The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, February 1

Episode Date: February 1, 2018

The FBI is clashing with the White House over the release of a classified memo that allegedly details abuses of surveillance power by the FBI and the Justice Department. House Republicans have voted to release it, and the President has signaled he's in favor. Also, with the State of the Union behind him, Trump met with Congressional Republicans to strategize about priorities for the year. This episode, host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, justice reporter Ryan Lucas, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben and editor correspondent Ron Elving. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey world, this is Justin from Red Chuck Productions coming to you from Pop Culture Trivia Night at Tapestry Brewing in Bridgman, Michigan. This podcast is recorded at 1.53 p.m. on Thursday, February. We made it to February 1st. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, the NPR app, or your local NPR station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. A standoff between the FBI and the White House over the public release of a classified memo. We haven't read it, but it purports to be about FBI surveillance and missteps in the Russia investigation. President Trump wants it released, but the FBI says it has, quote, grave concerns.

Plus congressional retirements, a fatal train accident on the way to a Republican retreat. And in case you didn't notice, peace, love and understanding have not broken out since the State of the Union address earlier this week. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And Kelsey and Ron are currently sharing a microphone in this clown car of a studio. There are so many of us. We just don't have enough microphones for all of them. So that is that.

And that is because we have Ryan here in the studio, at least for the first half of the podcast, to update us on the memo, the hashtag memo. Memo gate. Memo. Release the memo. Memo. Memo. Okay.

Let's explain what this is. This is a not secret because everybody's talking about it. Everybody knows that it exists. It's classified at this point. Yes, it is classified. It was created by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee or? It was it was drawn up by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a Republican by the name of Devin Nunes, as well as his staff. We don't know exactly what's in it yet because it has not been released. It remains classified. But from talking to people who have read it, what we know is that it alleges that the FBI and the Department of Justice abused their surveillance powers in the early days of the Russia investigation, purportedly deals with surveillance on Carter Page, who was a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign, basically saying that the FBI leaned on material in the infamous Trump-Russia dossier to get court approval to conduct the surveillance on Carter Page. That's what it purportedly says. We'll find out once it's actually released. And depending on who you ask, it is either highly damaging or it is a nothing burger. What has the FBI said about it?

Well, the FBI put out a statement on Wednesday that was really pretty stunning in many ways. They came out and said that they have grave concerns about the memo. They have concerns about factual inaccuracies that could be misleading, lead to improper interpretations of what actually went down. It's rare that you get an FBI coming out so strongly against something that the president himself has made clear he wants to have come out. Now, the Justice Department did come out before then. It came out several days earlier and said that releasing the memo would be extraordinarily reckless, could endanger national security, ongoing investigations. So you have the Justice Department and the FBI both saying, do not let this see the light of day and the White House signaling that

we want this out there. Without having seen the memo, do we have any clear-ish sense at all of specifically what the FBI is concerned about or what type of thing the FBI is concerned about? We do not. We do not. Specifically, they do not get into details with it. It was a two-paragraph statement. It was an unsigned statement from the FBI. Part of the concern when you talk to former FBI officials, I talked to a couple last

night, is that in a memo like this, it's difficult for the FBI to counter because to present counter arguments, you would have to reveal classified information, which is something that the FBI is loathe to do. So it puts them in this sort of impossible situation of, well, we don't think it's right, but we can't tell you why it's not right. And what do we do? Well, the thing is, politicians know this. You will often hear from national security folks that when they go into hearings, they will be berated by members of Congress who will come up with theories about X, Y, Z. And people at the FBI, DOJ, CIA basically can't counter these arguments. They just say, well, we can't comment on ongoing investigations or we can't say if there is an investigation or not. Could we at least hypothesize maybe looking at a different set of circumstances at another time as to what it would be in a memo

like this that would compromise confidential information? Is it the revealing of sources? Is that what we're talking about? Are we ratting out somebody somewhere who's been helping the FBI? There's always the concern about exposing sources and methods, potentially compromising an ongoing investigation. And obviously something that the intelligence community is deeply concerned about and always is would be sources and methods of how they conduct investigations and how they attain intelligence and information. talking to a former FBI official last night who said he feels that it's largely concerns about being able to push back on what they see as this kind of misleading narrative that's concocted in the in the allegedly concocted in the memo. That there could be errors of omission. Exactly. And earlier today on Morning Edition, the former CIA director Michael Hayden was interviewed by some of our colleagues, and he talked about some of this stuff. I figure let's hear it from one of the experts. Let's hear a little bit.

