The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 2

Episode Date: March 3, 2017

This episode: host/Congressional reporter Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and political editor Domenico Montanaro, with justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. 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 Christian McCluskey from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. This podcast was recorded at Captain's Log, March 2nd, 2017, 5.04 p.m. Things may change by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with a roundup of the week's political news. We'll talk about Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself from any investigations into Russia's election meddling, Donald Trump's speech to Congress, plus a few of your questions. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress for NPR.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. How's everybody doing? Good, Scott, how are you? Yeah. I'm doing pretty wellleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. How's everybody doing? Good, Scott. How are you? Yeah. I'm doing pretty well. Awesome.

All right, two quick things. First, you can grab our last episode for a full recap of the president's speech to Congress Tuesday night. We'll talk a little bit more about that here today, but if you want all the details, it's just back one episode. Two, you have one more reason to check out the NPR One app now. It's now available on your Amazon Echo, Dot, and other Alexa-enabled devices. Just say Alexa enable NPR One, then you

can tell Alexa to play our podcast. So there you go. Do either of you have Alexa? I do. No. Her jokes are awful. Really? Yes. What's an example of an Alexa joke? I worked at the orange juice factory, but they fired me because I couldn't concentrate. Stuff like that. The April showers, May flowers joke. At least she's trying. I mean, Siri doesn't even try. Is she? Is she? That's true. Okay, moving on. Siri,

tell me a joke. See, not even trying. Alright, on to more important things. As it seems to be happening with increasing frequency, NPR justice correspondent Kerry Johnson is here in the booth to talk to us about breaking news. Hey, Kerry. How's it going? So late this afternoon, after a whirlwind almost 24 hours of news,

Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigation of Russia's meddling into the 2016 election. Here he is reading a statement this afternoon. I've said this, quote, I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States. I went on to say this announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of the scope of any such investigation. So let's rewind a tiny bit. The big news broke last night that Attorney General Sessions had spoken twice last year to Russia's ambassador to the U.S. These were conversations that happened when he was an Alabama senator, but also a key advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. So, Carrie, why does

this matter? Well, two big reasons. First, Donald Trump and his inner circle have come under a lot of scrutiny for possible contacts with Russia. This is at the same time the intelligence community is investigating whether Russia was trying to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. And National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had to resign this year after not telling the truth about his contacts with Russia's ambassador. It's kind of an echo to what we're seeing here with Jeff Sessions. This also matters for another really important reason, because during his confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee he hadn't been in contact with Russian officials about the campaign. Yeah, so let's listen to that moment. The exchange was with Minnesota Senator Al Franken.

If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians. And I'm unable to comment on it very well. So, Kerry, how is Sessions reconciling what he said at the hearing to what he said today and what you and others reported last night? Well, importantly, first of all, Jeff Sessions promised today that he's going to send a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee correcting or clarifying his testimony, which makes a big difference legally. Second, Sessions seems to be drawing a line between his role as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee and his role as

one of Donald Trump's most loyal campaign surrogates, chairman of the campaign's National Security Committee. He said when Franken asked him that question, he was thinking about other things and not thinking about these two meetings. In retrospect, he should have disclosed the two meetings he had with the Russian ambassador. Now, one of those meetings we know took place in July in an event in connection with the Republican National Committee and another in Sessions' office on September 8th. And Sessions has said, listen, I just didn't discuss issues of the campaign. I don't really remember in detail what came up, but I don't think I did anything wrong. So he was saying it was fine because he was in his role as a senator, not

talking campaign, but he's not denying the meeting happened. In fact, he talked about it at length this afternoon when asked. Yeah, he talked about it at length, although we still don't have a lot of detail about what exactly was discussed in those two meetings. I'm sure Democrats are going to want to know more about that. But Jeff Sessions finally did say that after he met with Justice Department ethics lawyers, he determined he shouldn't play any role in any investigation of a campaign he had worked on. Okay, so here's a question I have, though. Like, let's say he had had mentioned these meetings with the ambassador in his confirmation hearing. Would this still be such a big deal then or not?

