The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, June 21

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Congress struggles to commit to immigration legislation, while the First Lady heads to the U.S.-Mexico border to visit children who have been separated from their parents. The Supreme Court reshapes how Americans shop online, and the United States withdraws from the United Nations Human Rights Council. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, political editor Domenico Montanaro, and State Department correspondent Michele Kelemen. 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

Hi, this is Chris. And this is Hannah. And we are in Central Park. Everyone around us is asleep, and we are waiting online to get tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. This podcast was recorded at 3.18 p.m. on Thursday, June 21st. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this. Okay, here's the show. Sound like they were whispering. Yeah, because everyone's asleep. What time of day was that? You got to go early to get those tickets. Well, hey there. This is the NPR Politics Podcast, and we are here with a weekly roundup of the biggest

political stories. Congress sort of votes on immigration. The Supreme Court is out with the decision to end tax-free shopping as we know it. Plus, why the U.S. is withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Well, it has been a whirlwind of a week around immigration. We've actually already done two podcasts on the topic, the first one about the Trump administration's policy of separating kids from their parents at the border. And then we did another podcast on the reversal of that policy.

But that means that a lot of immigration decisions are sort of being left in limbo. There's a lot that's still really undecided. And Congress is, I should say, or was supposed to be voting on some measures that would offer some clarity on that. So, Scott, what happened? You're up on the hill. Yeah, the focus today in Congress is not as much on the family separation, though, that's certainly hanging over everything and continues to, but on yet another attempt to pass a broad bill that provides some sort of permanent protection for people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and also does a lot of the stuff that President Trump wants to see with any bill doing that. A lot of money for a border wall and border security and big

changes to legal immigration. Now, as we talk right now, the House just took up a very conservative immigration bill and it failed by a pretty wide margin. They were supposed to vote on a second bill crafted with House Republican leaders backed by President Trump that would do all of the things that the president wants to see. That vote has now been delayed until tomorrow. We were already really skeptical that this bill would have enough votes to pass, and delaying it by a day is a sure sign that right now it does not have enough votes to pass. I feel like this is sort of deja vu because we constantly have heard in the last few months about immigration votes potentially

coming up. They're obviously often not being Democratic buy-in for some of these pieces of legislation. And Scott, what you're describing sounds exactly like that same situation. It is the exact same dynamics that have tanked every previous effort to do some sort of fix for immigration. Most of those efforts have failed before they've gotten to the floor. The best parallel is a Senate vote that happened earlier this year where only 39 lawmakers voted for that bill. And here's the problem. The president is insisting on these four pillars as he talks about it, and they are very hard to square with each other and get people on the same page for all of them. Ayesha, just remind us again real quick what those four pillars are that we constantly are

hearing about that Donald Trump says he needs in any piece of legislation that he will sign. So there is the permanent protections for the DREAMers. Then you have the visa lottery, which President Trump hates. He wants to get rid of it. Then there's the issue of border security and possibly border wall. And then you have this idea of stopping or limiting how people can bring other people over for citizenship when they migrate to this country. So basically, I guess, helping to sponsor other members of their family, extended members of their family for citizenship. Democrats want a permanence for DACA. That's pretty clear. They have said they're willing to spend billions of dollars on border security to get it. That is a compromise

that could pass, that would pass if it came up for a vote. But the White House is insisting on these changes to legal immigration, and that loses them every single Democratic vote because they just don't want to make big changes to legal immigration. And then you have to do it only with Republicans. And there's enough Republicans who don't want to see a pathway for DACA protectees that you don't have the votes. So what does this mean, especially for leadership there? Right. Well, on immigration especially, there's this huge split in the Republican Party that they can't figure out. But look at issue after issue. Except for the big tax cut bill, Republicans and the House Republicans have had a really hard time passing their agenda at a time when they control all aspects of the federal government. So this is another case of not having a clear game plan, not having the votes in hand moving forward.

