The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, January 11

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

The main focus in Washington this week has been immigration, and the efforts to strike a bipartisan deal on DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. The administration also announced it will allow states to impose work requirements for Medicaid. And Senator Dianne Feinstein has a new nickname from Trump - sneaky Dianne - after she unilaterally released the transcript of a Senate interview with the head of Fusion GPS, the research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. This episode, host/congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, justice reporter Ryan Lucas and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

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The main focus in Washington this week, striking a bipartisan deal on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is, of course, expiring. The Trump administration also announced today it will allow states to impose work requirements for Medicaid. We'll explain what's happening there. And California Senator Dianne Feinstein has a new nickname from Trump, Sneaky Dianne. After she unilaterally released the transcript of a Senate interview with the head of Fusion GPS, that's the research firm behind the infamous dossier.

We'll talk about all that and much more. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. Before we get into the news, I need to ask both of you, do you think your family would

be functional and on the ball enough to all record a timestamp together in unison like the one we just heard? No, definitely not. Mara, do you think you can orchestrate that? No, absolutely not. I feel like the Detro family, the extended family, would be yelling at each other. I would devolve into some people shouting and maybe just like my dad giving up and walking away. Well, large groups of people all getting on the same page is an excellent segue into what we're talking about today. And that is the state of congressional negotiations over DACA. DACA, of course, expires in March. We've talked a lot about the fact that Trump set those wheels in motion in September, that there's lots of

general consensus on both sides to get to a deal, but it's really hard to get there. Kelsey, as we talk right now, mid-afternoon Thursday, it seems like there's been some sort of progress toward a deal. Walk us through the latest on that and what the parameters of an agreement seem to be looking like at this point in time. We were, all of us reporters in the Capitol, were standing in the basement by the subway, which is where we wait for senators when they come in to vote. And Senator Jeff Flake got off of one of the trains and said to us that they've got a deal. He said, we've got a bipartisan group and we're at a deal. I think we've got sound of him saying that.

We've got this bipartisan group. We are, you know, we're at a deal. And so we'll be talking to the White House about that. And I hope we can move forward with it. It's the only game in town. All of the reporters jumped on him and wanted to know everything we could. And that banging in the background is the door of a Senate train door shutting. The Congress train. The Congress train. One of the several. And then he went off and went into vote and then went to a party lunch.

By the time that he came out, other Republicans were saying, no, no, no, there is no deal. There is a deal among about six senators, this bipartisan group that's been working together. They have a deal. They have an agreement. But the White House, they haven't signed off on it yet. And some really important congressmen, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn from Texas, he is one of the main negotiators on this, says he hasn't even seen what is in this deal. So there's a deal of sorts.

But as Flake says, it's the only game in town. There is no other bill that we've seen or heard of. So we're at this crossroads. We're not sure exactly what's included in the deal. They haven't released anything. And we don't know where they go, but they do have a deadline that is one week and one day away. Okay. So Mara, we'll get to you and the White House's role in all of this in a moment. But Kelsey, from the conversations you've been having, can you give us a sense of what issues at least

would be part of an agreement, even if we don't know how they would be reconciled. Obviously, some sort of status protection for DACA protectees. These are about 800,000 or so people who are in the country illegally who came here as children. There's been a lot of push for some sort of increased border security, whether you want to call it a wall or not. What else? There's conversation about how many members of one's family could be included for immigration protections or who could have access to citizenship, paths of citizenship. We hear that called chain migration. We call that family unification. You can pick however you want to describe it. But there is a debate about whether or not people who have a status here in the United States

should be able to share that status or extend that status to their immediate nuclear family, so children and spouses, or if that should include parents or stepbrothers or cousins or aunts, grandparents. That's all being debated right now. The other big debate is about what is a wall? Yes. We've heard the White House say a number of things about what a wall is. And here in Congress, they're trying to figure out if you could, you know, satisfy the president by saying that a wall is a fence or a wall is a virtual wall made up of sensors and drones

and people roving the border. So the definition of a wall is a big deal. And the idea of who gets to come into this country and how you get to bring your family along is a big part of this problem. So this is all happening, by and large, behind closed doors. And it's the it's the typical game of chasing people down the hallway trying to fill in the details. But Mara, earlier this week on Tuesday, there was a meeting that was definitely not behind the scenes. President Trump meeting with lawmakers from both parties and cabinet officials in the cabinet room. Why don't you set the scene and explain what a pool spray is and what it typically looks like and what happened Tuesday? Normally, when the president meets with members of Congress, as he was doing on Tuesday, the pool, the small group of reporters who represent their various