I don't think it would be so scandalous or it would have gotten so intense so fast. You know, it's become a part of this whole cloud around this administration when it comes to Russia and whatever Russia was trying to do last year and maybe continuing to try to do. That said, Danielle, just remember back to Sessions' confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked a lot of questions about Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation. Remember, he was at campaign events where people were chanting law corrupt. And during his confirmation hearing, Sessions actually promised not to do any investigating of Hillary Clinton or the Clinton Foundation at all. He already recused himself

from that stuff. So I feel like my thought is that this is a meeting that Sessions says was innocuous. It was just, you know, their meeting in his office, not a big deal. Michael Flynn says his meeting, his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, innocuous, not a big deal. There's a pattern here of whatever. It wasn't that big of a deal. But they still did not admit that these conversations happened initially and created more problems for themselves by initially denying them and then only admitting that they happened after reporting came out. Yeah, Scott, it's kind of weird. You know, as somebody who takes a lot of meetings with people, gets a lot of emails, I think I would remember a meeting with the ambassador. Jeff Sessions did

put out some information last night suggesting he had met with dozens of ambassadors last year. But if I was going to get asked a question, say in a Senate confirmation hearing, I might have done some review of my schedule. And you would think it would come up in the preparation for your hearing. We should also note, though, that Tamara Keith confirmed from a senior White House official that not just Michael Flynn had met with the Russian ambassador back in December, but also Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who is now also a senior White House advisor. They met with Kislyak during the transition.

The White House official said that the meeting took place at Trump Tower in New York, lasted about 20 minutes. No date provided exactly, but December is important because the sanctions were released December 29th. I just want to understand exactly what was the wrongdoing here. Am I right that, you know, someone from a political campaign, it's OK for them to talk to an ambassador, right? In fact, that's what Jeff Sessions said today. Ambassadors are supposed to be doing and often trying to. They're going around like mini reporters trying to figure out what's happening, piecing information together through a bunch of sources. Yeah, but politically, right? I mean, so there's two sides to this. Do you take a meeting

with an ambassador because, hey, I'm on the Armed Services Committee? Sure, that's possible. But there's also the situation in which, as Sessions said, ambassadors are always trying to find out information. And one of the big pieces of information that ambassadors and officials from all over the world wanted to try to find out was who is Donald Trump? What is he like? How can we find out that information? And if you were a smart ambassador or representative of another country and you wanted to find out a little bit more about Donald Trump, you might speak to somebody who was close to Donald Trump during the campaign. And remember, Jeff Sessions was for a long time the lone senator who endorsed Donald Trump and helped write his immigration bill, for example. Danielle, going more to your point, if you're the nation's top law enforcement officer

charged with investigating and prosecuting all of the federal laws on the books that matter. Right. You do not want to be a part of a sentence that raises questions about your veracity or credibility and the possibility you may have committed perjury, which is what Democrats were slapping around all day with respect to Jeff Sessions. But the other thing that was going on and why this is a bigger political issue and now possibly an investigative issue in both the Senate and the House and we think the FBI, is that as these meetings were happening, earlier than that, Russian hackers were attempting to influence the election, according to U.S. intelligence, by hacking into the DNC emails, by hacking into John Podesta's emails and feeding those to WikiLeaks to release them and really mess with the election.

Yeah, Scott, one of the big unanswered questions here is what exactly is the FBI investigating? We know that the intelligence community wants to get to the bottom of the election meddling last year. That includes the hacks and a whole bunch of other stuff. But the FBI has not been clear with senior officials on Capitol Hill like Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, about who exactly is under investigation and for what. And in his statement today, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, did not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation related to Russia or say anything about the scope of those investigations. They are keeping that very closely held. On the investigation, can you explain to us what it means technically and in terms of what may come next?

What does it mean for Jeff Sessions to recuse himself? Why does that matter? Well, this is kind of crazy because Jeff Sessions is the only major political appointee at the Justice Department who have received Senate confirmation so far. He's the only guy minding the store. So now that he's recused himself, the decider on all these matters, should they come to a head, is Dana Bente. He's the acting deputy attorney general. He's a career prosecutor from Virginia. And you might remember him because he's the guy who was installed by Donald Trump to run the Justice Department after Trump fired Obama hold over Sally Yates over his travel ban executive order.

But it's not like the attorney general is like sitting in on interviews as part of investigations. Like their role typically, if I have it right, is, you know, we did all this research. This is what we found. Do we go forward with this or not? Yeah. In very sensitive cases, the highest levels of the Justice Department only get involved toward the end of the case after lots of investigation has been done and recommendations about bringing charges or not bringing charges have been made. In those cases, the deputy AG and the AG are the deciders. But the top guy could certainly kill an investigation, right?

