The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, February 14

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

In the year since the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, how have attitudes about gun control shifted, and what legislation has been enacted? Plus, Republicans use Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar to paint Democrats as too extreme. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political editor Domenico Montanaro, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political reporter Tim Mak. 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 there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and as you know, we start every show saying things may have changed by the time you listen. Once in a while, things change before we even post the show, and that is again the case today. So before the full episode, we're going to talk a bit about the breaking news, that President Trump is going to sign the compromise spending bill that does not give him the wall money he demanded. But he's also going to go ahead and declare a national emergency to try and build that wall anyway. White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here.

Hey, Tam. Hey, Scott. Lucky for us and for listeners, you have spent a whole lot of time researching what exactly these national emergencies mean. Yes. So a national emergency is something under the National Emergencies Act where the president can say, hey, there's a national emergency. And that then frees up all kinds of other laws and statutes and things that give the president access to money or other things that he wouldn't ordinarily have access to. Now, the original intent here, the idea is, oh, my gosh,

there is a fire, hurricane, terrible national emergency. I need to get funds and move it here really quickly. And Congress doesn't have time to act. Let's declare an emergency. And we're going to get to the congressional response in a moment. But it's not like the president has to prove there's an emergency, at least on first glance. No, the law gives the president almost unlimited power to declare an emergency. But then he has to tell Congress where he's taking the money from and what laws he's citing to have the authority to do that. And we should say this all comes in the context of a bill that is, as we speak, making its way through Congress. It passed the Senate. It's on its way to a House vote that does not give him what he wants. It gives about one point three billion dollars for fencing, nowhere near that five plus billion dollars he demanded during the month long government

shutdown. Democrats are furious. A joint statement just out from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a from Florida is saying we have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution. And that he's concerned about the next president. Maybe it's a Democrat would use a national emergency to impose the Green New Deal, he says. Yeah. What can they do, though? Yeah. So here's what they can do. Will they? Can they actually get the votes they need? Unclear. But actually, in the law that allows the president to declare an emergency, there is a built-in congressional check on presidential power. Any member of Congress can introduce a resolution terminating the national

emergency. And then it is on a fast track. It has to get a vote in committee. If it makes it through committee, it would have to get a vote on the House floor. And then it would rush over to the Senate and they would have to vote on it. So we can expect this to pass the House because it's controlled by Democrats. Usually when the House passes a bill, Mitch McConnell doesn't want to deal with. he goes, cool story, not going to hold it up for a vote. He doesn't have that option here. Nope. He has to bring it up for a vote. And then Republicans will be faced with this question. Are they worried about setting a precedent that they aren't going to like in a few years?

You know, there have been lots of times when Republicans have said, we don't support what the president is doing. And then when it comes down to voting, they fall in line. So it's a it's an open question. But then, like, let's say it passes the Senate. The president can still veto it. So then it would come back to Congress if they could muster a two thirds majority, a veto proof majority. Other options include lawsuits. Yeah, and this news first came from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell making a statement on the Senate floor, and he said that he supports President Trump's decision to declare this emergency, which was pretty surprising because there had been a lot of reporting that

McConnell was among the Senate Republicans skeptical of this move. We're going to dig into all the politics of this and what it means for Republicans and what happens next in a podcast tomorrow. Can't wait. All right. Thanks, Tam, for the quick update on this. You're welcome. All right. So podcast tomorrow. But first, here is the actual weekly roundup we recorded today, starting off with a very special timestamp from First Lieutenant Benjamin Greif. Hi, this is First Lieutenant Benjamin Greif, and I'm hours away from my first deployment, while my wife is months away from having our first child. I just wanted to say I love you both and hang in there, hon.

This episode of the podcast was recorded at... It's really nice. It's 121 Eastern on Thursday, February 14th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on NPR.org, the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Well, happy Valentine's Day, everybody. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. It has been one year since the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Has the country shifted its views on gun policy since then? We will talk about that. And the much-hyped Green New Deal got some support from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who says he'll call the resolution

up for a Senate floor vote soon. But wait, it's a political trap. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. So today marks one year since the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. And unfortunately, as we've talked about before, there have just been so many mass shootings. It's this familiar, terrible feeling that happens every time there's a new one. But that one, for one reason or another, seemed to be a turning point both in the moment and now a year later. So, Tim, I'm going to start with you. You've been covering the gun issue for a long time. A year later, to you, what actually has changed?