And I think it's going to lead to more calls or at least rumblings about whether or not House Speaker Paul Ryan should finish the rest of the year as House Speaker. He's kind of a lame duck right now because he's retiring at the end of the year. But there's no real clear successor for House Speaker. The other thing that's worth mentioning is President Trump came to Capitol Hill this week to meet with House Republicans. And the idea was that he was going to give his backing to this effort. And he ended up saying, yeah, I endorse both these bills. I'm for them. And then talking about a whole bunch of other things in that meeting with House Republicans. And then he went and insulted Mark Sanford, the South Carolina congressman who lost a primary recently, mostly because he's criticized Trump. Interesting thing this morning. I mean, one of the main themes of this year is that it's the Republicans who are

retiring who are more blunt publicly about the dynamics. Raul Labrador, the Idaho Republican, who's a member of the Tea Party caucus, the Freedom Caucus, said that he thought that by insulting Mark Sanford and then tweeting about it, Trump heard his cause and maybe even lost some votes because he said the point of that meeting was for the president to say he had our backs. And then he went and insulted one of us and didn't really have our backs. I want to pivot a little bit back to the conversation around kids, because that's where it feels like this conversation has been for the past week. Right. And we've heard so much outrage and at times even from Republicans around this. So, Domenico, help us understand, you know, the president signed an executive order, right?

Right. And in theory, that halts the situation. But then, Scott, you're saying nothing on the Hill has actually resolved that situation. So where are we in the conversation of what is going to happen to these children? Well, we know the president this week, because of all the images that were being seen on TV. And, you know, the pressure that really moderate Republicans on Capitol Hill who might be vulnerable in their reelections, because of the pressure, the political pressure that the White House was facing, and that they were facing, the president decided to sign this executive order. But when you dig into the executive order, there's still a potential problem here. And under one of the clauses, it says that the attorney

general will file a request with federal court to modify the settlement agreement in Flores versus Sessions. Now, the Flores settlement was done in 1997. It was a 12-year process to even get that settlement in. It was a class action suit that was looking at the rights of detainees. So what they wound up settling on eventually was that you couldn't hold children for longer than 20 days in detention. So the problem here is that if you're going to have families together, unified, and you have children in detention, you still can't hold those children for 20 days. You can hold the adults who are being prosecuted with a misdemeanor for crossing the border illegally. So what the Trump administration did, what President Trump did in

this executive order, is the rest of that clause says that they want to be able to, because of present resource constraints, that they want to be able to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings. In other words, they want to be able to waive the 20-day rule and hold them indefinitely if that's what it comes down to, essentially. And that's all, it sounds like, in limbo in terms of its legality right now. Oh, absolutely, because that's going to wind up having more lawsuits that are pushed through in the same way that the Obama administration had to deal with lawsuits about its family detention centers because of the very same issue.

So, Scott, were any of the bills that were introduced today at all trying to resolve that issue? Yeah, both of the Republican bills had language in it that would change the rules, lift those 20-day bans, and allow families to be housed together. You've also seen similar efforts being talked about in the Senate, though it seems that the president signing that order changing policy really slowed down the urgency. Senate Republican leaders have been talking about passing something this week. I think that conversation is off the table for now. So these children have been held in essentially shelters, right, in many places, specifically kind of around the border.

And today, the first lady, Melania Trump, visited two of these facilities in Texas. And Aisha, you've been following this a bit, right? So give us a sense of what she went down there to do. And did she have anything to say as it sort of related specifically to the policy? So the first lady did go down to Texas today, and she said, or her office said, that she went down there because she wanted to talk to the people working there and see for herself exactly what is going on.

The workers or the children? The workers and the children. She wanted to see, she wanted to thank the authorities who have been working on this issue, and the officials who have been working on this issue, and she wanted to see the children for herself. So she did go. Her spokeswoman, she said that the first lady had said she wanted to go down and visit herself, that basically this is all the first lady. And she also talked about how the first lady supports the reunification of these

families, because that's a big question right now for the children that have already been separated from their parents. How do they get back? How do they get back together with them? And so that's part of what they said that the first lady is focusing on and that what the first lady wants. To me, it was also a really striking image of a desire to sort of soften the conversation, which I think has become so polarized in recent days. In fact, I was talking to some Republicans who had some qualms about how Donald Trump was navigating this space. And he really did get a lot of heat around this particular issue compared to some other issues that have not been as polarized.