The Bureau and the broader Department of Justice has been very vocal and very public, which is very hard for career professionals to do. And they are going back, pushing back on three tracks. Number one, that you really can't do this without revealing critical sources and methods, all right? The second is that you are injecting politics into a process that should have no politics attached. And so you're setting up a horrible, horrible precedent here. And then finally, they're simply saying that the memo itself is so cherry-picked evidence available out there that it leads to a faulty conclusion. I want to talk about the politics because, and Ron, I'd like to get your perspective on this too.

This does not seem normal. You know, in the normal course of things, every time I've ever seen the intelligence community and the executive branch involved in something, it has been that the executive branch is working in tandem with the intelligence community to try to prevent something from being released or to try to protect sources and methods. And this time you have the FBI and the Justice Department on one side and you have the White House and the president on the other side. That's right. You're scrambling the branches in the usual warfare and putting people on different sides. If you look at the basics of this, the FBI and the Justice Department are very much part of the executive branch. They are not the creatures of Congress. But what we have here is elements of Congress that are determined to defend the president against what they see as elements of the executive branch

who are not loyal to the president, but are loyal to themselves, to something that is sometimes characterized as the deep state. That is to say, the government as it exists, irrespective of who has just won an election, the people who are the professionals, the people we count on to be there, whoever wins the election, the military, the intelligence services, the law enforcement people. And what we have here is a very aggressive characterization of those professionals as being actually politically motivated and in some or another, devoted to torpedoing Donald Trump. And now you have the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, responding to the FBI saying, well, of course they would push back on this.

It's pretty difficult to argue with Nunes. If you believe that Nunes is correct and that there is a conspiracy by the so-called deep state, then is it that much of a jump to believe that the FBI and the DOJ are going to push back against allegations that they abuse their surveillance powers to target the Trump campaign? So like the FBI can't win? No. maybe either Kelsey or Ryan can answer for me is, you know, I saw Paul Ryan saying the following. This is a completely separate matter from Bob Mueller's investigation, and his investigation should be allowed to take its course. Now, as a person who does not cover this and is not neck deep in all of this, can you explain to me, like, what kind of a line is he drawing there? And what should I make of that? Well, he's not the only one who's drawing that

line. I spoke with Mike Conaway, who's basically taken over the Russia investigation for the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee once Nunes had to step aside because of an ethics investigation. That's a whole other tangent. No longer really stepping aside at all, but let's get back to it. But back to the question of how this does or does not relate to the Mueller investigation. Certainly, Republicans are trying to say this doesn't have anything to do with the Mueller investigation. We're not trying to hamstring it. This is merely about alleged abuses by the FBI and DOJ. And that's something that is in the interest of the American people to learn more about to make sure that it doesn't

happen again. The problem with that reasoning is this does tie directly back into the Mueller investigation because it alleges that the foundation of the Russia investigation is off. It's wrong. It was unfairly concocted and is basically part of a plan to try to bring the president down. The foundation being the Steele dossier? Being the Steele dossier, which was funded by Democrats. And therefore, this is all part of a political hit job. But we don't actually know that. Right. To be clear, we don't. And there's a lot of evidence out there that there was

additional evidence, like a lot of it beyond the Steele dossier. Absolutely. And part of the issue with the allegations that Republicans are making about the surveillance, this ties into something known as FISA surveillance. And this would be surveilling people in the U.S. who may be believed to be the subject of a foreign power. But the thing is, when you apply for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance, it is a painstaking process, current and former officials say, to get this done. It's not like you just go to the court and say, hey, we want to conduct surveillance on this individual and they go, done. No, it is a long process that involves many, many people. Former FBI folks say that there are various layers of oversight to make sure within the Bureau before you get to the DOJ to make sure that this is all above board.

And then you get it to the court. Sometimes the applications are 50, 60, 70 pages long. And you have to prove to the court that there's probable cause to believe that this individual may be acting as an agent of a foreign power. So basically, this is a long way of saying that in order to get approval from the court to conduct surveillance on someone like Carter Page, it wouldn't just be the dossier that's in there. It would be part of a very kind of extensive bit of documentation to justify it. And this is something that Republicans in general are trying to do is they're trying to parse the two things. And you know what? There are a lot of people out there who don't understand those distinctions, that don't understand those differences. And Speaker Ryan has tried to kind of say, well, I view these things separately.