media, radio, wire, print, etc., TV, are ushered in for just a few minutes at the top of the meeting and the president says something, maybe some of the senators say something too, and then the pool is ushered out. And then the meeting continues in private. But on Tuesday, Trump decided to let the pool, the press, stay there for 55 minutes. And there was a lot. And in essence, we were watching Trump, quote, negotiate with a group, a bipartisan group of senators. So that was extraordinary. The meeting did continue behind closed doors after that 55 minutes. but a lot of really interesting things happened while the cameras were rolling. And let's listen to two different moments within the span of, it was 55 minutes total. Here's what Trump said toward the top of the meeting in terms of how hard or soft of a stance he's taking on these negotiations. And Chuck, I will say, when this group comes back, hopefully with an agreement, this group and others from the Senate, from the House comes back with an agreement,

I'm signing it. I mean, I will be signing it. I'm not going to say, oh, gee, I want this or I want that. I'll be signing it because I have a lot of confidence in the people in this room that you're going to come up with something really good. So then at one point, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked him, would you sign a clean DACA bill? That's something Democrats have pushed for. And clean means just dealing with the status of DACA protectees, nothing else. And he said, sure, I'll sign that. A couple of Republicans pushed back saying, well, we want other stuff, too. And then this is how Trump defined clean a couple minutes later. No, I think a clean DACA bill to me is a DACA bill where we take care

of the 800,000 people. They're actually not necessarily young people. Everyone talks about young. You know, they could be 40 years old, 41 years old, but they're also 16 years old. But I think to me, a clean bill is a bill of DACA. We take care of them and we also take care of security. That's very important. And I think the Democrats want security, too. But then after that, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that their view of a, quote, clean bill also included changes to the legal immigration process. So, Mara, two questions here. What does President Trump want? President Trump wants to sign something. He wants to sign something that does two basic things. One, security, something he can sell to his base as a wall. And he also wants a bill, obviously,

that takes care of the DACA kids, the pool of 800,000 or so people who were brought here, most of them illegally when they were children. But the problem is that we don't know if the president is willing to sell to his base a bill that includes a path to citizenship for the DACA recipients, because that's something that a lot of his hardcore base considers to be amnesty. We also don't know, as Kelsey pointed out before, exactly what kind of wall he needs. Now, Kellyanne Conway, his advisor, was on television saying that experts have told the president, the president has, quote, discovered that you don't need a 2,000-mile concrete wall. We've heard Republicans on television today saying we just have to have a border security plan that some people will call the wall, some people as in Donald Trump. So we're waiting to find out the answers to those questions.

So, Kelsey, how relevant has Trump's shifting views been to the negotiations happening at the Capitol? Well, it has played a big role in that people are trying to figure out what exactly did Trump mean? And when he says he'll sign anything, does he really mean anything? It doesn't seem like that's the case, because if this group says they have a deal and it sounds like the White House doesn't accept it, then maybe he won't just sign anything. I know this is a theme that we have come back to a couple of times on the podcast, but this idea that down over here in the Capitol, we spend a lot of time trying to divine what is real and what isn't about what the president says. And as in all of those previous cases, it's kind of a question mark until he puts pen to paper and signs the bill. And amid all of this, another curveball happened this week. This is all motivated by the deadline, two deadlines here. One is the early March expiration of DACA.

But more importantly to these negotiations is the fact that the next government funding deadline is January 19th. There's a lot of push to resolve this around the 19th as well. But we got a ruling from a U.S. district judge in California that granted a request by California and other states to keep DACA going, at least until these lawsuits play out in court. So that seems to, from the moment at least, take away that March deadline. Has that had an effect on these talks at all? No, I have spoken to both Republicans and Democrats who say they don't view the court ruling as changing the deadline. If anything, the thing that's changing the deadline is the fact that they can't get a deal done.

They seem like they are ready and the House seems to be preparing to start the process for a short term spending bill. So something that will keep the government open for maybe another month. It looks like maybe sometime mid-February they would extend the funding until that's not yet settled. But if they do that, which seems very, very likely at this point, it would give them a little bit more time to get something done. And leaders here in the Senate are saying that they actually think that they have maybe till the end of January to get a final bill passed. That doesn't mean that they won't have the outlines of a deal or an agreement in principle done before the 19th. But they're setting themselves up for a situation where something signed pen to paper, signed into law may not happen in the next week or so.