And I've been taken by Melania has not been front and center as a first lady that has not been her MO but on this issue she did decide to step out and to put out a statement before the reversal saying that she felt like something could be done now people could read different things into that whether she was actually contradicting her husband or not but she did say she didn't like these images of these children being separated and now she took the step of going down to to the border i do think that it's interesting that it's kind of being put on the women kind of melania and ivanka to moderate president trump to sort of soften to soften and so it does kind of play to this kind of this it plays to this idea of women i guess because what we have have a uterus that we have to that we have to soften take care of the children yeah and and it does allow president

trump to say i'm tough but you know ivanka and melania were talking to me so i you know i kind of took this step but although president trump did in all fairness say that he didn't like these images either well speaking of images i feel like like we should point out that all of those goals that you're talking about right there might be a little overshadowed in the end because of a fashion choice that Melania Trump made. Would you call it a fashion faux pas or was it intentional? Well, here's the problem. We don't know. We're the fashionista. Okay, Scott, first explain the att attire the choice problem here i think you know i made it to mid

june so uh i'll consider this a win but i had made a new year's resolution as a journalist not to talk about optics at any point that was bad optics because often i think that doesn't really mean anything but this is a case of bad optics. Melania Trump wore a jacket on this trip that on the back reads, in all caps, white paint, I really don't care, do you? So we should describe. This is a Zara jacket. It costs, I believe, $39. One of the more price accessible items that Melania Trump has this feature.

It's a green kind of military style yeah military yeah military style jacket and she wore it and it should be pointed out she wore it on on her way getting on to uh the plane to go to texas here in dc so she wore it in dc she did not wear it in Texas. Her spokesperson said, basically, this is just a jacket. And she hopes that people will not focus on this. They'll focus on the reason why Melania went down to Texas. So what's your take, Aisha? What I will say, and we talked about this. We were just talking about this before we turned this on.

We were talking about this. Any first lady wearing a message or words on her jacket, it's going to be scrutinized. There's no way that's for anybody. And so for, it's just for a first lady, everything you do is scrutinized. And so particularly if you have words on your jacket that says,

I don't really care, that's going to get attention and you're going, this is such a sensitive, emotional issue for people. It has been, for people, it's gut-wrenching when you're talking about separating children from their parents. So to have those words on that coat, it does, it is going to distract from whatever she was trying to do down there. You know, Asma, you said, is it a fashion faux pas? It's a political faux pas.

Yes. You know, I don't know, you know, you can, is it a fashion faux pas? It's a political faux pas. Yes. You know, I don't know. You can't quote me on the fashion stuff, but you can quote me on the politics. And I can tell you, like Aisha just said, you wake up in the morning. You're going down to send the message presumably to the country, to your husband, to say that you should care, right? You should care about these children. She took a measure of credit. The president gave her a measure of credit for changing this policy. And then unintentionally, let's give her the benefit of the doubt, unintentionally wears a jacket with a message that says, I don't really care. Do you? That is just, it just doesn't, it's just mind boggling. It is perfectly possible that maybe this was something that was maybe a

troll of the press saying, you know, I don't really care what you guys think or something like that. I mean, it could, we don't know what, if it was intentional or unintentional, or whether it was some oversight. There are so many things that could be read into it. But regardless of whether it was intentional or unintentional, it seems that to some degree it overshadowed some of the very good intentions it seems she had in going down to Texas to meet with these children and meet with some of the workers at the shelter. And that's not the message, certainly, that her staff or the Trump administration probably wanted out of this trip. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about why the U.S. decided to leave the U.N. Human Rights Council and why you may pay a little bit more if you're shopping online. Maybe. 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. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. You got one week to fix a country's failing preschools. Go. On Rough Translation, a bold experiment by a country to transform its culture of teaching. And it works until the very people that most want these schools to succeed start getting in the way. Rough translation, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, and we are back. And one really good way to know that it is summer in a newsroom is when it's 10 a.m. and reporters are all huddled around a computer constantly refreshing the SCOTUS blog. And that is what was happening today. We have still got a lot of major decisions from the Supreme Court that are going to be trickling down. Today, we got one that affects taxes and online shopping, two things I feel very strongly about. Domenico, you have been keeping a close eye on a number of these Supreme Court decisions. So why don't you start by just explaining what was specifically decided this morning? You know, every time you're refreshing SCOTUSblog, you're like, oh, this thing came out. And then you're like, what does that mean? So everybody has to take a pause.