Well, from a federal level, not very much. But I think that gun control supporters would say, look at the states. look at the various places where they've been able to pass gun legislation, such as Florida in the wake of Parkland. You had a governor, Governor Rick Scott, who had an A rating from the NRA, who supported certain restrictions on guns in Florida. And in fact, in nine states with Republican governors, they were able to pass gun legislation in this past year. And you could also say, well, what's actually happened from the perspective of the NRA? I think they feel really vulnerable at this time. And some of the evidence of that vulnerability, didn't they lose a bunch of money, it seemed, between 2016 and 2017? I think it was $55 million and had some layoffs at NRA TV, right? Yeah, there have been some signs of financial difficulties at the NRA.

Their political spending is down significantly from 2018 midterms to the previous cycle of midterms. And they now have to deal with a Democratic-controlled House. So, Sue, let me go to you on that, because I think one reason why they may be feeling more pressure and certainly one reason why Parkland stood out in a way other shootings didn't was this really surprising wave of activism directly from a lot of students at the school who right away started organizing and saying this is enough in a way that that really spread. And one thing that I know that you've noted is that Democrats have no qualms about talking about gun control in a way that for the last few decades they really did. Yeah. I always think it's important to remember with Parkland that that activism and what it

sparked, it wasn't just because of Parkland, right, that Parkland was a part of the continuum of a series of modern gun violence events that have contributed to this moment. I think you could make an argument that that started with the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. That included events like the Newtown school shootings, nightclub shootings, the Vegas shootings. Then Parkland happened. And it wasn't just that this was another tragic mass shooting, but it also spoke to a political reality of a younger generation that has really grown up in an America where this is a very common part of their life. It did also change. And I think, again, part of a continuum, it wasn't just Parkland. But I think Democrats have also increasingly become more bold and less fearful of campaigning on the gun issue. Yeah. And we saw that this week where House Democrats had a hearing on this and are moving forward with a vote on this for the first time in a long time. Democrats, one of the things they campaigned and ran on in the 2018 elections was promises

that they would bring up gun bills if you gave them the majority. And they're making good on that. One of those first acts is a bill that's been in the works for a while that would essentially extend the background check system to cover all existing gun purchases and transfers, basically expands current law to affect even more gun sales. It doesn't actually affect the sale or regulation of guns, just how you run the background checks on who gets to buy them. This is interesting because it will be the first major gun vote that the House has taken since the 90s. And Domenico, Sue was talking about the fact that so many younger people, people still in school, recent graduates, have just grown up in a world where this is the norm, where

you're doing shelter-in-place drills in the classroom on a regular basis in a way that people our age and older, like Columbine was so shocking because it was something that we hadn't even thought about before. That is just not the world they've grown up in. I know you have a new poll from NPR Marist and PBS NewsHour, and one of the most striking findings in that poll was the generational divide here. Yeah, I mean, young people, 18 to 29, when we look at that number, you know, for the most part, they are overwhelmingly in favor of stricter gun laws in the country and moving toward more restrictions rather than protecting gun rights, which is a big difference for from people

who are slightly older and those who identify as Republicans. Now, part of that is obviously because younger people identify more as Democrats, too. But there is a bit of a change on that number, even as the NRA, as Tim points out, has become, you know, has kind of moved away from its messaging on guns being for recreation as they were more so in the 90s, to being to having more political messaging weighing in more politically, taking, you know, going after Democrats, running ads against them. And the numbers we've seen move. I mean, you only have 51% of people in this poll say that they were more in favor of gun restrictions, that gun laws need to be stricter than protect gun rights. That's a big shift from 1990, for example, where Gallup found 78% of the country felt that there needed to be