So one other thing I want to talk about, Mara, you mentioned it before, a lot of the dynamics here come down to defining wall versus no wall and how President Trump is approaching this and how he needs to be able to claim some sort of victory. It's an interesting flip side on the Democratic side because a wall and the call for a wall has become such a shorthand for everything that many people in the Democratic base are just repelled by when it comes to how Trump approaches immigration. So one thing I did this week was ask a lot of Democrats, OK, you say you're on board with expanded border security, beefing up existing border security, but you say you're against a wall. Where do you draw the line between those two things? And I never really got a straight

answer. So this is from an interview I did with Bernie Sanders, who, of course, is not a Democrat, but caucuses with the Democrats. And when it comes to Congress, he's, for all intents and purposes, a Democrat. What is the difference for you? How do you define the difference between beefing up border security and funding a wall? Because a lot of this seems to be semantic at this point. I don't think so. You know, walls probably were a great idea in the 15th century when the Chinese built their Great Wall. You know what? Technology has advanced just a little bit. And we have the absurd situation that the Trump administration is cutting or delaying funding for border surveillance in a number of ways. We now have

high-tech solutions to border security. Everybody wants to have strong border security. Spending $18 billion on a wall is not the most cost-effective way of doing that. So I play that because I got a similar answer from a lot of Democrats where they couldn't quite say where the difference is. Are they a no vote on any addition of any fencing at all? Like, how do you define this? It doesn't seem like there's a clear answer. Well, I think that you can't look at these pieces separately. I think that if the Democrats get a path to citizenship for dreamers, that's going to go a long way towards helping them swallow something that they have, A, voted for in the past, border security, and B, become a symbol of xenophobia under Donald Trump. In other words, Democrats have voted for funding for physical barriers on the

border in the past. But when Donald Trump made the wall into a symbol of xenophobia, it became kind of kryptonite for the Democratic base. But so what I think is so interesting is you've got, this is how the government is supposed to work. People are trying to make a compromise. That means that both sides don't get everything they want. You have the president's base, people like Mark Levin and Ann Coulter on Conservative Talk Radio going, wow, we're not going to get a 2000 mile physical barrier. We're going to have to swallow path to citizenship. Mexico isn't paying for this.

So they're going to have to swallow path to citizenship. Mexico isn't paying for this. So they're going to feel betrayed. And then you've got the left wing base who says, wow, we're going to we're going to agree to something that might erect some more fencing. I think this is all about how each side sells what finally comes out. And I've been told that in the private part of that meeting, when the cameras left, the president turned to the senators and in effect said, you know what, when we finish this, I'm going to be out there selling security. You're going to be out there selling what you got from Dreamers. And, you know, I like my position better. So, Kelsey, flip side of that, how hard will it be to get enough House Republicans especially to vote for something that does provide a path to citizenship, even if they get all of these border and immigration changes that they want? That is a really serious problem and a serious question right now, because most of the negotiations that we have seen have been happening in the Senate. And we saw that reflected in what

Senator Flake said. This is the only game in town. And that game is happening in Senator Dick Durbin's office, which is really not a good selling point if you're trying to get a bunch of House Republicans to vote for something. So that may be part of what is causing the hesitation on the part of the White House and on the part of Republican leaders. There's supposed to be some new group that's getting together. They're calling themselves the number twos, the deuces, the whips, all kinds of fun names for this group of the number two members in the House and the Senate and Democrats and Republicans, the four of them. Their staffers are getting together. They're hoping some deal will come together.

Right now, it's a really big question mark what the House is going to accept. I'll tell you what the House will accept, something that Donald Trump is willing to back and sell to his base. That's what I'm hearing from people on the Hill. Will the White House back this? And if they do, they believe that Donald Trump can go out there and tell his hardcore base, who believe that a path to citizenship is amnesty, that it's okay in this case, because look at all the other stuff that we'll get. This is probably the first real compromise that has occurred in the Trump era. Potential compromise, obviously, as Kelsey keeps on pointing out, is not done yet.