But it did. It actually made four rulings today, three of them fairly narrow. One of them will affect a lot of people. The Supreme Court ruled that states can now collect sales taxes from online retailers on consumer purchases. So the decision, this really overrules something that had been some decades-old precedence. There was one in 1992, one in 1967 that went all the way back then, and said that if a store was not in a state, like if there wasn't a brick and mortar store, that a state couldn't charge that retailer sales taxes within that state. You know what I mean? So you've got... Now, the online world has completely upended that. And that turned into this 5-4 decision where they overturned the precedent. Justice Anthony Kennedy was the one who wrote this decision. And this,

I should say, by the way, was not your usual 5-4 split. They had very different reasons for doing this rather than just conservative liberal. But to sum it up, Kennedy said the internet's prevalence and power have changed the dynamics of the national economy. And really, states stand to gain billions of dollars with this ruling. Domenico, I'm shocked that a Supreme Court ruling from 1992 was really out of date when it came to the Internet. Well, I mean, think about 1992. Do you guys know what year Google came online? Oh, I'm going to guess.

99? 96, 7? I think it was actually 2000, which is kind of amazing. Like 99, 2000, around then. But I remember being in the newsroom of my college paper when one of my deputies on the sports desk said to me, have you tried this thing called Google? And, you know, in my usual skeptical, dismissive Debbie Downer way, I was like, that's ridiculous. You were like, no, man, I'm all about Lycos.

Give me a break. No, no, no. Go to the library. Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves was awesome. Wait. I want to like, I'm typing in Ask Jeeves right now to see if it still exists.

If it still exists. So guys, can I share? It does. So I want to share something. So in a former life, I guess, Scott, you and Domenico know this. So I covered 2016 and then I stepped away for a bit. And so in the past year-ish or so, I was a tech reporter up in Boston. And one of the big companies involved in this decision is Wayfair.

I don't know if you know much about Wayfair. They sell online. It's basically an online outlet for furniture, lighting, other such household goods. And so I actually covered this story quite a bit in that previous life, in part because Massachusetts was wrestling with this very same question. And this is what's happened, you know, because this had never been dealt with on a federal level. You saw this ad hoc pattern of states trying to figure out ways in which they could collect tax revenue because there was millions, you know, technically being left uncollected as tax revenue. In fact, the National Conference of State Legislators had estimated in 2015, states lost roughly roughly $17 billion in uncollected taxes because of electronic sales. I mean, that's a huge amount of money being left on the table. And if you think about it, like, you might go, I don't know if you're a big online shopper, but say you go to like overstock.com and you buy something. Chances are when you go to checkout, you don't see it'll just say like sales

tax zero if you pay attention that much when you're checking checkout, you don't see, it'll just say like sales tax zero, if you pay attention that much when you're checking out. You are supposed to independently calculate that and you are supposed to pay taxes on it. Oh, really? No one does that. Because who's, you know, it's just sort of no one does that. Maybe we shouldn't admit that. The IRS is going to come calling.

So it's not something that is generally done. And so as a result, the sort of outlet that would be collecting this ought to be Wayfair.com or Overstock.com or all of these other companies. They should be the ones collecting it. But to your point, Domenico, that wasn't happening. And this fundamentally changes it. This makes them do it. Though Amazon had been collecting for stuff that it sold directly, right?

But also Amazon has a lot of these warehouses in a lot of these states, which means that they have a foothold in those places. And instead of sort of trying to fight that they're not a brick and mortar store, they just pay it. They sort of embrace that idea too then and then established a brick and mortar presence in a lot of states. So does this mean when I'm buying like baby bibs and all that stuff that kids stuff that I'm buying online, am I going to have to pay more for that?

Or what does this mean? So it depends. I mean, in theory, to Scott's point, Amazon's been collecting sales tax. They kind of just embrace this idea because they had brick and mortar locations in dozens of states as it was. So a couple of years ago, Amazon was like, okay, fine, we'll just pay it in all the states. But if you're a big Wayfair shopper, which was one of the companies that was introduced here, you want to buy a sofa, say that sofa costs $800, you will now be charged sales tax in a number of states. It depends, again, the state has the right to collect it, right, Domenico? That's the change. It's not like an obligation, but if you're a state, I feel like it'd be pretty foolish to not start collecting this money. I mean, they're the ones who sued for it. I mean, South Dakota is the one who went to court over

this because they felt like they were losing all that revenue. This is a big deal for state governments, because especially in Republican controlled state governments, where leaders are not that jazzed to raise taxes, every budget cycle is a desperate search for new revenue in some way or another. That's why a lot of states over the last decade have slowly expanded gambling in order to get extra money that way. So this is suddenly a ton more sales tax that states can collect. That's a big deal for state budgets. So I have one final thought here, and that is that this decision was made by the Supreme Court.