stricter gun laws. So we were talking about the NRA for a while, but we haven't directly talked about Republicans in Congress. As that committee hearing and vote was happening, one House Republican leader who is himself a victim of gun violence was speaking up, and that was Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who was in one of those shootings that I think kind of went away from popular consciousness in a way Parkland didn't, was one of several lawmakers shot at a couple of years ago during a baseball practice in Virginia. And he made the argument that he is against this move for restriction because, among other things, the person who shot

him would have cleared that background check. And another thing is that he thinks that he was saved by someone else with a gun, the police, the Capitol Police officer who's there. And this is his his argument has been reflective, I think, of the larger Republican Party who say a lot of the gun measures that Democrats have put forward in the over the years, none of them would have specifically stopped the mass shootings in question that they have been in response to. There's also a reality about gun violence in this country that most of the people that die from gun violence aren't in mass shootings. It's still most gun deaths are related to handguns. And I would say that Republicans have always approached this debate not as one about gun access or gun restriction, but as one about mental health and treating the problem from

the other direction? Well, I think what advocates of more gun control legislation would say to that, there would be two major points. The first point they would probably say is that the rate of mental illness in this country is not so high to be able to account for the increased amount of gun violence in America and can't explain why there's so much more gun violence in America than in other countries. And secondly, I think they would say regarding the background checks, they would argue that while these background checks might not have prevented some of the mass shootings that we saw in America over the last few years, that common everyday gun violence involving homicides and suicides could be prevented. And those incidents are far more common than these mass shootings are.

What's fascinating is when you ask people about this list of potential policy options, background checks and mental health checks on gun buyers seem like low-hanging fruit. 80% of the country, 8 in 10 people, believe that there should be stricter background checks and that they would make a difference in gun violence. And they there's almost the same number believe that about mental health checks on gun buyers. And guess what? 70% of Republicans believe that background checks would make gun violence less prevalent. And 74% of Republicans think that mental health checks on gun buyers would make gun violence less prevalent. And 74% of Republicans think that mental health checks on gun buyers would make gun violence less prevalent. Now, why then can't something get

done at a federal level? When you look at some of the other items, though, things like banning high capacity ammunition clips, national database to track gun sales, banning assault weapons. All of those things have 60% or more support in the poll, but yet Republicans are split amongst themselves on that issue. And it's part of why those have become so controversial and haven't moved. So obviously those trend lines are there, but is there anything in the poll to give us a sense of, is this the top issue on voters' minds? Is this something that they're making their decision on on or is it just a view that they have? Well, what's interesting here is that about half the country says that laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter. But that's down from 71 percent, 20 point drop from immediately after the Parkland shooting. And when you ask people whether or not

gun legislation should be an immediate priority for Congress, that's also down 10 points. You've only got 42% of people saying that there was a majority support for that after Parkland. And frankly, that's the reason why you see this kind of delay tactic from the NRA when in the immediate aftermath of some of these things, like they did after Parkland and then go on offense. It's part of a broader strategy. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Green New Deal, how it's shaping the 2020 presidential campaign and why Mitch McConnell is all about holding a vote on it. We'll be right back. The world is complicated. And for many of us, history class was a long time ago.

That's where we come in. I'm Randha Dirphatah. I'm Ramteen Arablui. And we're the hosts of ThruLine, NPR's new history podcast. Every week, we'll dig into forgotten stories from the moments that shaped our world. ThruLine, history like you've never heard it before. We are back. Let's talk about the Green New Deal. It was

introduced to Congress last week and first unveiled on NPR's airwaves by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She represents New York. She, of course, has become this high-profile superstar freshman to the point where she's introducing policy that almost every Democrat running for president is immediately signing on to. So that bill introduced a week ago. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, says he's going to hold a vote on it on the Senate floor. Why would he do that? We will talk about that in a moment.