But the question is, if it really happens and both sides have to give something up and both the bases of both parties are not happy, how does Donald Trump, the super salesman, he might not be a super negotiator, as we heard in that long 55-minute tape, but he is supposed to be a super salesman. Can he sell this? Yeah, Mara's totally right on that. And the other thing that I think is interesting is that you don't really technically need House conservatives to vote for this. You just need 218 House members, period. So if you could cobble together a bunch of moderate Democrats and a bunch of moderate Republicans and get something passed, that would be novel. It would be unpopular, but it would get you a bill that could go to the president's desk. So how rare would it be for Republicans who control the House, of course, to to hold a vote on something they know the majority of Republicans don't support? Incredibly rare.

Can we even think of the last time that happened? No. Last thing on all of this, I have made a professional New Year's resolution not to say the word optics that much. So I won't say that. I would add meme to that. You would add, well, it's harder not to say meme, Mara. We live in a meme world, but that's okay. Just to talk about that meeting again, because that meeting happens after a weekend dominated by the news of that Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, and questions related to that book and outside of that book about Trump's stamina, about his seriousness of approaching the job of president of the United States. Mara, it feels like it was no accident that after all of that conversation, Trump says, you know what? Watch me preside over a meeting for an hour. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, this has happened before. I mean, he is the consummate showman and he figures out how to extract theatrics from even things that other people would consider boring or humdrum. Meeting at the White House, good opportunity to show that he can control the room. He certainly didn't look like he was, you know, impaired in any way. Now, he definitely couldn't follow the details of policy. That was obvious. But the same thing, this is how he signs executive orders that are basically meaningless. He makes a huge show. He has this incredibly dramatic signature. It's kind of four inches high and big black Sharpie. And then he holds it up and as if it's the most important, you know, the Magna Carta. And, you know, he took the opportunity after Fire and Fury to try to push

back against the portrait that was painted of him in any way that he could. And he even said that should give the news some material for a while. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back and talk about changes to Medicaid and some other executive actions that the Trump administration took this week. 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. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states.

NMLS consumeraccess.org, number 3030. All right, we're back. And the Trump administration announced today that it's going to allow states to impose work requirements for able-bodied adults on Medicaid. Mara, Trump had been talking about making broader changes to Medicaid and other entitlement programs. Walk us through what this specifically means. What this means is that the Trump administration is going to give states waivers if they ask for them to establish, for the first time ever, work requirements for Medicaid recipients. And it would mean that able-bodied, working-age people who are enrolled in Medicaid would be allowed under these various

state programs, they would be required to get a job or participate in some kind of related activity like job training in order to keep their Medicaid coverage. Now, it wouldn't affect elderly people in nursing homes or people who are disabled. And about 60 percent of non-elderly adults who are able-bodied are already working part or full time. But the idea is this is a longstanding conservative goal that welfare programs should not be a, quote, hammock, and they should encourage people to get off of welfare, get off of Medicaid. So this is only if states want to do this, right? That's right. And mostly Republican states have applied for these kind of waivers. But I think the bigger picture is that Trump wanted to do something called welfare reform this year.

He seems to have backed away from that because he realizes he won't be able to pass legislation because it would need Democratic votes. But he can do a certain amount just through executive action like waivers. And this is something that his base really likes when he mentions welfare reform in a speech and talks about the person next door to you who doesn't have a job and he collects all this money and you're out there, you know, busting your butt working three jobs, he gets a big cheer for it. But putting this into effect in the real world is pretty complicated. So that is one example of Trump's, you know, base instincts, seeing their way into executive branch policies. There was another really interesting development this week. This had

to do with offshore drilling in federal waters. So earlier in the week, the Interior Department, which regulates this, issued a draft ruling, which would take a long time to go into effect, but they started the process of massively expanding offshore drilling. That's something the Obama administration had worked to scale back, and the Trump administration was opening wide open. So a couple days later, though, Ryan Zinke follows up and says that they are going to go forward with offshore drilling off all states, except for Florida. And he issues this statement that I'm going to read here. It's a little long, but it's worth listening to. So he says, Florida, you're good.