And one of the criticisms I heard in reporting out this story was that this idea of finding a solution for the problem of how online Internet retailers are not collecting sales tax was an issue that was perennially brought up in Congress. And it was never, ever resolved. And I actually remember in my reporting last year, somebody I interviewed said more and more states are trying to figure out what to do on their own because Congress failed to address this issue. Well, we just talked about immigration, right? That is the theme on so many different issues that over and over again, there's something that even if there's a bipartisan common sense solution, it gets ground down and doesn't move forward. All right. well, we are going to shift gears for now and talk about the United Nations. The Trump administration announced this week

that the United States is pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council. The U.S.'s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, made this announcement. For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias. Regrettably, it is now clear that our call for reform was not heeded.

And to help us kind of make sense of that decision and better understand why the U.S. made that decision, we've got Michelle Kellerman on the line who covers the U.N. Hey, Michelle. Hi there. Okay, so Michelle, we brought you in to essentially help us better understand what is sort of on its face, I think, a somewhat shocking headline to people that the U.S. is leaving, withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Help us understand that. I mean, it's gotten a lot of buzz. Why did the United States do this? Well, I mean, for one, you know, this is part of a trend by the

Trump administration to pull out of multilateral organizations. So that shouldn't be a surprise. I mean, what Haley was talking about, she said she's been trying for the past year to reform this Human Rights Council, and she said she didn't get anywhere. What's been really surprising is that she's lashed out at human rights groups for blocking her attempts to do this. She even wrote a letter to them accusing them of being on the side of Russia and China in thwarting her attempts at reforms. And they were really taken aback by all of that. So, Michelle, can you just explain what the UNHCR does, what it's responsible for? Well, it's the main human rights body for the UN system, and they bring up a lot of different issues.

They have special rapporteurs on a lot of different topics. Iran, for instance, that was a big win for the Obama administration when they persuaded the council to appoint somebody that specifically focuses on Iran. So they take up a lot of different issues. They pass a lot of different resolutions. One of the complaints that both the Obama administration and the Trump administration had is the focus on Israel. There's some concern that by pulling out, there could be even more resolutions about Israel because you don't have the U.S. kind of pushing back and changing the agenda as much as they can. We've actually got a little bit more tape of Nikki Haley explaining the rationale for why the U.S. left. When a so-called human rights council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran,

and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy of its name. And so this seems like, as Michelle said, this is part of a larger push by the Trump administration to kind of get out of these international organizations. In fact, John Bolton yesterday told Fox News that the reason why he agreed with this move is because he felt he feels like that the U.S. shouldn't be a part of any. It doesn't have to answer to some international body. We have the Constitution, according to him. So that was a larger thing. They also had a big problem because they felt like this panel was too focused on Israel and saying that Israel had abused human rights.

And they felt like that this was wrong and that that focus was wrong. And Bolton said that he feels like when people are complaining about Israel, they really want to complain about the U.S., but that's harder for them. So they're kind of using Israel as a proxy for the U.S. So that was the argument that he was making. And listen, I mean, Bolton made those cases when he was in the Bush administration, too. I mean, he has a long, long track record on this. The Bush administration did not join this body. The Obama administration did. And the Obama administration did it to try to fix the very same problems that Nikki Haley

and others were talking about. And I have to say, you know, one thing she mentioned was that it doesn't deal with Iran. Well, actually, the UN Human Rights Council does have a special rapporteur on Iran. And I talked to an Iranian activist who said, you know, it's important to have something like that because it has more weight. It's harder for Iran to dismiss criticism from an international repertoire that's backed by the international community. It's easier for Iran to dismiss complaints coming from Washington. You know, Michelle, some people were bringing up the fact that the head of the Human Rights Council had actually criticized the Trump administration for its immigration policy.