But first, let's just walk through what exactly this thing is, because Green New Deal really started as a catchphrase, something that protesters were talking about, saying we need to do something like a Green New Deal. What was the actual legislation? It's essentially a framework. The format that they put it in is a non-binding resolution, which means it's not a bill. It's like a sketch of ideas or goals to work towards. And it is a very ambitious 10-year plan to essentially radically remake the energy infrastructure in this country and the economy in a lot of ways to make the country a energy efficient, low carbon emitter,

new economy world leader. And from the Republican standpoint, they see a lot of fodder here to make it a campaign attack. Yeah. And there's a long history of Republicans effectively using votes on plans like this to say so-and-so voted for higher gas taxes, for higher energy bills. The argument from supporters of this plan is that, yes, it is a very incredibly high bar. But, you know, if you look at climate change right now, a high bar is what's needed to avert catastrophic increased warming across the planet that is already underway. If you look at a whole bunch of Democrats running for president or otherwise, I think there of terrible things is going to happen that will lead to flooded cities, increased wildfires, and basically just a much more terrible world to live in. I mean, the Department of Defense itself has said that climate change is one of the biggest threats to the United States. The global consensus on climate change exists.

It is the U.S. government that has been very resistant to those conclusions. But Domenico, I think one of the things that really jumped out is a lot of attention was made of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi basically shading this whole thing, saying, I welcome everyone's enthusiasm. She called it the green dream or whatever. She clearly didn't seem too enthusiastic about this. But you know who was? A whole bunch of people running for president. Yeah. And I kind of wonder about some of that, because, you know, on the one hand, you know, you can argue that and I think it's the right thing to argue that, you know, maybe Hillary Clinton wasn't as visionary as she needed to be in 2016. And that is not something that a lot of young progressive activists are in love with.

That's not what they want to see. And it wasn't enough to be anti-Trump. She was already anti-Trump. And this does provide some of that activism, some of that base with something to believe in and hang their hats on. At the same time, all of this are things that Republicans feel like gives them or gives President Trump potentially a narrow path to win reelection if they go too far to the left. That's the argument anyway. For Democrats who are running for president, they're less concerned about that future possible eventuality where they might be in a general election. They're concerned about winning over the Democratic base first and foremost. And one of the facts that really jumped out to me was that between December and January, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got more engagement on Twitter, retweets and likes than the six

most prolific news organizations combined. She is just incredibly popular. And you can't does hit on a broader political point is that she talked about how the president made build the wall, his sort of vision statement for how he governs. And her counterpoint was, I'm shorthanding it, but that Democrats kind of need to do the same thing. And that Green Deal. And she described she was talking about the wall and she says, here's this hugely impossible thing that seems ridiculous and I'm going to seriously push for it. And for the president, that's the wall. And for her, it's the Green New Deal. I mean, she's sort of acknowledging that it is this lofty thing, but it's about capturing voter enthusiasm and voter excitement. And voters get to put on to that idea whatever they want it to be. In that way, politically, I think she's on to something there. You know, the president was on to something with Build the Wall. It captured a sentiment that voters

were able to cling to. He was able to take his profile and say, here's this hugely impossible thing that seems ridiculous, but I'm going to seriously push for it. And for him, that's his wall. And obviously, I'm diametrically opposed to it. But I think that the reason he's so attached to this thing, despite the fact that it's not what voters want, despite the fact that it's not what the American people want, is that it's the only vision he has. I think that's a pretty strong political argument in terms of framing big stuff. But in the meantime, people still have to run elections. And Mitch McConnell seems to think that this is a short term vulnerability to the point

where he says, great idea. We're going to vote on that really soon. So what's the thinking there? Sure. I mean, this is kind of a common political tactic is you do a political show vote to try and jam your opponents. I think McConnell's motivation, especially on the right where the Green New Deal has been particularly derided, is to put it on the floor and try and just kind of shame Democrats into voting for it or voting against it. But that approach, Dominica, I know you wrote

about this this week, seems to be indicative of a broader trend that you're seeing from President Trump and from Republicans, you know, looking at their low approval ratings and saying one way for us to carve out some victory to gain popularity and maybe win next time around is to say every Democrat is a socialist. Right. And I think that the big part of this is figuring out what socialism means. Right. You know, it's when you look generationally, there's a huge difference in how people who are over 30, 35 view the word socialism versus people who are under 35. This is not a generation of Cold War kids. They were not, you know, underneath their desks in fallout shelters and listening to American propaganda

about how communism could be coming to the country and how socialism meant taking over the means of production. Now, since Republicans, frankly, have been using the word socialism over the past 10, 15 years, especially with everything that Barack Obama tried to do and tried to call, you know, the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, a socialist government takeover. For young people, you're sitting there thinking, well, what's wrong with health care? Yeah. There's one more thing that we need to get to this week. A big story on Capitol Hill. And that was comments and tweets made by Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, who was broadly condemned from Republicans and from Democrats. The tweets were viewed as anti-Semitic.

