The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, October 12

Episode Date: October 12, 2017

President Trump signed an executive order on healthcare, intended to increase insurance options and lower costs, but critics say it could erode protections for those who need them most. Trump is also expected to announce whether or not he'll recertify the Iran deal by the end of the week. The prosecution rested its case in the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ). And, can't let it go. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis and White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and Embedded is back. President Donald Trump has no record of public service, but he does have a record in business and on TV. In our latest round of stories, we introduce you to the people who were there as he built an empire and a name. Listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Reggie Diehl checking in from Beaumont, Texas, where we are slowly recovering from the effects of Hurricane Harvey. It will be a long struggle. This podcast was recorded at Thursday, October 12th at 1.18 p.m. Eastern. Please note that due to the swirling political winds in our modern political climate, things may have very likely

changed by the time you're listening to this episode. For the latest, please check NPR.org, check in on the NPR One app, or listen to and support your local NPR affiliate member station. Now, on with the program. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. President Trump hasn't gotten much traction in Congress this year, but he's continuing to make sweeping changes on his own. Trump is expected to decide by the end of the weekend whether or not he'll decertify the Iran nuclear deal, a move that would have global repercussions. He's also signing an executive order today that could provide an end run around the Affordable Care Act.

And while most of Puerto Rico still doesn't have power, Trump sounds ready to move on. This morning's tweet, We cannot keep FEMA, the military, and first responders, who have been amazing under the most difficult circumstances, in PR forever. Finally, the prosecution has rested its case in the federal corruption trial of New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. And of course, after all of that, can't let it go. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. It's another day of Congress team versus White House team mixed doubles here on the podcast. All right.

So let's start this out with Puerto Rico. President Trump took to Twitter this morning to talk about the situation there, which is still pretty dire. Here's what Trump said. Puerto Rico survived the hurricanes. Now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making, says Cheryl Atkinson, who is a, this is Scott talking, not Trump tweeting, a TV reporter for Sinclair. Okay, back to Trump. A total lack of accountability, say the governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend, and this is the one

that got a lot of attention. And again, that's Scott, not Trump. OK, back to Trump. We cannot keep FEMA, the military and the first responders who have been amazing under the most difficult circumstances in PR forever. Now, it's only been three weeks since Hurricane Maria hit the island, and Puerto Rico is still very much in the middle of a crisis with more than 80 percent of the island still without power, a third without clean drinking water. I do not recall this sort of we need to move on quickly message with Texas or Florida. That would be correct. And two places where FEMA is still operating. Yeah. And that would be a point that the governor of Puerto Rico, who at times has been very complimentary to President Trump and the response of FEMA. He

is a Democrat. But when President Trump was visiting Puerto Rico, Trump joked that, like, you know, you're a good ally. You've been you've been really great to us. In contrast to the mayor of San Juan, who's been much more critical. Exactly. So the governor, Ricardo Rossello, tweeted this morning, the U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are requesting the support that any of our fellow citizens would receive across our nation. The other thing that's interesting about what the president is tweeting is that it's a direct contradiction to what Vice President Mike Pence said when he was visiting Puerto Rico late last week, he said, President Trump sent me here to deliver this message, which is what he always says, that we are with you every step of the way. Chief of Staff John Kelly spoke at the afternoon press briefing today and said something similar. Does President Trump believe that the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens who deserve the same access to federal aid as the people who live in Texas and Florida.

What is his tweet about them? The tweet where he says that we can't be in Puerto Rico forever. I think he said the U.S. military in FEMA can't be there forever. Right? He did. First responders, first responders. The minute you go anywhere as a first responder, and this would apply certainly to the military, you are trying very hard, working very hard to work yourself out of a job. There will be a period in which we hope sooner rather than later to where the U.S. military and FEMA generally speaking can withdraw because then the government and the people of Puerto Rico are recovering sufficiently to start the process of rebuilding.

I just got off the phone. I've talked to him many times with the governor of Puerto Rico. Great relationship. The president deals with him periodically. We saw him when we were down there last week. So, you know, this country, our country, will stand with those American citizens in Puerto Rico until the job is done. But the tweet about FEMA and DOD, Reed Military, is exactly accurate. They're not going to be there forever.