What this is not is an indictment on our institutions of our justice system. This memo is not indictment of the FBI, of the Department of Justice. It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general. What it is, is the Congress's legitimate function of oversight to make sure that the FISA process is being used correctly and that if it wasn't being used correctly, that needs to come to light and people need to be held accountable so that we do not have problems again, because this does affect our civil liberties. And voters who don't know a lot about it will listen to that and will understand that. I think that there's also or will give him the benefit of the doubt. But then they're also counting on lots of people conflating it all.

Right. And well, it's important to have some context to this is that Ryan has tried to stay back from this as much as he can, except for the fact that he has a close relationship with Devin Nunes. They work together on a lot of budget issues. They were close on the tax writing

ways and means committee. And Ryan has been a supporter of Nunes in the past. And so he is call that Ryan could make. And he is in a very tough place. But I wonder, Ryan, what do you think about these Democrats saying that Nunes should be gone? Do you think that means anything? I think that it's political signaling, but I don't think there's any chance that Ryan's going to do it. Democrats lose nothing by calling for's going to do it. Democrats lose nothing by calling for Nunes to step aside. But as you said, Ryan has been close with Nunes for a while.

And he has signaled, Ryan has signaled that he is going to back Nunes in this fight. He backed him when the director of the FBI and the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, came up to push back against requests for documents involved in this investigation. And Ryan stood behind Nunes and said, no, you have to provide these. And we should mention that last year, Devin Nunes started the year as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he was looking into all this. And then there was an incident in March where he produced some information that he said, well, this ought to be of interest to the White House. I'm going to tell them about this. And it was related to all of these same matters that we've been talking about.

And it came to light that he had gotten that information by going to the White House. He got the information from the White House? He got the information from the White House and then proclaimed that he had obtained this information and said he was going to report on it to the White House, all of which caused him to have to step back for a period of time, recuse himself from the entire investigation, and a lot of people had thought that he was still recused. But, of course, he has resurfaced because, among other people,

Paul Ryan decided that that would be okay. So the responsibility for Devin Nunes and his role in all this at this point is rather squarely in the speaker's lap. And Democrats will say that Nunes never really stepped back because he still held subpoena power with the Russia investigation. He was not running it day to day, but he could determine who would come in and who would not. And that is something that we heard them talk about a lot was after he had been removed or had stepped aside. Democrats were constantly saying that they firmly believe that Nunes was heavily involved. And let's just say also, Devin Nunes was on the transition team for President Trump. Like he is one of the members of Congress who is most loyal. I mean, there are a lot of people who are in Congress who are loyal

to President Trump. He is very, very loyal to President Trump. This memo, it's not out yet. There was some thought that it would be out by now. We had sources telling us that it would be out by now. And can we just walk through the process? This is such a confusing process. This is a classified memo. They're using some sort of arcane house rule I've never even knew existed. That actually members of the committee will say that they've never used before. So how this basically transpired is the committee voted on this memo on Monday to release it to the public. On a purely partisan line. On a purely party line vote. That sends it to the White House, and the president has five days to either give it a thumbs up, thumbs down.

If he gives it a thumbs down, it then goes back to the House. The committee can kick it to the full House, and the full House can vote on whether to release it, basically overrule the president. Now, that looks unlikely to happen because the president and the White House have certainly signaled that they are in favor of releasing this. I'm pretty sure he said 100%. He did indeed. He was caught on a hot mic at the State of the Union saying that. One of our editors said, what did he say, that the ship has sailed off the map? It most decidedly has. I have another question, I know smaller potatoes compared to the Republican memo, but there's a Democrat memo apparently as well,

right? Like, what do we know about that? That's an important point. The Democrats prepared a memo to counter, essentially rebut all of the points in the Republican memo. It's about 10 pages long. They brought it up for a vote on Monday in the same meeting where they voted to release the Republican memo on a straight party line vote. It was shot down. They are not releasing it to the public right now. They are allowing the full House to see it. Republicans say that they will then allow a new vote on releasing the Democratic memo. But what Democrats counter by saying is, well, look, what you're allowing to happen is to have the Republican memo out first that will set the narrative around this question. And then a week,

10 days later, the Democratic counterpoints will come out. But by that point set the narrative around this question. And then a week, 10 days later, the Democratic counterpoints will come out. But by that point, the Republican narrative will be set in the minds of the American people. So a lot of this is really atypical, because when a committee issues a report like this, we often see a majority report, a minority report, and then the agency involved gets to issue their own side of things. And in this case, we're only seeing a majority report. And there are people who are criticizing the process for not providing the full breadth of information. And one thing that people within kind of the legal community and FBI, DOJ will say is that there is already an inspector general investigation into all of these matters.