The story had a lot of fallout. Sue, can you take us back and first of all, just explain what exactly happened? Sure. On Sunday night, Ilhan Omar retweeted the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who had made a tweet essentially criticizing Kevin McCarthy and over criticisms of Israel that he has had against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. And so Ilhan Omar takes this tweet and retweets it. And it just says, it's all about the Benjamins baby. If you don't know what that means, and I can't imagine any of our listeners don't get the cultural reference, it's all about the Benjamins baby. If you don't know what that means, and I can't imagine any of our listeners don't get the cultural reference, it's a hip hop lyric in reference to money.

Benjamins, of course, being $100 bills. A Jewish writer responded to her and said, what do you mean by that? And she responded, all of this is playing out on Twitter, AIPAC. AIPAC, of course, is well known as the pro-Israel lobby. These two tweets combined created a firestorm because in it, what she did and what was widely viewed as what she did is she played on these tropes of anti-Semitism that Jews have influence over American politics because of their money. And now she had been really in kind of the crosshairs of House Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney for a while, ever since she got to Congress and was put on the Foreign Affairs Committee for a lot of stuff that she said

previously, well, not that pointed or problematic, but really critical of Israeli foreign policy and Israeli treatment of Palestinians. She did. And she also had another tweet that was in 2012. That was long before she was elected to Congress, in which she made a comment in that Israel had hypnotized the world. Another tweet that I think people pointed to is seeing anti-Semitic veins in that. You're right, Scott. Prior to the Sunday tweets, she had been someone that congressional Republicans were already sort of pointing to these past statements and behaviors as controversial and using those past statements and behaviors to protest her assignment to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. condemnation from her own party, her own party leadership, and broadly seen as that this is just not an acceptable way to talk about people or behavior. And so House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were relatively quick to put out a statement condemning those tweets,

and she pretty quickly apologized. That did not seem to be the end of this news cycle, though. It probably won't be. I also think that she gave an apology, but she also made clear that she wants to continue to be sort of provocative and forward pushing on this. She has said that she was not aware these were anti-Semitic tropes. She has said she is relying on and looking forward to counsel from Jewish friends and allies to explain to her better ways to talk about this issue. But she clearly is going to be a provocateur. Yeah, but I mean, you know, combining the Green New Deal with this controversy, Republicans were more than happy to jump all over these two things to try to draw a line between them and say that Democrats are extreme, even though there's a total difference between how these two things were dealt with and who's embracing them. And Nancy Pelosi kind of made that point when she was asked about this

earlier this week. She said, I think the administration owes a public apology for some of the things that were said there. As I heard the president speaking this morning, all that was going through my mind was Jew S.A., Jew S.-A at his rallies that he never distanced himself from. They shouldn't go down this path, she said. They don't have clean hands. We're going to take one more quick break. We will come back and end the show with Can't Let It Go. Castlemont High is different from a lot of other high schools. This student, he got shot four times. I was just standing outside and like, heck of bullets. He held the gun up to my head. I'm Sam Sanders. One year after Parkland,

we talk to kids who face gun violence every single day. Listen on It's Been a Minute from NPR. We are back and we are going to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about one thing we can't stop thinking about. Domenico, you are up first. Another podcast. There you go. I can't let go, unfortunately, of Chuck E. Cheese. And this is not because I'm a dad and I take my kids there.

I really just generally can't stand the place. You just love their pizza? It's gross. It's, no. I'm not looking forward to the Chuck E. Cheese era. The germ infested whatever. But one thing that has caught the internet by storm is this conspiracy theory

that has become re-upped by Shane Dawson, who's this 30-year-old internet personality. He's got like 20 million subscribers on YouTube. And he was wondering about why Chuck E. Cheese pizzas are not exactly perfectly circular. Now, this could be many reasons. Maybe they don't roll out the dough that well. I don't know about you.