And the whole point is to start to work yourself out of a job and then transition to the rebuilding process. The reality is like, Scott, let's just go through some of those numbers. Only 17 percent of people on the island right now have power. I mean, that is a lot of people and hospitals who are relying on generator power. At this point, there is an assessment that is taking place that they say is going to take two weeks to figure out which schools could possibly be opened. Yeah. And the power problem was going to be a long term problem the entire time because basically the entire electric grid was wiped out. They have to run new lines. They have to connect them to houses. They have to connect them to substations. That's going to take a long time to do. The other thing that happened this week when it comes to how the White House is viewing this,

didn't they put out a video that was very sunny and optimistic about the situation on the ground there? It's a great success story. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that I think is interesting about this, too, is that the cumulative tone of the president, not of his administration, because Tam's right, people like Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan is headed to Puerto Rico on Friday. Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, has been very active in making sure Puerto Rico has what it needs. The tone of the president towards this crisis is so different. And I think it also goes to when you hear people of color and communities of color say that they don't feel as respected by the president because there is a tone when he talks about Puerto Rico that he has not given to the same hurricanes in Florida, in Texas. And there's a sensitivity there that it just seems like he doesn't care about these people as much as other

people. Puerto Rico has the same population, roughly, of the state of Connecticut. Take out Puerto Rico in that tweet and put in Connecticut. You know, it's a different, it has a different tone to it. You're right, because basically, every single American city that's in a floodplain, that's in the path of hurricanes could have a better preemptive policy in place. And by and large, we just always choose not to do that for the most part, or we choose not to do it as best as we could. So you could say, yeah, you kind of asked for this to basically any city that's in the middle of a natural disaster. Say that to the New Jersey coastline. In real time, Congress is working its way through the next round of emergency funding. The House is approving. They added in $6 billion on top of the $29 billion that the president requested. They've already approved $15 billion in disaster aid relief.

And I would also remember that this is still only the second bite of that apple. I mean, the cumulative cost to recover from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and any more that may come is still estimated to cross well over the $100 billion mark. All right, let's go next to this executive order that President Trump signed on healthcare today. Here's what he had to say. It directs the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury, and the Department of Labor to take action to increase competition, increase choice, and increase access to lower-priced, high-quality health care options. And they will have so many options. This will cost the United States government virtually nothing. And people will have great, great health care. And when I say people,

I mean by the millions and millions. Scott, what is this executive order doing? Well, this is designed to, as the president says, create more options for people. It's not the first time that this president has promised that he's going to deliver great health care at lower prices for all Americans or millions of Americans. He may be overselling this a bit, but the goal is to free up some additional alternative forms of health insurance for some of the customers who've been frustrated trying to buy insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. There has been less competition on those exchanges. A lot of insurance companies have left the market, and as a result, prices have been higher. So this is a way to try to create some additional options. In one case, these

association health care plans that would let employers team up and offer insurance, they're also relaxing the rules governing temporary health insurance plans that are not subject to a lot of the Obamacare mandates. That might also provide an attractive option for people, especially folks who don't feel like they need a lot of health care. So how does this work exactly? Because as we've been talking about all year and before that, there is a law in place saying plans have to meet certain requirements, have to cover certain things.

So how can these other plans exist and not do those and still be okay? Well, that's going to be the question. This is going to go through a formal rulemaking process. There's going to be a comment period. There may be some litigation from challengers. I think may might be an understatement. There will almost surely be some litigation. And so the executive order today just directs the cabinet secretaries of labor and health and human services and treasury to start this rulemaking process.

It doesn't tell us exactly what the final rules are going to look like. And what those final rules look like, just how much leeway they provide is the big question. Because the concern for critics is if you relax the rules too much, then you're really going to disrupt the pool of people buying insurance. And you're going to have sort of the two-tiered system with one set of rules over here that young, healthy people will go and buy cheap insurance policies, and another set of more comprehensive rules over here that will be only for people who really need health coverage, that is older, sicker people. Their prices will go way up. So in an effort to lower prices, what you'll do is some people will get a discount, but the people who need insurance the most might end up paying more or being priced out altogether.

And that was the dynamic for each version of these Republican bills over the last year, because, you know, again, if you relax the rules, the cheaper people migrate away. The whole purpose of Obamacare was to create one pool in every geographic area. Everybody would be in the same pool, and that would mean healthy people would be subsidizing sick people. That's the way insurance works. A lot of healthy people didn't like that idea. They said, why am I having to subsidize people who have health care needs that I don't have now, and I'm going to gamble that I might never have? You know, why should single young men be paying for prenatal care, for example. But the whole idea of Obamacare was put everybody in the same pool, and that would lower cost. The problem has been they haven't

gotten enough of the young, healthy people in that pool. And so the cost for the people in the Obamacare markets have been higher than you'd like to see. So how much of the goal of this is to disrupt, injure the current Obamacare system? That's not the stated goal, but it may very well be the sort of subtext. And it wouldn't be the only way that the Trump administration has deliberately sought to sabotage the Obamacare markets, which they've described as a disaster. If they weren't a disaster before, the administration is doing everything they can to make it a disaster. For example, the president has repeatedly threatened to stop paying cost-sharing subsidies to the insurance companies. That's caused some insurance companies to flee the market, and it's caused those who've stayed in to raise their premiums dramatically.