You don't have to have any offshore drilling. And he says, quote, I have witnessed Governor Scott's leadership through hurricane season and I'm working closely with him on Everglades restoration. He is a straightforward leader that can be trusted. President Trump has directed me

to rebuild our offshore oil and gas program in a manner that supports our national energy policy and also takes into consideration the local and state voice. I support the governor's position that Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver. As a result of the discussion with Governor Scott and his leadership, I am removing Florida from consideration for any new oil and gas programs. So immediately, a lot of other states, particularly California, said, hey, our state is unique. Our coasts are reliant on tourism. I would even say our governors are straightforward leaders. We don't want drilling off our shores

either. Mara, what do you make of this decision and then saying, hey, Florida, a state I won, a governor that I work with that I hope to run for Senate, you're good? I think this has been just extraordinary that almost every single coastal state is saying no, thank you. And you're not even getting big response from oil and gas companies who want to drill. It seems like they, of course, you know, Secretary Zinke has subsequently said this has nothing to do with playing favorites, and he's willing to hear requests from both Democratic and Republican governors. Sounds like nobody wants this off their coastline. But Mara, I feel like we can go through and tick off a ton of different policies or executive actions or statements that Trump has made that really do benefit the states he won,

the states where his base is strong, at the expense of states that he lost. And I think, you know, top of mind is the way that the tax bill turned out, where blue states, Democratic states with higher state taxes really pay a price and lower tax states, Republican states benefit. There's no doubt about it. He's pursued a very meticulous base strategy, red state oriented strategy in all sorts of ways. The interesting thing about this oil and gas decision is it backfired and got all tangled up into knots. I mean, first, he was pleasing the oil and gas industry, as he's done with almost every single environmental policy or decision, and opening up the coastline to drilling.

Then when the state of Florida, which, as you said, is one of the states he wants to win again, where he won, he supports the governors if he wants to run for senator there. They gave him an exemption. And then you have all the rest of the states saying, sorry, I don't want this either. So I think this one just backfired. Couldn't it also come back and be a problem when they are trying to campaign in these states when, you know, in 2018 and Republicans are trying to stand with the president or even in 2020 when Trump's trying to presumably run again? Well, absolutely. And in this case, they just underestimated how popular the environment is. And people think that drilling off the coast is dangerous for the environment. And they don't want an oil spill to, it's not just the environment, they don't want an oil spill to hurt the tourism industry or anything else in their

states. Well, the other issue is that at the moment when it comes to the domestic drilling scene, supply is not the problem. We are at record levels of oil supply because of hydraulic fracturing and the boom that that caused to the point where oil prices really cratered over the last few years because there was just so much oil coming onto the market. So whether it comes to offshore drilling or whether it comes to allowing drilling in Alaska's Anwar, which finally happened after decades of attempts in the tax bill, obviously the oil industry wants to be able to drill more places. But at the moment, they're not itching to drill new wells.

They need to kind of shift things in the other direction, if anything. Yeah, this goes under the category of wrong answer to the right question. Well, all right. We are going to take one more quick break. When we come back, what we learned with the release of those Fusion GPS transcripts. Each and every morning, there are a whole lot of places you can look for news. Try this instead, though. Listen to Up First.

Up First is the morning news podcast from NPR. One tap and 10 minutes later, you have started the day informed. Find Up First on the NPR One app and wherever you listen to podcasts. And we are back. We have another person in the room, Justice Reporter Ryan Lucas. Hey, Ryan. Howdy. Big week this week when Senator Dianne Feinstein, a.k.a. Sneaky Dianne, according to President Trump,

so she decides to unilaterally release the transcripts of the head of Fusion GPS's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last summer. Now, Fusion GPS, to remind people, is the firm that commissioned the now infamous secret dossier on alleged Trump ties to Russia, had many claims that have turned out to be verified, many claims, you know, one in particular that have not been verified. Unsubstantiated. Unsubstantiated. Ryan, you had the distinct pleasure of reading 300 pages of a transcript on a tight news deadline. 312.

312. Don't want to shortchange those 12. But who's counting? Nobody. Nobody. Let's start with this big picture. Did you learn anything you didn't know before? And did you learn anything that changes the general framework of how to approach this investigation? Did I learn anything that I didn't know before? Yes. Did we learn anything that changes our understanding of the investigation?

No. As for what we didn't know before, we didn't know, for example, what sort of interactions Christopher Steele had with the FBI. Christopher Steele, of course, is the former British intelligence operative who was hired by Fusion GPS to collect information. Which is why we call it the Steele dossier. Which is why we call it the Steele dossier. Exactly. And what we learned was that after Steele compiled the information for his first report on Trump's Russia ties, he was so concerned by what he saw that he was worried that Trump might have been subject to blackmail by the Russians. And this led him to say, you know what, maybe we need to talk to U.S. law enforcement about this. Maybe we need to talk to the FBI.