That would be enormously controversial, a violation of Justice Department norms and possibly a violation of law. So what you just said is among the most serious things I've heard. And you're kind of giving me a pressure is going up. That's why we're not live. Does anybody else have anything? I feel like one more thing. You know, Jeff Sessions has taken a step here. He has recused himself. But Democrats are not happy with this decision. They are still demanding a special prosecutor be appointed, which is a step that is taken from time to time when the White House itself may be implicated in investigations. Though I do think it's politically notable because we talk so much about how Democrats don't really have that much power in D.C. You know, they're

in the minority in the House, they're in the minority in the Senate. This is twice now within the last month where Democrats beat a drum for something, call for something over and over. First, Mike Flynn stepping down or being fired. Now that Jeff Sessions must recuse himself. And both times, those things have happened. The administration has decided to make that decision. So I think that's worth pointing out. Yeah, it's important. And moreover, it wasn't just Democrats. It was some senior Republicans on Capitol Hill. And there was a big protest outside the Justice Department today with mostly Democrats standing outside DOJ hollering, lock him up, lock him up. That kind of stuff matters. Right. So, well, my question

on all this then is, you know, there are definitely Democrats not just asking for recusal, but for all out resignation. So now that Jeff Sessions has recused himself, I mean, what does that mean for that Democratic opposition? Could that at all, you know, kind of quiet down that opposition or will or will that they just remain very firmly opposed to him? Well, they had been calling for recusals for a while. And then it wasn't until after this latest development about the meetings with Russia and his testimony that that as soon as some high profile Republicans came on board with the Democrats on recusal, Democrats kind of moved the goal line in terms of what they were calling for and said, well, now we think that he should resign. So will that go away now? Or do we have any

indication that they... I think we do have some indication because just because he recused himself, it was only one of the things that Democrats were calling for. Chuck Schumer, in a press conference earlier today, the Senate minority leader laid out three things that he's asking for, none of which were recusal. He said that he wants a Department of Justice independent prosecutor. And he said if DOJ won't do that, then they would want to revive the special prosecutor law in Congress, which hasn't been used since the Clinton investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There's also questions of what do congressional committees actually do that? You know, what does the Intelligence Committee that says it's going to be having

this investigation? Will they go forward? Certainly a lot of open questions and a lot of things for Democrats to continue beating the drum over. Listen, we're only, you know, a couple months into this administration, right? And if you take the Mike Flynn example as something to model this on, it took multiple damaging leaks for Michael Flynn to be fired. It took a damaging leak or two for Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from these investigations, another damaging leak or two, and it could set off the same firestorm you've been talking about. All right, Carrie Johnson, we'll probably be talking to you again in the podcast sometime soon. Thanks for coming in. Thank you.

Bye. Bye, Carrie in. Thank you. Bye. Bye, Carrie. Bye, Carrie. Okay, one other quick thing from today to mention quickly. We know that congressional Republicans have not repealed and replaced Obamacare as quickly as they said they would because it turns out health care is really politically sensitive. And as President Trump said this week, it's really complicated. Not that many people knew that is what President Trump said. A lot of Democrats said we knew that because it took us like two years to pass a

health care law when we had massive majorities in the House and Senate. Try like 30 years because they've been working on it for a very, very long time. So there's an update on that today. Republicans are working on a plan. It seems to be kind of far along the process, but it's been really locked down. I was outside a Senate Republican meeting about this Wednesday night, and nobody said anything at all, like anything about how the meeting went, which was pretty rare for Congress. It is so secret that the draft health care bill is in a room in the Capitol locked away under guard, so only certain people could come in and see it. Is this the same room where the TPP authorization was?

It is a different room. It is actually, this one is in the main Capitol as opposed to some like sketchy basement far away. But of course, opponents of this effort, including Rand Paul, Kentucky Senator who wants to see a full repeal, not Obamacare light as a lot of people are saying it, realized that going and standing outside this room that's locked down is a great photo op. So beyond the photo op and the grandstanding and all that, I mean, there are some real issues here.

For example, I was reading this morning Representative Chris Collins. He's a Republican from New York. He said something that I found fascinating. Collins said the panel may try to mark up the bill next week, but it hasn't been processed yet by the Congressional Budget Office, which will provide a score on its cost. So the CBO, right, on proposed legislation provides what they call a score saying, OK, here's how much it will cost. And also they will sometimes, you know, game out, OK, here's the other effects we'll have. For example, how many people will this insure? So it's pretty remarkable that this really huge piece of legislation that is going to repeal and replace another really huge piece of legislation that provided insurance for a whole bunch of people might not potentially be scored.