The president has also cut the budget for marketing designed to bring more people into the insurance pool. So in a lot of ways, the Trump administration is sort of fulfilling their own prophecy that this insurance market is going to collapse. Sue, meanwhile, when we last checked with Congress after they had failed to repeal it, there was still that conversation of, well, there had been this early talks of Lamar Alexander, Republican, Patty Murray, Democrat, working on something to stabilize the markets. Has that moved anywhere? Has that happened at all over the last few weeks? No, it's really just stalled. And if anything, there isn't much momentum behind it at this point, particularly even recently in a series of tweets, the president over the weekend sort of reignited this idea that he could cut a deal with minority leader Chuck Schumer over health care.

And Democrats have just kind of thrown cold water on the sense that there's any real talk of bipartisanship, in part because they see the actions the administration are taking with these executive orders as intended to undermine the foundation of the law. And that Democrats' response to this have said there's really no bipartisan deal to be had on health care until you agree that you're not trying to repeal it. So you said this was beginning the process of directing agencies to get into this. Any sense how long it'll take before these new plans expand? Administration officials didn't set a definitive timeline, but they say we're talking about

months, not weeks. So for people wondering, you know, do I need to sign up for Obamacare during the upcoming open enrollment period, which starts in November? Yes. Just don't do it on those Sundays when the website is down. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, what would it mean if the president decertifies the Iran deal? And we're going to look at the corruption trial of a sitting senator. And then we're going to end with Can't Let It Go. Be right back. Hey, y'all. Sam Sanders here. Want to tell you about the only NPR show where you can hear about the latest White House drama and the return of TRL to MTV. The show is called It's Been a Minute. Every Friday, we catch up on the week of news and culture, everything. And every Tuesday,

I sit down for some long interviews with authors, filmmakers, directors, and more. You can find It's Been a Minute on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. President Trump is going to announce tomorrow whether or not he's going to recertify the Iran nuclear deal, meaning he'll decide whether or not Iran is in compliance with the terms of the deal or whether the deal is in the national security interests

of the United States. Trump has recertified the Iran agreement twice in the past, but every indication lately is that he won't this time around. The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States, and I don't think you've heard the last of it. Believe me. That was Trump at the United Nations back in September. So what's going to happen here, or what could happen here? Well, you're right. The president has never liked this deal. He campaigned against it. He has

gritted his teeth and held his nose to certify at the previous two occasions. He basically told his staff, I do not want to have to certify asked not to actually slap new sanctions on Iran. And as long as Congress doesn't slap sanctions back on Iran, then the deal remains in place. Which isn't that kind of a mirror of how this deal was approved by Congress to begin with? There was this whole vote where it was a vote to not undo the deal. It was very complicated and not undo the deal. It was very complicated. And I got very confused. But it basically seemed like, let's structure this so we don't have to knock this down. Exactly. It gave lawmakers an opportunity to vote disapproval of the agreement. And they couldn't muster the 60 votes to do that. And so the agreement went into effect. I feel like this is the part where Sue comes in and says, when betting on Congress, always bet for no action. Well, I think it's also more about how it's so much easier for Congress to vote when there's

no consequence. You know, they voted 60, 70 times to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. When they actually had a chance to do it, they couldn't do it. When they knew voting against the Iran deal wouldn't actually down the deal, most Republicans voted for it. Now they will have an option. If the president decides to decertify, Congress will have in its power the ability to take action that would essentially end the Iran deal. And will they do it? And even Senator Cotton, who was, you know, an early and outspoken opponent of this deal. Remember, he wrote that as a as a as a senator with all of two months experience.