And that is the proper venue for this to be done. Unless the reason we're not doing regular order and the reason we are doing irregular order, if you will, is because there is a larger meta purpose here and that we are laying the groundwork for the president to justify removing some people from office who he has a problem with. And that would possibly include Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Robert Mueller to do his investigation. He is currently the deputy attorney general, but he's in charge of that investigation because Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, recused himself because he had been part of the Trump campaign. And it could also include Christopher Wray, who was appointed the FBI director after

President Trump fired James Comey. So that's a lot of names, I understand. And it gets confusing, and it's kind of a welter of names. But all of these people are, in some sense or another, in the crosshairs, because they have been at odds with the president. And what we see happening now looks to the president's critics as some kind of pretense being set up for the president to remove all of these people who have been, in his mind, bedeviling him. And those critics are not just Democrats. Agreed. I mean, there are Republican, there are lots of people who are very worried about this. Absolutely. And there are a number of people who believe that. And Paul Ryan said it earlier this week that Rosenstein should remain in the job. He should. He's been doing his work as it needs to be

done and he should be left alone. So at the top of this, I sort of joked about hashtag release the memo. But is that part of this story? Yes. There are certainly groups that monitor online activity by Russian bots. One is called the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which is based in D.C. And they say that Russian bots have been pushing the hashtag release the memo campaign, which has helped drive the conversation online. Certainly hasn't been the only thing driving this conversation. I mean, there's been a lot of coverage on right wing media. Sean Hannity has been pushing this pretty hard, as I understand it. But yes, but it's also been a conversation that's been on CNN, MSNBC.

This is kind of consumed Washington over the past two weeks. But yes, the Russian bots have played into this. And, you know, that's not the first time that they've kind of pushed a conversation along in the U.S. political realm. And again, it's kind of wild that this is all or maybe it's not wild at all. It's very partisan. This has turned into something of a partisan food fight, which leads to all of the, you know, the usual like, well, he said and then he said. And then it's just a big, muddy mess. And everybody is talking about what did the FBI do wrong? Well, and this is why it's been very effective for Republicans to bring this memo to the public, which is,

one, we're not talking about Mueller's investigation. We're talking about alleged possible abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department in the Russia investigation, and also kind of laying the foundations for sowing doubts, raising questions about any conclusions that special counsel Robert Mueller may come to in the Russian investigation and any conclusions that the congressional committees may come to in their investigations. And this does not happen in a vacuum. President Trump for months, literally months, has been beating up on the intelligence community,

beating up on the FBI and calling all Russia investigations a great big hoax. And a witch hunt. One of our human players needs to leave the studio and go keep reporting. So, Ryan Lucas, thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. Goodbye, Ryan.

Bye. We will miss you. Keep up the good work. And in the meantime, we will be right back to talk about Congress and stuff. Support for NPR Politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan. Rocket Mortgage is simple, allowing you to fully understand all the details and be confident you're getting the right mortgage. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics.

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All right, we are back. It has been two days since the State of the Union. It was a relatively quiet two days on Twitter from President Trump until this morning. And although the State of the Union address was billed as this thing that was going to create unity and bipartisanship moving forward, it seems pretty clear at this point that whether it was the intended result or not, it is certainly not what actually happened and what has resulted. Today, President Trump is speaking at the annual retreat of congressional Republicans. And this is what he said about

Democrats. And when I made that statement the other night, there was zero movement from the Democrats. They sat there, stone cold, no smile, no applause. You would have thought that on that one, they would have sort of at least clapped a little bit, which tells you perhaps they'd rather see us not do well than see our country do great. And that's not good. That's not good. We have to change that. That was a direct attack on Democrats essentially saying like, they don't love America because they hate me. And how are we going to get anywhere? And the reality is that this is a potential problem, given some things that are on the calendar, right, Kelsey?