One more question about the contents of the transcript itself before we get to the broader way that this fits into the political argument, because I think that was probably the bigger dynamic at this point. But there was the Twitter version of a flare that shot up at some point during the day that this transcript was released saying there is a shocking new development in this transcript that the FBI said at one point that they had an informant, a mole inside the Trump campaign. This is the way that this kind of was being framed on Twitter after the Twitter game of telephone at a certain point. And in news reports. Yes, that's how it was presented. Explain how that shook out and what the transcript actually did say here. So the transcript basically says that Steele had a meeting with the FBI in Rome in September of 2016, so more than a month before the election. And Steele was told, as Glenn

Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, relates it in this transcript, was told that the FBI had a walk-in informant, somebody who was concerned by what he saw in the Trump campaign about ties between Russia and Trump associates. And he approached the FBI. And the reason why this is important is because the FBI took it seriously and took Steele seriously, because what Steele was telling them that he had heard about Trump-Russia ties corresponded to what they were hearing from this alleged walk-in informant. Now, what has later come out is reporting that Simpson may have mischaracterized what Steele was reportedly told by the FBI. As Simpson tells it, the FBI had told Steele that they had an inside source within the Trump campaign, when in fact, he may have been referring to a tip that the FBI received about contacts between folks within the Trump camp and Russia. Okay. So let's talk about

something else here. Fusion GPS, the research firm that commissioned this report, and the Steele dossier itself have become a major political football when it comes to this investigation and when it comes to Republican critiques of the investigation. Absolutely. It starts with the claim that President Trump's been making a lot lately that the FBI started its entire investigation off this bogus dossier. And therefore, the entire investigation is also bogus. That is the way that President Trump and his allies have been framing this. How much does that align to what we know? So we know that the FBI launched its investigation in July of 2016, because James Comey, then FBI director, has said as much.

Though, of course, he did not say that in 2016. No, he did not. To the frustration of Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign. Indeed. We know that Christopher Steele, the man behind the dossier, met with the FBI in late June or early July. We learned this from the transcript, where he first expressed his concerns about what he had learned about alleged ties between Trump and Russia and the fact that Trump may have been subject to blackmail. We know that by September, when Steele reportedly gave the FBI a full debrief of what he had learned up to that point, that the FBI had already had concerns,

had already learned from a tip that they had about questionable contacts between the Trump campaign, Trump associates, and Russia. So the transcript would seem to undermine the allegations of Republicans that the dossier is the foundational document of the FBI's investigation. Why did Dianne Feinstein release this document? Why didn't she consult with Chuck Grassley? There has been a long running partisan street fight over this investigation. It has grown increasingly partisan. The lines of investigation that both Republicans and Democrats are taking have diverged. And you have to remember that last week, Chuck Grassley, who's the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham, who's a member, both Republicans, referred

Christopher Steele to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, saying that he allegedly lied to the FBI about contacts that he had with journalists. Now, they did that over the head of Dianne Feinstein. They did it without consulting her, and that made her quite upset. She released a statement about that on Friday. And so this, in a sense, releasing this transcript is Democrats returning fire and saying, if you're going to use the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS as a political football, you know what? We are going to give it to the public for them to make their own conclusions. And you can no longer cherry pick references out of it or allude to things that are in there when they may or may not be in there. about whether special counsel Robert Mueller would request an interview with President Trump and what that interview would look like or whether it would even happen.

First of all, why was this such a topic of conversation this week? Was there any official action indicating this is something that could happen soon? There were news reports that came out in which it was stated that there have been conversations between the special counsel's office and the White House about basically that the special counsel might at some point want to talk to Trump, which is kind of a, yeah, of course. And nothing had been decided at this point as far as has been publicly reported. The special counsel's office, of course, is not commenting on this publicly. There have been kind of conflicting messages from the White House. I believe that White House

lawyers have said, you know, we're going to cooperate with the special counsel's office and its investigation as much as is necessary. And then Trump. Yeah. So Trump before had said he would be 100 percent willing to testify in this matter. But when he was asked about that yesterday at a press conference, here's what he said. Would you be open to it? We'll see what happens. I mean, certainly I'll see what happens. But when they have no collusion and nobody's found any collusion at any level, it seems unlikely that you'd even have an interview. So Sarah Sanders said today the White House is cooperating. Nothing has changed. So there you go.