He wrote that open letter to the Ayatollahs saying, don't do this deal because Remember, he wrote that as a senator with all of two months experience, he wrote that open letter to the Ayatollahs saying, don't do this deal because it may not stick. Even Cotton is saying Congress should not act right away and put new sanctions on Iran. He's saying, let's just hold that threat out there to negotiate a better deal. But whether or not Congress acts when the president makes an announcement tomorrow, that's going to have a global message. And I feel like there are three key groups listening to that message. We're going to have strong reactions. One is the other countries involved in the negotiation of this deal who all want the United States to stay in it. Two is Iran. And three is North Korea. And the way North Korea gets into all of this is the argument is that if you're creating a deal with somebody to get them from developing a nuclear weapon and then you back off on it, why would North Korea want to strike a deal with you? other things. President Trump does not see a prior administration's international deals as his problem. He feels like I'm president. I come in if I want to tear up NAFTA or I want to

tear up TPP or if I want to tear up any of these other deals, I'll go right ahead and do it. That makes it difficult for other countries to want to make deals with the United States. It sort of changes the bargain. You don't There's no guarantee of continuity from one administration to the next. And the U.S. isn't leading on this. The U.S. is taking its ball and going home. And it's the same as it was with the Paris Climate Accords. The other countries engaged in this are saying, you can walk away. We're not. So no one's following us. One big loser here could be companies like Boeing that were welcoming the opportunity to do business with Iran, a significant market. And, you know, the Europeans would be happy to say, OK, Boeing, Boeing's not going to deal with Iran.

So we're going to sell all those all those plane contracts. We'll go to Airbus instead. All right. So we'll have more clarity on this Friday afternoon. One more topic to get to on today's podcast, and that is the fact that the prosecution rested its case yesterday in the federal corruption trial of New Jersey's senior senator Bob Menendez. Menendez is a Democrat. He's facing a dozen counts of bribery, conspiracy and fraud. Prosecutors say he accepted donations, private flights and vacations from a wealthy friend and eye doctor in exchange for political favors. Now, this has led to political headaches for Democrats who have been pressed a lot lately on whether they think he should step down if he's convicted. OK, let's start with this. The charges themselves. Anything else we need to know about the case? It's a pretty classic case of pay to play politics that the accusations against the senator are that he accepted money, private plane rides, lavish vacations in exchange for doing political favors to benefit his friend, Dr. Solomon Melgan.

He is a doctor and he is earlier this year in a separate case convicted of defrauding Medicare. So he has been found guilty in a separate case. And so the question was, was the senator using his power to benefit a friend who was defrauding Medicare? Menendez, we should say, has denied all accusations of wrongdoing and has said that there is a big difference between having a friend and doing a bribe and that it raises an incredibly difficult legal question of how do you prove a bribe and how do you prove that it wasn't just the act of politics, right? And it got more difficult after the Supreme Court struck down the conviction of the former Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell, who was convicted and

then had that conviction overturned. And the basic issue there was what is an official act? Because McDonnell had accepted all sorts of gifts like watches and other things. And the question was, was was trying to promote that guy's private company, an official act in the Supreme Court said, no, it wasn't. So that seems to be a key argument here. Like, what's the line between helping a friend out and using your power as a U.S. senator? And also, you know, are these flights, these vacations, is there a quid pro quo or is this stream of gifts just a stream of gifts? So, Sue, if he's found guilty, and that's a big if, but there's already been a lot of talk at the Capitol about what happens if Menendez is found guilty. It raises a lot of complicated questions for the Senate.

He would be the first sitting senator in nine years to be convicted of a felony. The last was Senator Ted Stevens, who is a Republican from Alaska. They're one of those signs outside the Senate we have no convicted felons in nine years. It raises a lot of questions because one, if he is convicted, he will obviously, as any citizen does, have the right to appeal. And does he pursue that avenue, which he has indicated he likely would? And then there's a question for the Senate. If he refuses to bend to political pressure to resign a seat when you've been convicted of a crime, we don't know what he would do. The Senate would have the option to try and force him out, to expel him from the chamber. And it raises an extra political concern for Democrats that if he does resign or if he is forced out, the sitting governor right now, Chris Christie, is a Republican and could nominate a Republican to take a Democratic seat in the

Senate. So there might be some effort, if he were convicted, to get Menendez to stubbornly stick it out through January until possibly there is a Democratic governor. There is a governor's race in November. The next governor of New Jersey will be sworn in in mid-January. So Democrats, if they have to have an appointed seat, would much rather have a Democrat make that appointment than Chris Christie. And Sue, what's the best way you would characterize how Democratic senators have responded to the question of should Menendez step down if he's found guilty? It's a really tough question, because if we were living in normal political times, there would be an expectation that if you were convicted of a felony, you would leave, that you would step down, that the politics would not allow a convicted felon to continue to serve in Congress. These aren't normal times. And when you're already talking about a really narrowly divided Senate where every vote counts, we saw that in health care. If Mitch McConnell had 53 votes and not 52, would they have

been able to pass a repeal bill? The stakes are so high when you're talking about how narrow these majorities are that I can't predict how Democrats would respond. And I can't predict how hard Republicans will push to try and expel Menendez. One caveat to that is it's not easy to expel a senator. You would have to have an ethics investigation, a recommendation from the Ethics Committee. And an expulsion vote requires two thirds of the Senate to force out a senator. So it can't be a purely partisan vote. And politically, practically, Republicans would want all that to happen between whenever the trial ends and mid-January.

