the state level. As soon as the Senate failed to pass that legislation that that would have put the protections of Roe into law. That was her message. But I would point to another part of the Democratic message, which is almost immediately Democratic politicians started talking about this potential draft decision as going way beyond simply abortion access, but to potentially same-sex marriage or access to contraception, that the fact that the message moved away from abortion so quickly, the fact that President Biden has spent this week not talking about abortion, but talking

about inflation, is a very strong signal that although those fundraising emails are lighting up, you know, elections are not one on the issues that get people to click and pay money. Well, the uphill climb that Democrats have, to put it mildly, leads us to the last thing I wanted to talk about from your interview, Deirdre, and that's the fact that there's a pretty good chance that the year ends with McConnell once again as Senate Majority Leader. On one hand, we talked a lot about the various ways that he ground White House agendas to a halt when Obama was in the White House and McConnell was running the Senate. On the other hand, when Joe Biden was vice president, he cut a lot of deals with Mitch McConnell. So how is McConnell framing how he might run the Senate if Republicans pick

up seats there and he's in charge again? Well, I mean, I asked him, you know, going back to the issue of Merrick Garland that we talked about earlier in the podcast, I asked Leader McConnell, you know, if Republicans take control and there is another vacancy on the high court, you know, would he hold a vote on a Biden nominee? He didn't really want to answer that question. Instead, he wanted to talk about, you know, ways that he could potentially work with President Biden. Let me tell you what ought to be the posture if I'm the majority leader in the last two years of the Biden administration. We ought to look for things we can agree on. If you're a football fan, between the 40-yard lines, and I'm going to give you two examples of that that we've actually done this year, infrastructure, postal reform, both of which

I supported. So I think when the American people elect divided government, they're not saying don't do anything at all. They're saying search for the things that you can agree on that are worth doing and do those. So that will be my operating style if I'm the majority leader of the Senate. How that plays out on individual confirmations or legislation, I'm not prepared to announce today. But we are going to see where we can cooperate. Ukraine is a good example of it right now, and try to accomplish some things for the

American people that we can agree on. Tim, how is President Biden and how is the White House thinking about this? And I purposely said was a lead negotiator along with Mitch McConnell in solving these fiscal cliffs and crises and standoffs and all of that. I spoke to somebody at the White House today who says that they expect that Biden and McConnell will continue to have that sort of relationship and that you can look to, as McConnell mentioned in Deirdre's interview, you can look to the Ukraine funding, where the two leaders have had a phone conversation very recently and sort of forged a path forward on getting the Ukraine funding passed very quickly. So they are actually working together right now. Now, whether McConnell will be able to wrangle his caucus and whether, you know, his idea of like, well, let's just get done the things that we can get done together. I don't know if that's going to become a reality.

Yeah, there's Deirdre, there's a lot of Republicans running for seats in both the House and Senate who do not exactly have bipartisan common ground governing in mind when they make their case for why they want to win these elections. Yeah. And Senator McConnell has more than one Senate Republican who's got his eye on potentially the White House in 2024. So, you know, the early part of the Biden administration was sort of the window to do things like infrastructure, postal reform that McConnell mentioned. But when you get into the next two years, right ahead of the next presidential election, you know, it's hard to see many topics that sort of could forge this bipartisan consensus that McConnell pointed to. I mean, I think issues of national security like Ukraine could be an exception on that. But on domestic priorities, you know, we'll have to see. I don't know. I see a lot of investigations and a lot of standoffs over basic functions of the government. No doubt, Tam. No doubt. Especially if Republicans control both the House and the Senate. All right. One more quick break, then we'll come back with Can't Let It Go.

And we are back and it is Friday, so it is time to end the show like we do at the end of every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things we cannot stop talking about, politics or otherwise. Tam, what can you not let go of? Well, you know the lifestyle brand that Gwyneth Paltrow has called Goop? I do. With its various dubious products and claims. Well, Goop this week put up an Instagram post about something called the DiPare. Just $120 for 12 diapers. Oh, my God. Our new disposable diaper lined with virgin alpaca wool and fastened with amber gemstones known for their ancient emotional cleansing properties.

Infused with the scent of jasmine and bergamot for a revitalized baby. Okay, so this is complete insanity, but they post a lot of things that is completely insane. This is $10 a diaper, though. This is $10 a diaper. For alpaca wool. Yeah. Who wants alpaca wool on your baby's butt? I feel like the baby would be very crabby with that diaper on.

Yeah. So this thing went completely viral because it is that absurd. It turns out it is absurd on purpose. And Gwyneth Paltrow posted a video explaining the point she was trying to make. Goop launched a luxury disposable diaper at $120 for a pack of 12. And there was a lot of outrage. Good. It was designed to piss us off. Because if treating diapers like a luxury makes you mad, so should taxing them like a luxury. The diaper is a fake product meant to shine a light on a real problem. It turns out in a lot of states, diapers are taxed.