We might not know what the estimates are of what it will cost or what it will do by the time they vote on it, if this is correct. So you mean to tell me that they might vote on this bill without knowing what it would cost? That's what Representative Collins said, yes. Although, I mean, right now, of course, so much is unsure, but that is a possibility. Wasn't that a major Republican talking point during the initial Obamacare bill, saying that it was rushed through, that it was too long? And the whole Obama, it would bend the cost curve because the out years that, because the CBO usually scores up to 10 years, that even further out,

it would bend the cost curve down was the Obama administration's response to this. So hypocrisy is always a shoe worn on both feet when it comes to Republicans and Democrats. President Obama certainly didn't like things like debt ceilings being raised when he was a senator. And then when he was president, he really liked the debt ceiling to be raised. Remember the 2011 standoff. So this happens all the time with your plenty of positions that both parties were in favor of that they suddenly are against. Yeah. And I think the main thing to know about this right now is that Republicans are really trying to get on the same page. But the Republican, it's very easy when you're in the minority party to say, repeal it, repeal it. That's what we want to do. But when you're in charge of coming up with a new system about something that that is a huge

part of the American economy, it's hard to do. And just generally, you have you have people like Collins who say they're very hesitant to scale back a lot of the popular parts about Obamacare, scale back the Medicaid expansion that states have been taking advantage of. Then you have people like Rand Paul who want a complete gutting and nothing else. And that matters because you only need a few Republican senators certainly not voting for it. And you can't get a bill passed even with just 51 votes. Yeah. And the reason why this is such a big deal. I mean, if you think about the scoring issue, the fact is, like, if you're going to vote on something that keeps these popular items in place that you're

talking about, the whole reason that the unpopular mandate was put in place was to keep the bill balanced in because of cost, because younger, healthier people would cost less money for insurers, but they would have to buy insurance. Otherwise, they wouldn't buy the insurance to be part of the pool to bring the cost down. So you can't just have all the goodies and not pay a price for it. So despite all this real talk from us right now, leaders still are confident or at least saying they're confident that they can vote on this within the next month.

They can vote on it. They control both chambers. They can bring whatever they want legislatively to the floor and certainly could do it. All they have to do is agree, right? And that's a lot harder to do than maybe some are making it out to be. But apparently they have agreed, at least in principle, if there is this bill behind lock and key behind some door in the Capitol. All right.

And with that, we will take our first break. When we come back, we will talk a little bit more about President Trump's big speech to Congress this week. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wonder Capital, asking what if you could help combat global climate change and make money at the same time? Introducing Wonder Capital, the award-winning online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in solar energy projects. You can earn up to 8.5% annually while diversifying your portfolio. Best of all, Wonder Capital doesn't take any fees for investing your money.

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Again, a big episode behind this one, recapping the president's speech. We are here to talk about the reaction to the reaction for a couple minutes. Backlash squared. And the reaction to the reaction. And reaction to reaction. So I know that, Domenico, you and I disagreed a little bit about the effectiveness of the speech in general. Right. Daniel, I don't know if we disagreed, but I guess we're about to find out.

Oh, fine. Let's do this. So I was among the people saying that I thought this was a really big moment for President Trump. I thought he gave the best speech of his political career. And I thought that was really notable, whether or not that leads to a shift in his presidency, I don't know. And even though he clearly did not change any of his hardline policies and agenda, I thought it was very notable that he came out there and acted like a typical

president of the United States in a typical setting and did what you expect the president to do when they address Congress. To me, that was a really big deal. You know, I followed your tweets fairly closely on this and your responses to some of the tweets. And I don't think we're that far off. I think one line in particular tells kind of the difference in our priorities here. You said it's all relative, right? Oh, yeah. I think relative is important because real quick, just his convention speech, his inaugural address, very, very dark.

And the other big high-profile moments, the presidential debates, he got his butt kicked by Hillary Clinton pretty clearly, even though he won the bigger, more important contest between the two of them. The election. The only poll that matters is on election day. The only poll that matters, yes. Clearly he's made the case and clearly his supporters like a lot of these speeches and his supporters find hope in these things. You know, but as far as relative, I think there are people who can hear low bar in something like that. You know, I think that the issue for him was that it was an effective speech to win over the people that he needed to win over, because there's a lot of room for error for Donald Trump to be a successful legislative president because he has what's important, which is numbers.

He could basically do almost anything he wants short of there being something really serious that happens in the country. He's going to get a lot done with the Republican Congress as far as their agenda goes. OK, but a couple of things here, something that really bugged me about all of this talk about, you know, the backlash and the backlash to the backlash, all this talk about tone is that it's very easy. One thing that I wonder about when I hear you say, Scott, that, you know, it sounded presidential is the best speech of his political career. Sure. Okay. Let's say I grant you that. Okay, then so what? That seems to me to be very short term thinking. I mean, think about just a couple weeks ago, there was that big presidential press conference where everybody walked away from it going, what just happened?