How much of that has been part of the discussion? Or is that just dismissed as just coincidental? Well, it was pretty terrible timing on the part of Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who, by the way, jointly announced this move. And neither of them took questions after it, kind of avoiding the limelight on that issue of migration policy. But, you know, U.S. officials say this has been in the works for a while, so they tried to downplay any link to that. On the other hand, Pompeo did say, you know, we're not going to take any lectures from hypocritical organizations. He made that announcement while he was talking about withdrawing from this. I should also say, you know, the council is in session now in Geneva. And one of the things they're talking about is a report by a special rapporteur on extreme poverty, someone who came to the U.S. to look into that and

had a pretty damning report talking about things like tax cuts, exacerbating income inequalities in the U.S. Good luck with that one. So again, again, there, you know, the U.S. does come under criticism at these international bodies. One thing, Michelle, I want to ask you about, you know, you mentioned that part of Haley's criticism was that the Democratic Republic of Congo, that it was problematic. What was what could you expand a little bit on like what her rationale was in in criticizing them? And was you know, can we say if, if the rationale for admitting them on the Human Rights Council side, you know, means that maybe her criticism was unfair? Or how does that play out? Well, I mean, that particular one is an interesting example, because there were two

UN investigators who were killed in DRC, including one American. And she says that the government hasn't been helping with that investigation. So how could a country like that get elected onto the council? And that's been one of the problems is the membership of the body and how countries get chosen. What she wanted to do was make some big reforms and bring it to the General Assembly and have them voting on it. Human rights groups, European countries, you know, encouraged her not to go that way and to do things smaller, quietly, behind the scenes in Geneva to change things. Because if you bring it to the General Assembly, it opens up to even bigger changes, you know, ones that China and others might want to have, you know, put their stamp on it, make amendments. She got really angry about this move by human rights groups to encourage her to do this quietly.

And she actually, in a letter to them a day after pulling out, she accused them of being on the side of Russia and China. And she said it was, you know, part of their efforts to block negotiations and thwart reforms, as she said, were a contributing factor to the U.S. decision to leave the council. And, you know, I talked to human rights activists who were pretty shocked about that attack on them. So, you know, Michelle, I have heard that the United States in making this decision is the first country ever to have voluntarily left the Human Rights Council. And to me, you know, if that's correct, it just seems like it's such a bold statement to make, regardless of whether or not, you know, a country believes the organization is actually effective. Right. And I was curious to better understand why take such a bold statement.

Exactly right. This is an unprecedented move. Yeah, I mean, but that's what they like to do, right, is to create kind of a crisis and walk away. She says they would come back if there are reforms. But, you know, the seat has already been taken away. The nameplate has already been taken away. The nameplate has already been taken away. They're meeting in Geneva now without U.S. representation. And the General Assembly is going to have to decide how to move forward on filling that seat.

What reform does she exactly want to see? Did she specify that? Well, they wanted changes on how you can become a member because, you know, countries like Venezuela, for instance, is a member. And because it is, it managed to block any discussion about the crisis there. So is it a good thing that they're leaving because they were concerned about these people, they were concerned about these countries that have human rights abuses who have been a part of the council? I think there's a lot of concern that without the U.S. there, without the U.S. pushing to have the agenda that they want, that the council becomes less legitimate, that, you know,

that countries, you know, like China fill the vacuum. European countries will try to set the agenda. But most experts I talk with say without the U.S. there, you know, it tips the balance to the autocrats. All right. Well, thanks so much, Michelle. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. And we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about things that we cannot let go, politics or otherwise. Support for NPR Politics and the following message come from The League, a selective membership-based app for busy, high-achieving, career-focused people looking to connect with each other. The League is your hub for all things social. Date someone new, find your soulmate,

make new friends, or discover exclusive events going on in your city. Get complimentary, expedited review of your application by downloading the app at theleague.com slash NPR politics. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This. And on our latest episode, how Chip Wilson turned workout clothes into a fashion statement. And along the way, built a breakout brand, Lululemon, now worth billions. You can listen to How I Built This on Apple Podcasts or however you get your podcasts. Okay, we are back and we're going to talk about the one thing that we cannot let go this week, politics or otherwise.