So you have to pay sales tax on diapers. And Gwyneth Paltrow is advocating that sales tax not be charged on diapers. Parents have enough to worry about. It turns out she is not that absurd. And it's all a big promotional stunt to draw attention to the fact that diapers are taxed. So really, this is not an otherwise story. This is a politics story. I guess it is, and a twist at the end. I saw the first half. I missed that it was a stunt.

But also, if that many people believe it, perhaps you should reexamine what you charge on your goop line of products. Yeah, yeah. It was believable enough. Deirdre, what about you? Well, the thing I can't let go of this week is this crazy story about a passenger pilot in flip-flops who had to land a plane with literally no flying experience when the pilot of his plane was slumped over the controls and the plane took a nosedive. This is like a stress dream in real life. So this happened earlier this week. This, you know, small sort of Cessna plane was flying back from a fishing trip in the Bahamas, I believe. And this passenger was sitting in like the third row back

from the pilot and the plane started to take a nosedrive. He hopped up front, pulled off the pilot who was ailing, and all the controls went dark. He couldn't see any of the controls. And traffic control got on with him. And literally, the traffic controller taught him how to fly and land the plane, which he did safely in his flip flops without any flying experience. Well, there aren't really foot pedals, right? On a plane, it's all in your hands. I don't know. I just feel like it was like a weird part of the story. It's unbelievable. Call him Sully. Well, I know. And it turns out he is an interior designer. So because one of the reporters I saw on the story was saying, you know, he must have been like a heart surgeon or something where you have this like incredible calmness.

And so he's an interior designer. And it turns out he had incentive to safely land and save his life because his wife is expecting a baby. Aw. Oh, man. Also, though, if you're an interior designer, you probably get yelled at by a lot of crazy people who are really concerned about something really unimportant. And so maybe he has that skill. And before we get any emails from amateur flyers, there are foot pedals involved in steering airplanes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Don't ever let me fly a plane. Well, now you've got one step ahead in case. In case this happens to you. Yes. Scott, why can't you let go of speaking of being calm? Well, what I cannot let go of is sneaking into Ukraine with First Lady Jill Biden on Sunday, which is a thing that happened to me. So I was one of the reporters on Jill Biden's trip. She went to Romania and Slovakia. These are two NATO allies. They border Ukraine. It was a show of support for those countries.

But Biden also made a point to meet with a lot of kids throughout the trip. She would go to school. She would visit schools that Ukrainian refugees have come into. And the trip, of course, took place over Mother's Day. And we knew that she was going to do a lot of things highlighting Ukrainian mothers. What we did not learn until shortly before it happened, though, was that after a planned visit to a border crossing on the Slovakia-Ukraine border, Jill Biden's motorcade just kept driving into Ukraine and drove about 15 minutes into Ukraine to a to a small city near the border. And then the real plot twist, which we had no heads up for, was that suddenly, you know, we get there, Jill Biden gets out and out of a car pops Elena Zelenska, who's the first lady of Ukraine, who had not been seen in public since the war began because there are serious, real threats to her and her children's life that they could be kidnapped or killed. And they have taken that seriously. But there she was in front of us meeting with Jill Biden. And it was just a

really, really intense and emotional moment to see this secret show of support for Ukraine. And on Mother's Day. I mean, that must have been emotional for both of them. Yeah. Scott, I loved your tweet where you sent out the message you got saying your phone has entered Ukrainian territory again. Because as you said, there was no way you thought you'd be back in Ukraine that quickly after your reporting trip there a few weeks ago. I did not plan to make a second trip to Ukraine, but there I was. But I did a lot of reports on the trip for the radio network that we also work for in addition to doing podcasts.

But it was actually like driving into Ukraine was certainly memorable. But to me, the thing I'm actually still thinking a lot about is it's a long conversation that Jill Biden had with a Ukrainian refugee named Victoria. Shortly before that, it was still in Slovakia, where she just started unloading to Jill Biden and talking about trying to be a mom and trying to explain what's going on to your kids. And she said, you know, again, it's Mother's Day, and you're all thinking about it. She said, you know, like, you bring your kids into this world, and you feel like you can't protect them. And just seeing the way that Jill Biden listened to her and just gave her a big hug. And then my microphone picked up. She whispered into her ear, stay strong, was what I actually cannot let go of from all of that.

And with that, that is a wrap for today's podcast. Our executive producer is Mithani Mutturi. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishna Dev Kalamar. Our producers are Casey Murrell, Elena Moore, and Lexi Schapittle. Thank you, as always, to Brandon Carter, who runs all of our social media and our Facebook group and a hundred other things. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.