Yeah. So just for some calendar awareness, we are in a extraordinarily messy moment. We are between a government shutdown and a deadline to keep the government open again. And Congress is scheduled to be in session for two days before that deadline happens two and a half if we're being generous. Oh, my God, I didn't even realize that we do not have a spending bill released yet. We expect that Republicans are going to ask for a spending bill that will go through the end of March. Democrats I talked to say they don't support that and will not vote for it. They have not voted for the previous several short-term spending bills. This would be the fifth short-term spending bill. Since President Trump became president. Yes. There are conservatives who really don't like this idea. People who are, we call them defense hawks or military hawks,

say this is extraordinarily bad for the military because they can't make long-term investments on short-term spending bills. And there is just disagreement, chaos, and a sense that nobody has a map. And we have two days. Well, and to just sort of give more evidence of Trump saying these things about Democrats and calendar awareness, he tweeted this morning, March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Democrats are doing nothing about DACA. They resist, blame, complain and obstruct and do nothing. Start pushing Nancy Pelosi and the Dems to work out a DACA fix, all caps, now! We are wrangling at least five different narratives on every important deadline facing us. That is a spending bill. That is DACA. And that also includes the debt limit, which is coming up in February. Now, those alone would be really difficult things to handle, but they need to do all of them in a

very short amount of time. And I have never, I've been covering Congress for about eight years, which is not the longest time in the world. But I've seen varying levels of agreement and disagreement. And I don't varying levels of agreement and disagreement. And I don't think, even including when the Tea Party came in, I don't think I've seen this much disorganization and distrust. And the greatest of these, in a sense, is the debt limit. Because while we have not talked about it very much, and it is a headache of a topic, it has been accelerated as a deadline. This is when they can't keep pushing off. It was in April, then it was going to be late March. Now it looks like early March, may even be February because, hey, the tax cuts mean less

revenue, especially from corporate tax revenues. So as a result, we're going to bang up against that debt limit and all the extraordinary measures Treasury is taking now are going to be unavailing in a matter of a few weeks. So for all of our podcast listeners who have not been following every twist and turn of Congress for the past five years, the debt limit. The debt limit is a recurring problem. It is. And it is also becoming one of those very familiar arguments where we talk about each

side having their own facts. Now, the. Can we just explain what the heck a debt limit is? That's part of where everybody's own facts come from, is that the debt limit allows the government to keep on borrowing money to pay for everyday operations. Now, sometimes you'll hear Republicans, particularly those who oppose increasing the debt limit,

saying that you don't want to give somebody a credit card. This doesn't have anything to do with new debt. This is just dealing with the finances that have already occurred. Now, this is incredibly important because if it is not handled, there is a good chance that credit rating agencies would downgrade the value of U.S. bonds. And that could be very destabilizing to the U.S. economy. Right. What's scary, I mean, first of all, what's scary is what we could imagine could happen. And what is also scary is what we can't imagine will happen because we can't imagine it. And they have flirted with this before.

Yes. In 2011, the U.S. got its first sovereign debt downgrade. And fortunately, you know, no chaos happened. But good heavens, it's not a thing we want to experiment with. Actually, in 2011, there was a fair amount of damage done. The markets took quite a dive, and it was the worst year the markets have had in a number of years, certainly since 2008. And that was largely a consequence of that particular failure in Washington to deal with the debt limit and the perception in the markets that things were coming unglued. But nothing fell apart. That is true. But this time we're at the very, very top of a very frothy, toppy-looking market

where we're setting new records every day, where the Dow Jones added 1,000 points in two weeks. And a major disruption, such as the debt limit, could be the occasion for the sell-off that a lot of people think has to come sooner or later. So for all those people who think that we now have markets that only go up, that's one of those opportunities to learn better. There is a lot of anxiety. Every phone call that I have made today has been met with somebody who is nervous, anxious, and has no answer for what's going to happen next. And I'm

talking people on Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate, there's just a sense that we don't know what's coming. And that's pretty scary, I think, for a lot of people on the Hill who are used to having some level of understanding about, you know, yes, we run into deadlines, but we get things done. And that's not always clear anymore. And yet in the midst of all that, what is our main focus in Washington right now? It's a four-page memo that people haven't seen yet and that they might not see and that might be completely bogus. But that's what we're all focused on. And that seems to be what the White House is obsessed with as well. Right. As one more way of just kind of stressing how important the debt limit is, despite the fact that it could get buried under all of this other insanity. It's just the fact that global credit markets,

one of the underlying assumptions is that the U.S. pays its debts. That is the assumption. Exactly. This could be very, very bad. It's like that discussion in Ghostbusters of crossing. You know, I don't even want to get into that because that's making it too silly. Are you talking about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? I'm talking about crossing the streams. Crossing the streams. I thought that was very bad. That's too silly. Like, really, this could be so bad if we smash through the debt ceiling is what I'm trying to say.