It feels like that's not the focus. But when you make pizza at home, perhaps you got some dough from one of your favorite stores and you try to put it, you know, it doesn't always stick to the shape, right? That they just bypassed that likelihood and thought, hmm, maybe it's because not everyone finishes their pizza and the store is taking slices and reassembling them into pizzas for other people. This is what? I wasn't even aware.

Like Frankenstein pizzas? They're just putting them? So anyway, Chuck E. Cheese, CEC Entertainment Inc., the parent company of Mr. Cheeses, has not indicated whether they plan to take legal action against the YouTube star, The Washington Post wrote, but they did feel compelled to respond Tuesday to against the YouTube star, the Washington Post wrote. But they did feel compelled to respond Tuesday to the video.

They said the claims made in this video about Chuck E. Cheese's and our pizza are unequivocally false. No conspiracies here. Our pizzas are made to order and we prepare our dough fresh in restaurant, which means they're not always perfectly uniform in shape, but always delicious. I mean, fact check. I'm not sure about that. So before we move on, I just want to make sure I have the theory right, that they take leftover slices of pizza here and there and put them back into a circle and serve it to the next person. That's not how pizza works, right? Like a baked pizza cannot then be manipulated into dough, raw dough, and then remade. But they're all cut.

I think he's just saying they just- They're cut slices. And they're saying that they just like re-triangulate them all. Plop the slices. Because they're all about the same size pan. So they're saying, well, you got like six leftovers here, three leftovers there. Just put them together and make a new circle. It's a good idea.

I think you believe this theory. I think it's possible. But it's not. That's the best conspiracy theory you can have. It's also very low stakes unless you're a Chuck E. Cheese stockholder.

Good conspiracy theory is something possible, but very unlikely. Sue, is this going to be better or worse than Domenico's? Better, always.

It's a value judgment. You can ask Sue if she's better or worse than me. It's always better. Always better. My Can't Let It Go this week is a story about a senator with presidential aspirations, their Native American ancestry, that does not end or involve any controversy. Oh, wow.

Do you guys, have you ever seen the show Finding Your Roots, the PBS show with Henry Louis Gates? Yep. So they did an episode this week, which was, one, the show's great regardless. But they did an episode this week, which was one, the show's great regardless. But they did an your lineage through documentation, but then they also do DNA analysis. And they did both for, they did it for all three of them. And it turns out that Marco Rubio has Native American ancestry. And his great, great, great, great grandmother was fully Native American, which I believe makes him more Native American than Elizabeth Warren.

So you're saying Elizabeth Warren should have done her DNA test on Henry Louis Gates' show. It might have been a better way to handle it, right? It was a really cool episode. It also, side note, turns out that House Speaker Paul Ryan is also partially Ashkenazi Jewish. Who knew? That makes some sense. I kind of never thought I would do one of those 23andMes because I always thought it would be like, it's like 150 bucks. And I always joke that it would be like, and you're Irish.

But watching this makes me feel like I might be more complicated than I know. So, Scott, what can't you let go of this week? It's a very sad story. It's hopeful, but has a sad ending. And that is the death of the Opportunity Land Rover on Mars. Did you guys follow this? Oh, yeah. ending and that is the death of the opportunity land rover on mars did you guys follow this oh yeah so years and years and years ago uh spirit and opportunity rovers landed around the same

amount of time they were only supposed to have a lifespan of a few months because they just assumed the solar panels would get too dusty and that would be the end of it but they actually both ended up lasting for years and years uh spirit apparently fell into a sand trap at some point and that was the end of Spirit. But Opportunity kept going until last summer when they think a big dust storm might have killed off Opportunity. But they held out hope and kept calling it and kept calling it and kept calling it, saying, like, you still there? Hello? Waiting for a response.

And finally this week they cut the cord and they just declared Opportunity dead. Okay, I got hung up on one thing you just said, that the solar panels would get too dusty. Mars is a dusty place. Okay, except this is NASA, right? Yeah. If Mickey Mouse can have an underground hideaway where hands come out of things, you can't have like a blower or like some hand that comes out and like wipes the- Are you not impressed by them getting something to Mars

and having it last 90 days? It was only supposed to last 90 days. It seems like such a blind spot for something such a big thing to do. It lasted a decade past. It was totally right. It was only meant to last 90 days and it went for years and years and years and years.