And it is quite possible that we will have lots more what just happened moments, in which case, what does this one speech matter? See, that's the thing. Because 30-something million people sat down and watched it. And there's two things. So what? Well, there's two things. No, no, because I think there has to be something that results from it for it to have been such a great speech. Right. Which brings me to point number two, which is we're talking about tone. Let's talk about substance. I mean, what he didn't do was get specific. We were promised like the point of a speech like this is to lay out your legislative

agenda. He didn't do it. We didn't learn a whole lot that is new here. That's the other problem. So go ahead, Scott. What do you think is the reason why a speech that he's given that you feel is the best speech that he may have given? And I actually do grant you that. I think that this first month, it was a contrast to the first month. Yeah. And I'm not saying put him on Mount Rushmore. I don't mean to beat up on you here. No, it's fine. But two things. I think if you really dislike Donald Trump, if you are horrified by his presidency, if you are all about resisting Donald Trump, I think it's very hard for you to comprehend that there are a lot of people in America who are willing to give him a chance, who are a little skeptical. But there's a lot of parts of his agenda that people can get behind.

And we've seen these in some of the recent polls, even with his historically low approval ratings, there's a good chunk of the country who are the kind of swing voters that will matter in a couple of years who are saying, well, we'll see. But people who hate the Twitter fights, people who hate the kind of like off the rails moments and unscripted moments,

I mean, I think it was comforting for a lot of people to see him stick to a strip and kind of look like you expect a president to look like. I think that goes further than some people realize. Yeah, I know. So I think everybody is actually correct, because I think that Trump's presidency in some ways was at a danger point. Yeah. And that's what I mean, he had this really chaotic rollout. It was very disorganized. The speech was the complete opposite of that. It was organized. It was scripted.

It was the most inside the lines that you've seen Donald Trump really in quite some time. All right. And my last point, I'm not saying tone matters more than substance, but I think such a big part of Donald Trump's being and persona and presidency and before that campaign is all about the tone. I mean, a big reason why a lot of people don't like him is his tone, his constant fight picking the way he carries himself on Twitter. His supporters will tell us that the one thing they don't like about him is that they wish he would be more, quote, presidential. And there's there's a lot of Republican office holders and voters in the country who are desperate to want to support Donald Trump and look for reasons to support him. And a speech like that goes a long way for people like that, especially after Domenico. Like you said, he was really on the rocks and really, I mean, 30 something percent in your first month is not a good place.

Yeah, I will just make one other point because of the nerds that we tend to be. I think the thing that Danielle and I are listening for are like, OK, well, I don't want just principles on the health care law that you want put in place. We want specifics and leadership, things that you're going to be able to say to Congress. Here's how I'd like this done. That wasn't done. And the wall. Hey, were the words border adjustment tax in that speech? No. This got a little sports talk radio right there. What are sports? All right.

We'll be right back with Mike and the Mad Dog talking about EPA regulations. That really changes the mood of the conversation. Did y'all give me the quizzical who is, what is that? Domenico is Mike Francesca. God. be the quizzical who is what is that dominico is is mike francesca god the thing i want to know is where is border adjustment tax you don't see it in there dog i feel like the patriarchy just took over this podcast we're talking we're talking a rod and we're talking wotus wotus epa regulations um wotus waters of United States, because two quick things that happened this week that we just want to touch on.

You may have seen some news that President Trump signed documents Tuesday directing the EPA to review something called Waters of the United States. And in viral circles, that is just shorthand called WOTUS. Are you serious about that? I'm serious. I like that. This is a rule that defines which bodies of water are subject to federal regulation. Under the Obama administration, they tried to massively expand those definitions. Basically, it gives the government wider authority to regulate pollution.

And actually, as wonky as it sounds, this was a thing on the campaign trail. Basically, almost every Republican candidate running during the primary would name check WOTUS at one point during their speeches. So President Trump's signal, he wanted to get rid of the rule. A lot of real estate developers, golf course owners, others call it onerous. Thing is, though, it wasn't actually in effect yet. Right. Yeah. It's been on hold because, you know, you have judges who are still reviewing it from legal challenges. And those legal challenges started way back when Obama was president. So these challenges came from farmers, they came from fertilizer makers, oil and gas producers. And this legal fight is

being led by the American Farm Bureau Federation. This may wind up in the Supreme Court, as NPR's Greg Allen reported. You know, Neil Gorsuch, for example, could even end up hearing this case. His confirmation hearings will begin in a couple of weeks later this month. So stay tuned for that. He continues to make the rounds on Capitol Hill, but I don't think he's been petting any dogs lately as he was early in that process. Bummer. Another thing that President Trump did this week was sign a measure into law

that repealed an Obama era rule aimed at blocking gun sales to certain mentally ill people. The way this worked was that the Social Security Administration, because they hand out financial benefits, has a record of anyone deemed mentally unfit to manage their financial affairs. This affects about 75,000 people, and the law would have required the Social Security Administration to share that information so that people could be flagged in the national background check system. That's something that happens in a lot of states already in terms of that information processing. Domenico, can you walk us through kind of where this regulation came from and what this means? Well, this was a law written after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.