To be clear, we are not hearing anybody say that there's a chance that they think there's a chance that we will not increase the debt limit. What we are saying is that they don't have a plan for how to address it and it is rapidly approaching. It is possible. Congress has proven time and again that they can see a rapidly approaching deadline, cobble together a quick solution and move on. But as it stands right now on Thursday, February 1st, we don't have a plan. Well, I suspect we will talk about that a lot more in the weeks ahead. One just side note, and it was a pretty significant side note, is that on the way to this Republican retreat in West Virginia, a bunch of Republican lawmakers were riding on a train. I think it was like a chartered train.

It was a chartered Amtrak. They're at this retreat in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, at the Greenbrier Resort. It's part of they every single year, both Democrats and Republicans leave Washington for three or four days, and they have what they call an issues conference or a policy retreat. So they can go through and talk about the year ahead. So Republicans were headed out to theirs when their train struck a garbage truck that was obstructing the tracks. And one of the people who was on that truck passed away. He died as a result of that accident. There were several more injuries, though it appears that some people had been released from the hospital at this point. And it was a pretty gruesome scene. And it's another case, like in such a weird 12 months of Republican lawmakers all of a sudden finding themselves in the middle of like a trauma scene trying to rescue people or help people.

Senator Jeff Flake, who was also on the scene for the shooting at the baseball practice last year. Was that last year? Yeah. Gosh, last year. He had to help and be one of the first responders in that situation. And he again stepped in and was helping out with this situation. There are multiple doctors among the delegation that was on that train, right? Right. And they are retiring. Yes. We got news yesterday, right around the time that all of this was happening, that a Republican congressman whose name will sound very familiar to a lot of people, Trey Gowdy from South Carolina. He led the congressional investigation into Benghazi.

The last investigation into Benghazi of several. Yeah. So he is retiring. And you just add his name to the list, right? Yeah, he's retiring and says he's going back to judicial work. We don't know what that means right now. There's a lot of speculation. He's a former prosecutor. He is a former prosecutor. He reportedly turned down a job offer from the White House. But, yeah, we don't know exactly where he's going. But he makes number 34, the 34th Republican in the House, to decide not to run again. That is a record-breaking number. Wait, so what does that mean? Like, as a lady who doesn't cover Congress, what does that tell us?

And some of them had, like like pretty significant jobs in Congress. So Gowdy is unlike a lot of the other chairmen who were term limited. So Republican rules make it so that people can only serve as chairman of committees for a short amount of time. And by and large, one of the only ways to have influence in Congress is to be the chairman of the committee or to be rising towards that. Now, it's not uncommon for people to retire once their term limit is up as chair, but many of these people are retiring without that being the case. And most significant among them would be Rodney Freelinghuysen, who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, some would say the prime committee chairmanship of all, and perhaps one of the six

most important people in Congress. And he just decided that he had had enough, that he was going to leave the seat that he had, that his father had before him from suburban New Jersey outside of New York City area. And he did this with four years left to run as chairman of the most powerful committee in the House. In his case, it might have something to do with the difficulty of being reelected. But in many of these chairmen's cases, they would probably be pretty safe to be reelected in November. And also critically involved in keeping the government open and funded like that. That is the committee that is involved with all of these spending bills. Correct. Well, one thing I want to add is so our own Jess Taylor has been tracking these retirements.

And I am looking right now at a table she has made of all of them. One thing that stands out here is the overwhelming majority of these seats where these people are retiring or, you know, running for Senate or doing whatever, leaving the House. The overwhelming majority are Republican leaning. Yes. I'm looking at this. One is Democrat-leaning. Two are even. The rest are varying shades of red. But they're varying shades of red in states that are varying shades of purple. Okay. And that's an important thing here is that, so to answer your earlier question, I would say a couple of takeaways here, things that we should kind of remember when we're thinking about this. One, I talked to a lot of Republicans for a piece a couple of weeks ago when this trend was kind of starting about why they were leaving, why they

thought this was happening. One answer is to them, it felt a lot like earlier elections, particularly 2006, where they had a really bad year, where they were beat up on the campaign trail and then people lost. And there are a lot of people who don't want to go through a terrible bruising campaign or a really bad primary and then lose. It's a lot of work and it kind of isn't fun. Or to just end up win after all of that and wind up in the minority potential. Right. Which is also not fun. No. Being in the minority, particularly in the House, is not a fun game. Especially if you've been very recently in the majority and you are still tumbling downward.