Scott, why don't you start? So big shout out to Kelsey Snell for my can't let it go for this week. It has been a very busy week on Capitol Hill, as it has been a lot of cases. But this week in particular, Kelsey and I were both running all over the place all week. And then at one point during a very brief down period, Kelsey tweeted a link to this website, explore.org, that has live cams of all these different nature scenes and animal scenes. Kelsey, I guess, is a big fan of the site. I had not heard of it before, but she tweeted a link to a live cam of a senior dog center in Tennessee called Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary.

And it is just live pictures of this house that a bunch of old dogs hang out at. They're all hanging out on the couch. Do they do tricks? Or are they just like hanging out? They're just old dogs taking naps in the sun, living their life. It's like a sanctuary, so it's not like...

What is this called? Old Dog Senior... Old Friend Senior Dog Sanctuary. Old Dog Senior... But the site you said is Explore.org. Explore.org. If you go to Explore.org, you can look at all these different animal sites.

There's a live cam of bears, of oceans, of things like that. But I'm a big fan of the old dog site. I'm looking at it right now. I looked at that because I saw tweets about this from Kelsey. There's a beagle walking by. But here's the best thing about all of it. Scott

Horsley loves dogs more than anybody. He just has an extreme love of dogs and it's one thing I really appreciate about Scott. So he started watching it and I think he just had it up on his computer for days on end because he would then email us his updates like, hey, you gotta

check out the cam right now. Something's going on in the old dog center. No, seriously, this thing is awesome. I've got it up now. Is it relaxing? It's very relaxing.

I feel like it looked relaxing. It's so relaxing. Right now it's a front page. I never watch live cams. And here's the thing. If you're hearing this and you're thinking like, oh, I don't know if I can see a shelter because that would make me want to, you know, go get a dog and I'd be sad.

I like I cannot actually go into a dog. We got our dog from a shelter, but I cannot go in at any point because I'll end up coming out with the dogs. But I'm OK watching this because it looks like a really cozy place. There's a lot of people there who work there and the dogs are just hanging out on couches and napping and it's really relaxing. Aisha, why don't you go next? Okay, so this week I thought that my can't let it go would be the Federal Reserve. No, no, no, no, no.

It's Beyonce. It's Beyonce, guys. What? Well, Beyonce and... Oh, I was actually listening in for the Federal Reserve one. I was like, oh. Somewhere Sam Sanders' ears snapped. I was like, QE3?

No, no. So it's Beyonce and Jay-Z. So I'm a big fan of Jay-Z too. But the Carters, they released Surprise. They released the album. Everyone was waiting for it. Like, what's going on? They're touring right now. They have to have some new music, right?

And here you have it. Everything is love. I really like the album. You know, I'm older. I feel older. I'm not that old. I guess I'm not that old. But I'm not young. I'm not in the clubs anymore.

But I do like it. Anymore. But not anymore. But I do like... Anymore. But, not anymore. But, you know, so this is like really, I feel like this is more party music. I did love Lemonade. I felt like that more spoke to me on like a soul level. But I do like this. I feel like it's party.

It's fun. It's a beat. It's summer. So that's what I like about this. Well, you can't see my eyebrows right now. But I've been making faces at Aisha this entire time. Why? Are you throwing shade on us?

Because it was going to be what I precisely could let go this week. I was like, I am done. I am done. You know, I was the Beyonce fan who went and, like, danced it up when the Single Ladies concert. I was here at Verizon Center years ago. I was so excited. You know, then I've loved a number the Single Ladies concert. I was here at Verizon Center years ago. I was so excited. You know, then I've loved a number of her different albums. But this, I was just...

Okay, so for twofold. I have two reasons I'd like to make my case. Okay. One, I felt like Beyonce can't rap. Give me my check. Put some respect on my check. Pay me in equity. Pay me in equity.

Watch me reverse all the decks. He got a bad chick. Bad chick. We living lavish, lavish. I get expensive fabrics. I got expensive habits. Oh my goodness. I disagree. I disagree, but go ahead. Okay. She's like, she's not good with that.

She's good. She's better in her old school space. Go ahead. Okay. Secondly, secondly, so if you follow Beyonce, you will know that her sister Solange and Jay-Z had a tiff in an elevator. And a lot of people had questions about what does that mean? Was Solange standing up for Beyonce?