Republicans like Bob Goodlatte, who runs the House Judiciary Committee, argued that the rule, quote, paints all those who suffer from mental disorders with the same broad brush. It assumes that simply because an individual suffers from a mental condition, that individual is unfit to exercise his or her Second Amendment rights. That's a kind of amazing statement to make. One thing that's really interesting is that this issue has created a couple of strange bedfellows, the NRA, a generally right-leaning group and other pro-gun rights groups, and the ACLU, which is often associated with the left. They ended up siding on the same side, aka against the Obama-era rule on this. In a letter to Congress, the ACLU said, quote, we oppose this rule because it

advances and reinforces the harmful stereotype that people with mental disabilities, a vast and diverse group of citizens, are violent. And if you are one of the listeners who already knew what WOTUS was, you may have noticed that we're talking about regulations and laws interchangeably here. That is not a mistake. This was part of the Congressional Review Act, which was a law that was little used before, but allows Congress to basically scale back a recent regulation put in place by the administration. It's been getting a lot of use the last few weeks as Republicans take advantage of the fact that they control the House, Senate and the White House. Another thing they rolled back earlier was an Obama administration regulation that kind of did stream protections

in relation to coal that got rolled back. So one more quick break. We will come back. We will do listener questions and can't let it go. In a world with countless trends and so many different clothing options, Trunk Club, backed by Nordstrom, provides a service designed to make it simple for men and women to make sense of style and dress their best. You'll be connected with a stylist who will find the items that fit your style, budget, and wardrobe needs. The clothes will be delivered straight to your door, and then you'll have five whole days to decide what you'd like to keep. Anything you don't like, just ship back to Trunk Club for free. Get started at trunkclub.com slash politics. We know you love podcasts. We also know you know people who don't.

That's why this March you're going to hear a lot about Tripod. It's a month-long campaign from all your favorite podcasters, including NPR, to get you to recommend a podcast that's any podcast to a friend. And if they don't know how to listen, show them. Then give us your recommendations with the hashtag Tripod. That's T-R-Y pod. Thanks for spreading the word. Okay, back to the show. We are back. Let's answer a few listener questions. And our email address for your questions and comments is nprpolitics at npr.org. This week, we heard from Tiffany, who wrote us, in the show recapping Trump's address to Congress, a few on your team mentioned that Trump said things that crossed traditional political lines. My question, is this a bad thing?

My political opinions often cross party lines, which is why I'm not a registered Republican or Democrat. And I know this is true for many people. Could this lead to some sort of compromise between Trump and Democrats on policy? Best, Tiffany. Well, I think there are three specific areas where they aren't necessarily traditional Republican talking points. He talked about wanting a trillion dollar infrastructure plan. He talks about wanting to get out of trade deals that he calls were bad trade deals for America. It was very protectionist, quote, America first policy, as he puts it.

And when it comes to foreign affairs, he's not exactly towing the line when it comes to the way Republicans think about foreign policies, critical of things like the Iraq war and nation building, which is different for most Republican administrations. That said, what Trump has proven capable of doing and what, you know, you could say this of maybe other presidents as well, but capable of moving people away from their standard ideological positions. And maybe a good example of that is there are a few recent polls out that show that Democrats suddenly like free trade a whole lot more than they used to. I mean, that's kind of bonkers if you think about that. I mean, now Democrats are the party of free trade

as opposed to Republicans, and those positions have widened since the election. Likewise, there's a poll, I think I mentioned it several podcasts ago, but that I ran across where Republicans suddenly have a more favorable view of Russia than they used to. I mean, when a really polarizing president takes office, apparently, he has just by virtue of being of a particular party, he apparently has the capability of changing people's positions based on party. And because of that polarization, I think you should not expect Democrats to suddenly rush to pass laws with Trump. They are under a lot of pressure from their base to not cut a deal with him on anything. That being said, Democratic leaders have said all along, if there's one thing they could come to the table on, it could be a big infrastructure plan. A trillion dollars in infrastructure is something Democrats always want and lost a lot of political clout early in President Obama's administration getting passed. Well, and you mentioned infrastructure. I was just going to

note, you know, infrastructure might be something where Republicans are the anchor on what Trump wants to do, because they really cannot agree with Democrats on how to pay for this whatsoever. And like you heard in that speech, there really weren't a lot of specific details. In fact, no specific details from Donald Trump about how he wants to pay for it. He talked about public private partnerships, but didn't get into any details. All right. Next question, Peter in Kentucky. Peter writes, I'm getting ready to pay my taxes. Peter, if you wrote us about that in February, you are an overachiever in my book, if not other people's books. Way to not procrastinate. And there's a box that asks me