And there are a number of Republicans in the House who do not know what it is like to be in the minority. And there's a real reality check that kind of happens when you have to decide whether or not you're going to run for office again, is to look at the prospects for your power. Because at the end of the day, in Washington, power matters. That's why people go to Washington. It is to serve. It is to get their point across. But you can't get your point across, pass bills, and do anything without some power. But the other part of this, I think a takeaway why this all matters is that Republicans are nervous. And that's something that we should be thinking like that is going to come into play here, particularly Republicans in the suburbs. There is a lot of concern that there are voters who are just not going to show up. People who are disillusioned, people who are not happy with the direction the country is going, people who didn't get what they wanted out of this president. And in the midterm election, after a new president comes into office, it is not uncommon for the president's party to lose seats. But in this case in particular, there is concern that the president has been so divisive that there could be a pretty dramatic wave and people are nervous. As long as we're talking about retirements, there's one we would be remiss in not mentioning. Janet Yellen, Fed chair.

Not a member of Congress. Not a member of Congress, pointedly not political. That's kind of the job of the Fed chair. Janet Yellen, her last day as Fed chair is tomorrow, Friday. And it's just a thing that is worth mentioning. One, in part because she is, you know, arguably, I don't even know if it would be arguable, one of the most powerful women ever. And I do mean ever. Like she is in charge of monetary policy in the this, you know, global economic superpower. And the Fed chair actually has a lot more power over the economy than, say, the president of the United States. Or anyone else. Right. Right. Absolutely. And part of why it's easy to not think about that is because part of what the Fed chair's job is to be is to not rattle people. And just blend into the wallpaper. Spook no one ever. Right. And she has had to do that while having the really remarkably difficult job of starting the long process of unwinding these extraordinary measures that the central

bank had to undertake post-recession, you know, multiple rounds of quantitative easing, a huge balance sheet. It was an unenviable job. And Jerome Powell, who will take over after her, is going to have to continue that. We're going to take one more quick break. And when we come back, can't let it go. Do you love trivia, puzzles, nerdy games, and humor? What about interviews with actors, musicians, and people from all walks of life? Yeah?

Then join me, Ophira Eisenberg, host of NPR's Ask Me Another, every week on the NPR One app and wherever you listen to podcasts. We're back and it is time to end the show as we always do with a little levity, I hope. Can't let it go where we all share one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Who wants to go first? I'll go because mine is super otherwise. All right, Kelsey. I'm reading a Gizmodo article from yesterday, no, from today. Finally, facial recognition for cows is here.

Did we need that? Apparently. Is this to prevent the theft of cows? No, it has to do with spotting disease. It'll scan cows' faces, then determine a baseline of typical behavior. And they have perfected facial recognition software for cows. Wait, wait, wait. Is this for like mad cow? Are they looking to see if they look mad?

For any. So this was Cargill announced it Wednesday that is partnering with an Irish company that does, it's a computer vision company, to plot face recognition in order to make sure that cows are just generally healthy. Wait, wait, so you could look at a cow's face and tell it's typical behavior? Yeah. What? So you can see whether Bessie has brucellosis. Oh, Ron. I love that you know

bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Absolutely. Let's try for some more alliterative. We're old friends. That's what those years in Wisconsin were for. The agrarian knowledge in here is high right now,

and I am proud. High as the corn in Kansas and August. They say it's part of a broader biometric surveillance process. There's some talk about ways to surveil chickens also. So that could be coming down the pike.

Wow. I love this so much. I don't know. With chickens, I think you'd have to start over from scratch. Oh. Oh, Ron. Oh, Ron. Ron, why can't you let go of?

I'm going to go back to politics, if you don't mind. The State of the Union this year, which in many respects and in many people's minds was quite successful. The president put out that he was going to call for unity history as a monumental missed opportunity for the president in terms of just exactly that, because while he did get a lot of headlines that used the word unity, many opportunities to create unity in the speech were not taken. The president could have come out with something concrete about immigration, but instead renewed all of the grinding away at the angriest elements of the immigration debate. So there were many opportunities. He might even have tried to diffuse some of the tension around the Mueller investigation. Not that that would necessarily have worked, but it would have been

atmospherically unifying. So there really were not a lot of unifying moments, real outreach, substantive moments in that speech. So he missed an opportunity. All right. That was a downer. I'm sorry. All right. No, no, no, no, no. That's, I mean. You mean it wasn't an upper, like, bovine facial rescue. Yeah. It's good context, but like, all right, all right.

Danielle, what can you not let go of? I want to talk to you all about heroes today. I want to talk to you about a great American hero that walks among us, and his name is Scott Horsley. I mean, he is superhuman. Oh, no, you don't know the depths of it. So before the State of the Union, we're all sitting around eating our dinner, and I don't remember how this came up, but Scott Horsley starts talking about some story he did 25 years ago at the member station in San Diego. And the story was about... KPBS.