Right. And the trial's over and we could have a verdict, you know, and in days coming weeks, I mean, it's expected sooner rather than later. The question for Democrats is if he is convicted, do you want to have a convicted felon sitting in the Senate

for two, three, four months? Yeah. I covered a convicted felon who won re-election the day he was sentenced. So, you know, it happens. Well, and isn't there someone who left the House in shame

because he was convicted of a felony who is now running again for his old seat. Michael Grimm. All right. Well, that trial is continuing. We will talk about it again once it has a verdict. And now it's time to end the show, as we always do with Can't Let It Go, when we all share one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Tam, what can you not let go?

I, of course, cannot let go of the new trailer that came out this week for Star Wars Episode 8, The Last Jedi. It seems everyone else in this room probably can let go of it, but that's okay. So at the end of this rather dark trailer, there was on the screen for just a moment the flash of a little creature on the Millennium Falcon next to Chewie. Anyway, the creature is called a Porg. I went and looked it up on Wookipedia, of course. The definitive source for Star Wars news. It is a a Porg. I went and looked it up on Wookipedia, of course. The definitive source for Star Wars news. It is a pretty definitive source. And they are seabirds, sort of like puffins. They live in the cliffs on the planet where Rey goes to get training, presumably from Luke Skywalker. But, you know, we'll get into that later. But the Porgs now are starring in their own video. Someone has, they went out to the store, they bought a Porg toy, got it to make the little

Porg noise, and then they composed it into the Star Wars theme. And when is this movie debuting? How long are we going to be living with this? In December. Okay. A few months. We can make it. Sue, how about you? My Can't Let It Go This Week is about the NFL and about how people are viewing the NFL. As we all well know and have discussed in this podcast,

President Trump has taken issue with the NFL and with certain players who have taken a knee during the national anthem. And it has become sort of a national debate over patriotism and racial equality. And where you sit is where you probably stand along that. Or kneel. Where you kneel is where you stand. So that is not what is interesting to me about this week. What is interesting to me is that companies that poll how people feel about your brand. The latest data shows that the NFL has now become one of the most divisive brands in the entire country. And that decline has come almost entirely from Trump voters who have changed their viewpoint about the NFL. Like almost instantaneously.

Yes. And if you look at there's there's charts sort of graphing how people feel about it. And it is a precipitous drop in sort of favorability views of the NFL. And prior to this, you know, four weeks ago, before all of this started, the same amount of Americans had essentially the same positive negative views of the NFL. About 60 percent of Americans had a positive view. 20 percent had a negative. And the drop that comes is almost entirely by Trump voters, that Clinton voters pulled by the same questions as their views about the NFL haven't really changed. And why I think it's just so interesting is just about just the power of the president as sort of an influencer, right, as a brand influencer, when we talk about in so many different things.

And in a political way, it almost kind of reminds me of, do you remember when Oprah had her show and she did the Oprah book club? And sort of like the way that a certain person can tell you something's good or bad and can so influence the way people view it. And just the power that Trump has to influence his way, the way his voters see things, I thought is just really striking. And now we have some numbers that kind of point to how sharp that is. I wonder if he could be as effective if he were promoting something, you know, could he do the Oprah thing if he if he lent his imprimatur to something?

Would he sell a lot of copies or is it mostly work just in the negative? If he goes after somebody, he can tear him down. It didn't work for Luther Strange. Well, what's interesting about this too is they measure the most polarizing brands in the country. Do you know what the number one most polarized brand in the country is right now? Trump Hotels. Sure. Number two, CNN. And so the question is, and we'll see if this data holds, and what this survey said and the caveat is that we now just live in such an outrage culture that people's viewpoints go up and down and up and down. And the example they used was back in April. Remember when somebody was dragged off a United flight and United's brand favorability went way down? It's now since then basically recovered and has been back to what it was.