if I want to donate $3 to the Federal Elections Commission. My question is, do presidential candidates still use this to run campaigns? If they don't, where does that money go? Thanks and keep up the good work. Peter. All right. So I called up the FEC today to ask them what happens with this money. And as it turns out, the woman who I spoke to at the FEC said that it just sits there. Now, in the 2016 election, Martin O'Malley from the Democratic Party, Jill Stein from the Green Party, they were the two candidates that use presidential matching funds. One interesting thing here, though, is that while the money does just sit there, something interesting happened in 2014, which was Congress passed and Obama signed an act that took $126 million over 10 years from the fund and gave it to the NIH for research into childhood diseases.

What happened there was that they had decided to end taxpayer funding of political conventions, those big giant conventions we all went to and watched last summer. To bring in corporate funding. Right. So they cut off taxpayer funding of those conventions, gave it to the NIH. We can all agree that ending childhood disease is a good thing. What can we find that no one would disagree with? Hey, both parties agreed on it. Eric Cantor was championing this and Obama signed it. So that's where the money goes.

A.K.A. aside from those payments to the NIH, it doesn't go anywhere. So donation, this isn't like on top of your taxes. No, right. I guess you could call it not so much a donation as a diversion of $3 from your tax bill to this FEC presidential fund. So this became a big deal in 2008 when Barack Obama's campaign opted out of this because it would have set limits on how much they could spend. And they said, yeah, we'll just keep raising all this money online instead.

Right. And it surprised McCain because Obama had said he would take matching funds or thought it was a pretty good idea. But a whole lot of people started giving money to Barack Obama. And he wound up blowing John McCain out of the water when it came to raising money because of this. You know, it should be noted that Barack Obama was not the first candidate to not accept matching funds. George W. Bush did so in 1999 ahead of his run for president because he had this, as the New York Times put it, great war chest of $37 million, which by today's standards wouldn't be that huge. All right. One more question from Jamie in Seattle. Hello there, new fan of the podcast. Thanks for all the hard work. With the news of Republican representatives and lawmakers

avoiding town halls because of potential backlash from constituents, I was wondering if any Democrats abstained from town halls in the heyday of the Tea Party. Best, Jamie. So actually, there was an article about this in March 2010 in The New York Times headlined Democrats skip town halls to avoid voter rage. So there's your answer, I guess. Mad libs. Yeah. You know, Democrats skip town halls, too, because they felt like, you know, if it was going to be difficult for them, then they weren't necessarily always there. Plus, you know, the thing is people who wind up protesting this stuff are the people who are angriest and wind up going to these town halls. So in 2010, it was Republicans upset.

This time around, it's Democrats. And then you wind up seeing the narratives reverse about who's skipping town halls or who's ducking them. All right, that is all the time for the mail this week. Let's end with Can't Let It Go, where we all share something we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Danielle, you are up first.

Okay, this is politics with, I suppose, some otherwise thrown in. Go on. All right. So I'm talking about a man named John Ossoff. He is 30 years old and he is a Democratic candidate running for the seat in the House of Representatives, vacated by Tom Price, who is, as we all know, now the Health and Human Services Secretary. So there's a special election in the Georgia suburbs. Right.

Yeah. Right, yeah. So an attack ad against John Ossoff came out this week from a super PAC, and the ammunition it uses is a bunch of videos taken of Mr. Ossoff when he was in college at Georgetown. We have some audio. John Ossoff really wants you to think he's ready to be in Congress. I've got five years of experience as a national security staffer. And in that, he's got a suit and tie on. Right. Ossoff wasn't exactly fighting against terrorism.

He was fighting against restrictions on cake parties. You see, Ossoff was just a college kid doing things like dressing up with his drinking buddies and pretending to be Han Solo. Oh, no. I'm Han Solo. Captain of the Millennium Falcon. Oh, no. She's the baby who ran four kegs by docks under three parsecs. Oh no. So you have a shot there of him dressed as Han Solo in some sort of a video.

And this is him singing a cappella now? Uh-huh. So is the attack that he was once a college student? Well, I know. So the attack is that he's very immature. But I mean, you know, when you look at these, I mean, Scott, you and I went to college when Facebook was a thing. Yes. So this is like a stress dream level thing that I guess was going to happen at some point. And now it's happening. So Jessica Taylor from our team wrote a story about this. And a political science professor told her that, you know, these vaders are just going to write

themselves. I mean, in the future, now you have all of this ammo and all these people. But on the other hand, you know, the way that we all kind of looked at each other about this ad and went, this all seems fine. I feel like you have a growing portion of the electorate who grew up with, you know, YouTube and all of that who will say. I mean, the thing I think there's like in this room right here. Can I say how old you are, Domenico? Sure. Domenico, you're in your later 30s. Danielle and I are on the younger end of the 30s spectrum.