Yes. It was a story about occupational licensing. It was specifically... Oh, your face, Kelsey. It gets better. Specifically, it's a story about exotic dancers needing to be licensed to do their jobs. Now... Of course.

Of course. No, I want to be clear. I'm not bringing this up to be sophomoric because, you know, because, you know, I'm not saying that strip clubs are inherently funny. No, what's funny is Scott Horsley's magnificent delivery of the story has everything. It involves a police sergeant named Ed Paradise, who was in charge of. Was he policing the Paradise Lounge? Well, no, but he was in charge of licensing,

which meant Horsley got to deliver the line, would-be dancers have to see Paradise before customers get to see them. And so you get these dancers, you get the scene of these dancers in a class where a very matter-of-fact policeman is in front of them. And so, on a Tuesday morning, eight young women, all fully dressed, gather in a cramped conference room at police headquarters for their licensing orientation.

Driver's Ed was never like this. Okay, the first area I want to talk about is pelvic thrust. Detective Rick Bittner is conversational, even clinical, as he reads to the women from a loose-leaf notebook. He's clearly given this talk many times before. We don't care if you perform pelvic thrust as long as you don't do it in a lewd or suggestive fashion. How do you do it in a non-suggestive fashion? Exactly. Did this story air on a first of April? I don't believe so, but, but, but, but, like, that glorious Scott Horsley dry wit meant that I have one more line to play for you that just kind of caps this off for me.

With regard to pelvic thrusts, Detective Bittner says a couple of them might be okay, so long as they're not accentuated. In order to avoid trouble with police, some clubs have set their own standard, three thrusts and you're out. What? Do they sit there with like a click, click, click, three, you're done. Oh my gosh. Did you go, how did you find this? Where did you get it? He sent it, he sent it around. I mean, I would save that if I were him. No, listen, I was playing it at my desk. I called Sam, our producer, over.

It's radio beauty. Scott Horsley is Mozart. We are all Salieri, just wishing we could have that kind of genius. It's glorious. So Scott Horsley, I salute you. That is my very long, I apologize, can't let it go this week. I feel as though your references to fine classical music really dovetail well into my can't let it go. I am excited.

It involves Katy Perry. Let's go back to 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. And as you know, the Super Bowl is coming up this weekend. There will be another halftime show. Justin Timberlake performing. But we shall never forget 2015. Katy Perry and the left shark. So here she is. She's got her little outfit and the beach balls.

And there's these two sharks. And the shark on the right seems to be choreographed. And the shark on the left seems to be someone they pulled off of the street somewhere who knows nothing about dancing and seems a little lost or arguably he knew everything about dancing he was just and that that is what i can't let go morning edition david green host of, one of the hosts of Morning Edition, tracked down the left shark. They found the left shark.

His real name is Brian Gah. Apparently he had been a dancer with Katy Perry's touring ensemble for five years. So there you go. Now he works as a hairstylist. Was he fired for his shark dancing? No, no, he was not. So we just have a little bit of the interview. I'm in a seven-foot blue shark costume.

There's no cool. There's no cool in that. So what's the other option? Well, I'm going to play a different character. Okay, hang on. This is a moment here. Because America, they thought you were totally flubbing this up. Yeah, totally. What character were you going for?

This is an underdog it's an everyday person now showing you don't have to be perfect you don't have to be perfect nobody has to be perfect in life and you wouldn't lie to me like i'm looking you in the eyes right now this you planned this hundred percent you planned this character the thing is did i rehearse these actual steps to like like, my freestyle moment? Not necessarily. So you rehearsed being a little goofy. You rehearsed being a little goofy.

What we saw out there was maximum goofy. Totally. I'm on a maximum stage. This sounds like a story I tell if somebody sees me trip and fall. Yeah. Oh, I totally meant to do that. Yeah, no. It's, I still.

Sure. He was probably hungover. There has got to be a better explanation than premeditated terrible dancing. I say, I say you go go. Yeah, you be the undershark. You be the undershark. Isn't there a jump the shark joke here? Isn't there a jump the shark?

Yeah, maybe we've all jumped the shark, Ron. And that's a wrap for this week. Nonsense. We will be in your feed soon. Keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. You can also always catch one of us on Up First every weekday morning. And if you like the show, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes.

It really helps others find us. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the Politics Podcast.