They're going to open up a wormhole and the medicals are going to be like, eh, whatever. I'm not impressed. We're going to bend space and time and they and years. They're going to open up a wormhole and the medicals are going to be like, eh, whatever. I'm not impressed. No, that's not the point. We're going to like bend space and time and they'll be like, whatever. They're going to be like, oh, we can open up a wormhole. But if only we had like sunglasses because we could have like been able to, you know, block out the sun somehow.

It's like the low hanging fruit they missed. So we were talking about this a lot in the newsroom, and it got me thinking about, I hope it's not like the Martian where Opportunity wakes up, like, hello, anybody? Which led to this whole waste of an hour. Potatoes, that's the answer. This whole waste of an hour of what is the best space movie? And the loose definition that we had was,

it has to involve humans leaving Earth for space. So like Star Wars doesn't count. Star Trek, maybe borderline, but just like a going to space movie. I tweeted it. There were like 100 responses. Movies that came up a lot. The right stuff. I agree with.

That's in my final list for sure, if not the favorite, Apollo 13. Also, I would add on that list, Armageddon. Yes. Okay. Tim said this and I thought he was wrong. Armageddon is one of the best documentaries of all time. Exactly. Armageddon, the story of a bunch of kind of blue collar oil drillers going up to destroy an asteroid,

not to mention has the best movie space song of all time. I agree with that part, if nothing else of what you just said. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, a song which a 13-year-old me learned on the piano. Wow. And also, another fun fact about Armageddon is that they actually show Armageddon to incoming NASA scientists so that they can identify all the physics and science problems in that movie. This weekend, I'm going to watch Armageddon and go to Chuck E. Cheese. I really thought we were going to be talking about Apollo 13 for five minutes here.

But no, we ended up on Armageddon. And that's OK. Sometimes life takes you an unexpected twist. I don't want to close my eyes. Do you want to do your cat let it go or just sing? I don't want to fall asleep because I miss you, babe. And I don't want to miss a thing. Because even when I dream of you, the sweetest dream would never do.

I'd still miss you, babe. And I don't want to miss a thing. That was pretty good, Tim. I would like you to just keep singing, but I think the producers want you to give us your can't let it go. My can't let it go does have to do with music. So it's regarding a fellow Canadian who's trying to make it in the United States. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Just like me. You're Canadian? I'm dual. Okay. I'm Canadian-American. Congratulations. And it's Drake, rapper Drake. He and I share a birthday, too. It saying to be Canadian it's the trick sure basically Drake I consider

myself something of a Drake okay his mixtape so far gone came out ten years ago this week and that's the mixtape that launched him to international stardom and essentially every song you hear on the radio sounds like Drake featuring Drake because of this mixtape that came out that included the single Best I Ever Had, which we all know, right, from 10 years ago. You know a lot of girls be

Thinking my songs are about them But this is not to get confused This one's for you He's amazing. So, Tim, as a dual American-Canadian, you are uniquely prepared to answer this question. Is Drake more popular in America or in Canada? I don't know. You've been to Toronto lately? He owns Toronto, basically. I mean, if he is in Toronto, everything shuts down.

Really? Well, he is royalty in Toronto. Now, I might get some Toronto listeners saying that I'm not quite accurate on this. This is a controversial can't let it go across the board. The thing is that when Drake is in town, he actually changes the financials of various clubs and bars in that town. Okay, so I think Canada gets Drake. Happy anniversary to Drake.

That is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's more news. Until then, a reminder, we are hitting the road. We will be talking about stuff like this, as compelling as it sounds, in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday, March 8th. There are still some tickets. You can get them at nprpresents.org. I'm Scott Detroy. I cover Congress.

I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. See you guys later. See, this is the type of joint you got to dedicate to somebody. Let's make sure they that special somebody. Young money. Yeah.

Yeah. You know who you are. I got you.