And I feel like in between us. I'm 34. Okay. So the range of the 30s is represented here. And I feel like in between when Domenico went to college and when Danielle and I went to college, people started posting every single party and everything on Facebook right away. It's totally true. I mean, it is kind of weird that you guys are sitting here talking about how,

man, maybe there's videos of you with a Darth Vader helmet on and your shirt off with a lightsaber. I don't know. That wasn't him, though. Oh, that wasn't him. The video was misleading in that sense. Oh, interesting. I know, yeah.

That being said, there are videos along that vein of me from college. Oh, Jesus. But, like, I was an acapella dork. So I distinctly remember my freshman year of college from college. Oh, Jesus. But like, I was an acapella dork. I mean, So I distinctly remember my freshman year of college, 1997. You know, it wasn't like everybody

had a smartphone or a video. I mean, you'd have to have a video camera that you then uploaded. Like, that's not something people had. The only thing I had. In my day.

Hand-crayed telephones. I was, I was a very aggressive untagger from day one of Facebook's existence, though, so that helps the phones. I'm with you on that. My point is just that lots of voters are going to be desensitized to this sort of thing eventually, right?

That's my guess. Soon, everyone running for office will be a millennial who has embarrassing things on Facebook. But before we get to that point, this is the first ad in this new millennial era of people, parents telling their kids, be careful what you post on social media. And here's the first ad of that era.

But it's not even that bad. He could have had a better Han Solo outfit. I mean, that was kind of, Han Solo is a very easy Star Wars character to dress up as, and he did not meet my bar. The super PAC running that ad said they have other stuff.

So wait and see. Anyway. Domenico, what's yours? Staying along the lines of education. I thought something that kind of got lost in the shuffle a little bit this week because of Trump's joint address to Congress was this letter that Betsy DeVos, the new education secretary, issued about historically black colleges and universities or HBCUs. And in it, she said, we must be willing to make the tangible, structured reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential. And she said HBCUs started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. It goes on and says HBCUs are created because they were like in favor of vouchers to try to get people to go to school.

It's because black students were shut out of universities that were white universities and not allowed into those schools and created something so that African-American students could have somewhere to go. So that caused quite a ruckus. Betsy DeVos took to Twitter and tried to walk back some of what she had to say. She said HBCUs remain at the forefront of opening doors that had previously been closed to so many, which is far different. She said that your history was not born out of mere choice, but out of necessity in the face of racism and in the aftermath of the Civil War. Much more accurate. Scott, what can't you let go of? So the thing I actually cannot let go of is the the end of the oscars like i have tracked down every single like reported out article on what went wrong and how it went wrong and how everyone reacted like maniacally since

it happened like that night i was up until like 2 a.m like looking for like the next update as it happened so like i've been obsessing over that all week uh i think that's about all i have to say about it at this point unless we want want to go down into a recreation of that. Domenico, I know you've been obsessing over a photograph taken in that happen. Yeah, I was just going to say, there is one photo that I saw posted on a friend of a friend's Facebook page that I then stole for my cover photo. Because it's like the look I have on my face every day. It's like, there was like this range of faces. But you know, yeah.

And you have the rock. But the rock is doing the people's eyebrow. He's doing there was like this range of faces. But you know. Yeah. And you have the rock. But the rock is doing the people's eyebrow. He's doing his rock like just naturally. And there is one guy that I mean, you've got him. You've got the rock. You've got Meryl Streep. You have Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck curiously looking in Matt Damon's direction.

Kind of like. Where would you expect the two of them to look? Someone else said the cast of Moonlight was actually kind of in that same directional gaze as well. But there's one guy kind of fuzzed out in the upper left corner who cracks me up every time I look at it. Because he's like laughing with like appreciation for the chaos that this has created. Some men just like to see the world burn. I guess so. Can you say that again in a Michael Caine accent?

Some men just want to watch the world burn, Mr. Caine. That's not bad. Snaps for you. Do we still do snaps? No, I don't know. Whatever. Snaps are good. Don't do snaps.

That is a wrap for this episode. We'll be watching the news. We'll be back in your feed soon, by next Monday or Tuesday at the latest. You can keep up with all our coverage on your local public radio station. Our newsletter is also a great way to do that. Sign up at npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.