Mara, Kelsey, I've got to ask, do you feel up to speed on all the Russia stuff based on listening to Ryan? I feel as up to speed as I ever feel about Russia. I really appreciate when we do this because I need to catch it up every once in a while. A lot of threads. So Ryan is not letting that go for the benefit of the rest of us, which we appreciate. So we're going to end the show now, like we do every week, with Can't Let It Go, where we all share one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Mara, you get to go first. What you got? I get to go first, and she joined more than 100 other French women to push back at least a little bit against the Me Too movement and its French turned into a juggernaut and did a lot of really terrific things, like made certain kind of behaviors completely verboten, has also caused a

lot of confusion. And what Catherine Deneuve and her compatriots are saying is that rape is a crime and sexual predation is a crime, but insistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime. And they are basically asking the Me Too movement to define some things. What are the standards and what exactly is the difference between, you know, a failed pass that you can just get rid of with either a slap on the face or back off, pal? And what are the kinds of things that really should rise to the level of someone losing their job? So I think that's pretty interesting. And this debate is continuing and it needs a lot of definition.

And I think that's what she was asking for. Interesting. How about you, Kelsey? Well, I am still thinking about The Golden Globes. So I really, really loved Lady Bird. I liked a lot of the other movies that were nominated, but I really loved that movie. And I was surprised that Greta Gerwig wasn't even nominated for Best Director. I know that this came up a lot over the past week.

And I just keep thinking about it. Like, there are a lot of women directors out there. And if people aren't getting nominated, I don't know. It just,'s a it's it's it's a bummer, especially after it comes after that big Oprah Me Too speech. And then Natalie Portman says, and here are all the male nominees. Yeah, it's like record screech. Yeah, it was it was it was a little bit rough. And she hasn't been nominated in subsequent awards nominations processes so far either. So we'll see what happens. There's still more to come, but that was a big bummer. All right, so I will go next

because there is some overlap here, but that's okay. I have been trying to make my way through all of the awards contenders, and I did see Lady Bird earlier this week, and it's been an honest-to-God-can't-let-it-go because it is such a good movie. It has been stuck in my head ever since, and there was a lot of things going for me because I graduated from a single-sex Catholic high school in the same year that this

movie's senior in a single-sex Catholic high school graduates. The movie's about her senior year. Then I ended up living in Sacramento for a couple of years when the movie takes place. So there were a lot of dynamics going for me that were going to make me really like this movie, but it's such a good movie. And especially when, like, I feel like there are so many, like, check-off-all-the-boxes movies lately, even with awards movies. Like, I don't think I need to see another

World War II movie based in Britain again my entire life, because, like, six come out a year. No offense to Darkest Hour, but, like, we've been there. This is just, like, a really original good movie that made me happy, and also a little bit sad. It was a really good movie. You should see it if you haven't seen it. It's on my list. It's on my list. It's very good.

Ryan, you got last. Okay. Mine's a little bit closer to home. I got home the other day from work. This would have been late last week. I recently got a dog. Yes. A nine-month, ten-month-old puppy. And I discovered that my dog had eaten part of a toothbrush.

Oh, no. A green toothbrush. And she seemed fine, but as the days progressed, she got worse. Oh, no. Had some issues. So I took her to the vet, got an x-ray. And the x-ray, I think, is going to be a Christmas card at some point. Because you can see...

A toothbrush? Well, no. She chewed it up into tiny little pieces that look like sprinkles in her stomach. The thing is, those are actually green plastic sprinkles. The good news is, she is now healthy and fine and beyond the road to recovery. She's off the road to recovery now and instead just shredding documents and papers. My dog likes to eat books. And we have now had to move all of the books off the lower shelves because she likes to pull a book down.

There's usually an overlap with the books I really like and just kind of read it by ripping pages out. But I feel like an early part of dog ownership is the my dog ate what waiting game. Oh, guys, I've been talking about getting a dog for so long and you're scaring me. It's worth it. It's worth it once you figure out how to hide the specific. I'm glad your dog is OK. Thank you. Thank you.

That is a wrap for this week. We will be back in your feed soon. You can find all the political coverage we're doing in between at NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and on your local public radio station. We've got that live show in D.C. next week. Many of you have been tweeting at it saying, when are you coming to my town? Well, if you live in Cleveland, we are coming to your town. We just announced we are going to do a show in Cleveland on Friday, February 23rd. It's at the Ohio Theater

at Playhouse Square. We'll have more information soon. But if you Google Ohio Theater at Playhouse Square, you can find that. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And Ryan's dog is okay. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.