So I'd be curious to see in a couple of months if the NFL thing peters out, does it fully reshape people's attitudes or is this just kind of like a snapshot in time? And it is interesting because the NFL has taken some hard hits before and weathered them pretty well. Our former colleague now, occasional commentator Mike Pesco was on Morning Edition early on in this NFL dustup. And he was sort of skeptical. He's like, really, Donald Trump, you want to take on the most popular professional sport in America? Good luck with that. But it sounds like... It was effective, at least among his supporters.

Scott, what can't you let go of? So this was really surprising. Yesterday, I checked my phone and saw that the Boy Scouts have announced that they are going to start allowing girls into the Boy Scouts. Are they still going to be called Boy Scouts? They are still going to be called Boy Scouts. They are still going to be called Boy Scouts, and it's a bit more complicated than the headlines suggest. Oh, it's going to be complicated.

So girls can now be part of Cub Scouts seemingly right away, but in separate, still gender-divided dens. So there's the girls' den and there's the boys' den. What? But then over time, they're going to develop a program for older girls so that they can earn the same badges as guys do and eventually become eagle scouts which is interesting and i should say shout out to venture crew uh 390 that venture crews which is like i think for older scouts have been co-ed for a while now so this is not entirely new but

still pretty interesting and shifts the dynamic of Boy Scouts. And what was really interesting is that the Girl Scouts were pretty annoyed about this whole thing. They were not happy in the articles I was reading yesterday saying, stick with your own thing, Boy Scouts. You have your own problems to deal with. Back off, girls. And both Scouts are Eagle Scouts, right? That's right. And you were both in Girl Scouts. So maybe we can just roundtable this right now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my mind, becoming an Eagle Scout always meant involving a lot of, I think of like outdoor skill. Is that inaccurate? Well, really, that's where the merit badges come in.

It's a wide variety of things. But there are a lot of outdoor specific things that you have to do. But then you can get like the lawyer merit badge or the reporter merit badge or a whole bunch of different things. It's kind of like majoring in college. There's your major classes and then there are your minors. Yeah. Because that is where I think maybe the two missions don't always like run into each other in that the modern Girl Scouts is a lot of female empowerment, leadership skills, building the next generation of leaders kind of a thing, which seems like the missions might be a little bit different.

So Eagle Scouts are about building the next generation of leaders, right? Like that's like a part of it is you do a service project. And it's interesting if girls can't begin working on merit badges and towards Eagle Scout until later on, are they going to be at a handicap there? Because it takes time to earn all the badges you need. Well, they only earn 80% of the badges that men earn. Scott, you're up last.

What can you tell us? Well, my story is about redemption and hope. Oh, really? And it's about baseball and it's about mass transit. Go on. You know, the Washington Nationals showed us some redemption this week when Steven Strasburg, who had been sort of vilified for saying he was going to sit out an important playoff game, you know, took the mound and pitched seven scoreless innings and was the hero of the comeback of the Nationals to force a Game 5. And we saw a similar redemption for Metro, the mass transit system here in Washington, which initially said they were not going to provide late-night service for that critical Game 5.

And then after some money changed hands, Metro said, OK, we're going to run the trains a little late so people won't have to leave the game in the clutch ninth inning just to catch the last train home. I'm hoping that we will get some similar redemption right here at the Noma Metro Stop, which is the Metro Stop closest to NPR headquarters here. And the escalator there that takes you up to the elevated track has been out of service in Metro speak for some time. A generation. It feels like it. It feels like it. It's been a while, though.

And they've had a sign for the longest time that says, coming, a brand new escalator, coming in 2017. I noticed yesterday Metro has taped over the 7 with an 8. So now it says, coming soon, new escalator 2018. Metro has taped over the 7 with an 8. So now it says, coming soon, new escalator 2018. In a different font. So let me ask you this, Scott. Two very important topics in your life.

Do you think you will cover a tax cuts bill signing? Or do you think you will take the escalator up to your train home first? First. Boy, that's... Which institution do I have less confidence in? Congress or the D.C. metro system? I'm just going to say metro... Existential question for a lot of people. For any Washingtonian.

Metro, find your inner Strasburg, dig deep, and fix the darned escalator. How long should this take? That is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. You can keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and your local public radio station. Chicago, we are still coming.

More importantly, Ron Elving is coming. And there are some tickets left. This is Sunday, October 22nd. 2017. 2017, yes, at the Athenaeum Theater. For tickets and more information, go to wbez.org slash events. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. If the escalator moves, I also cover the White House. Thank you Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. If the escalator moves, I also cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.