Did Jay-Z do something shady? Who knows? But then Beyonce releases Lemonade, right? Which is this album in which she sometimes seems angry and empowered and whatnot. And then Jay-Z releases some music to respond to it. And now they release this album together, and my conclusion was like, oh, you all were planning it. All along you were planning it.

I don't feel like it's staged. I feel like they went through some things, and they've been working it out. Because, look, we come to work. We've got to talk about other stuff. But their work is their life. It's all together. That's why they got a tour. They're touring together.

So they're working it all out. It's all about money. They're working it out working on the albums that's that's what i'm going they're working it all out on the albums i can see the way i can see the reason to be cynical on it that was my first i was so kind of reaction and then they're in the loop did you see the music video that was well here's the thing if no it's art if what if what aisha is if what aisha is drawing on is the fact that they draw you know they they're their best music their best music and their writing from their relationship and from their experiences well then they're laying it on the table and if they're gonna make money off it okay then there you go. Last point to make my case. If anybody has followed Beyonce, you will know that Beyonce is not a public person who ever puts anything out in public.

Did you watch her HBO special? I did. When she talks about her miscarriage and she's crying. That's the only time I've ever seen her get even slightly emotional. But that entire thing was incredibly choreographed. I mean, this is a star who does not even want certain photographs of her out in public. No, she's very protective. And so for her to have this public vision of her life is also an extremely choreographed move.

That's all I'm saying. Well, and that's what they're also saying. Like, y'all are going to keep watching us. And I think that's very what they're playing on, too, is this idea, y'all keep watching us. We're going to give you a show. Scott, you want to weigh in on this? I'm just watching the dogs. To be honest with you.

I have very mild Beyonce opinions, and they are drowned out by everyone else's Beyonce opinions. All right. Well, Domenico, why don't you end the show for us? What is your Can't Let It Go? I just have two words for you guys. Space, force, space, force, space, have two words for you guys. Space force. Space force.

Space force. Space force. Space force. Nobody? No chanting? Oh, space force. Space force. I don't understand.

It's like you're speaking a different language. Space force. Oh, I didn't know we were supposed to join in. What is this? Space force. On Monday, President Trump, that was this week by the way president trump uh decided to announce before the national space council quote when it comes to defending america it is not enough to merely have an american presence in space we must have

american dominance in space okay so important i'm hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. I didn't hear that. But, Domenico, it was so out of left field, I honestly thought this was a chant for something related to the World Cup. Would you say it was out of the blue? Oh.

That was a dad joke. Thank you for that. Of course. What other kind of joke am I going to make? You know, Domenico, I think I'm pretty well-versed in the various future fictional visions of various different space forces out there. I'm a little skeptical this is going to get us

to the point we need to be at. To get us to another... You mean to get us to another planet because this one is being destroyed but the space force this isn't about fighting aliens right this is about like satellites the world the world first and first america in the world first okay that's the new slogan new slogan. I don't know. I can't repeat it. But yeah, I mean, look, the fact that my favorite part of this event on Monday was President Trump looking around in the audience for General Dunford, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Okay. Looking around for him because he says to him, okay, you're going to take this up.

He finds him in the audience finally and says, you're good with this command, right, basically. You know, Domenico, President Trump, more than anything else, likes to point out areas where he succeeded, where President Obama failed. I think this is another opportunity. There was a Star Trek fan in the White House, Barack Obama, and he did not create a space force. President Trump did.

So we are one step closer to Starfleet, and it's because of President Trump, not President Obama. I saw what you did there. I said we're one step closer, huh, Scott? There's a Neil Armstrong biopic coming out this summer. Is that what that was? That's what it was. All right. Well, on that note, let us wrap it up for today.

We will be back the next time there is any news that you need to know about. And in the meantime, our email address for your comments, questions, and timestamps, those are the little blurbs at the beginning of the show, is nprpolitics at npr.org. You can keep up with our coverage on npr.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and, of course, on your local public radio station. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from SimpliSafe, home security done right. The New York Times Wirecutter calls SimpliSafe the best home security. SimpliSafe is thoughtfully designed so you can blanket your home with protection and never notice it. There are no contracts, and CNET, the Wirecutter, and PCMag all name it their top pick for home security. Over 2 million people use it every day. Learn more about how SimpliSafe can help you today. Go to simplisafe.com slash NPR politics.