The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, September 28

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

More than a week after Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico is still without power and drinking water, and there is growing criticism that the Trump administration has been slow to respond. Repeal-and-replace is dead - again - and Republicans are turning their attention to tax overhaul. And the Senate candidate backed by President Trump and Mitch McConnell lost in Alabama. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Twice a week, we sort through the nonsense, share reactions, and give you the lowdown on what's worth your precious time and what's not. Find Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Maggie, currently trekking up Mount Kilimanjaro towards Uhuru Peak. This podcast was recorded at... 125 Eastern on Thursday, September 28th, aka three days after Tamara Keith's birthday. So 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 our weekly roundup of political news. The coyote that is the Senate Republican caucus was once again bested by the roadrunner that is the Affordable Care Act repeal. Now Republicans are moving on to overhauling the tax code. These tax cuts are significant. There's never been tax cuts like what we're talking about. Meanwhile, the candidate backed by President Trump and Senate Republican leaders lost by a lot in Alabama this week. We'll try to make sense of that. And more than a week after

Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico is still without power and drinking water. And as the situation gets more dire, it's becoming a bigger focus in Washington. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. And we are going to start right with Puerto Rico. It's been over a week since Hurricane Maria hit the island. And still, power is out almost everywhere.

Nearly half of Puerto Ricans don't have drinking water. People are running out of food and medicine. Over a week since Hurricane Maria hit the island and still power is out almost everywhere. Nearly half of Puerto Ricans don't have drinking water. People are running out of food and medicine. It is increasingly clear the island is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Here's Nydia Velasquez. She is a New York congresswoman, but she's also the first Puerto Rican woman ever elected to Congress. To the Puerto Rican people right now, to the people who are collapsed in the airport trying to get off the island, to those of you in houses without roofs waiting for the power to come back,

worry you are not, you are running out of drinking water. To those on the mainland who are worried about their lost land on the island, let me say this, we're going to keep fighting for you. Do not give up. We will not give up. Puerto Ricans, of course, are American citizens, but they do not have a voting representative in Congress. That's why members of the New York delegation have been so aggressive about this. And that's why members of the Florida

delegation have as well. Republican Senator Marco Rubio was on Puerto Rico this week, and he has been trying to draw attention to this in Congress. Here's what he said. And so while response to this storm will take a significant amount of patience, it will also take a significant amount of urgency. For each day that goes by, this crisis will get worse, not better. And I fear that if in fact there is not enough urgency in the response, we will be talking about a very different set of stories in the days to come. I hope I'm wrong with all of my heart. But I fear that when communications don't come back up, and when we start getting more access to some of these areas that have been cut off, we're going to start learning that the toll

and the impact of the storm is far worse than we had imagined. So Rubio said this a couple days ago on the Senate floor. As we talk Thursday afternoon, what is the latest on the conditions there? Marco Rubio held a press conference today, and he started it out by saying, as much as anything else right now, this is a major logistical problem. I mean, you have supplies that have come in that are sitting at port because they can't get them distributed. You have hospitals that are running on generators because there is no power. And diesel fuel is running out. Diesel fuel is running out.

This is not a situation that is under control at this point. This is, you know, we're 10 days out from a storm and they are basically still in the process of trying to figure out what the needs are and trying to meet those needs. But it's touch and go at this point. And we're going to we're going to listen to this clip in a moment. President Trump pointed out that, you know, an island makes it much harder to respond to. Rubio made that point as well. And it's just the fact that you can't drive a convoy of trucks in like you can to Florida or Texas. But Rubio has been pressing on this point, saying the United States has the

capacity to do something about that. This is a government that's invaded other countries, that has carried out massive relief operations in the past. I say this because there is only one entity in the world with the capacity to respond to all these various issues, and that is the federal government of the United States. Leveraging the power of the Department of Defense and an assortment of other agencies, it remains the only institution, certainly in our country

and probably in the world, with the capacity to respond quickly and effectively to the crisis at hand. Mara, hurricane response has been a major priority for multiple administrations over the past decade since Katrina went so horribly wrong. And you saw two hurricanes come and go. And FEMA was very quick to respond. President Trump was very quick to be engaged. And that just hasn't been the case so far here. It hasn't been the case. And the lessons of Katrina were really internalized by the subsequent administrations. And FEMA got better.

And that's why you didn't see the kind of devastation that you might have seen in places like Houston. But for some reason, for a number of reasons, the response to Puerto Rico has been slow. And at least in the president's initial tweets on this, it was rather grudging. He said that Puerto Rico had terrible infrastructure and owed all this money to Wall Street, almost as if it was their fault. All of those things are true. All of those things are true, but that has nothing to do with this unfolding humanitarian disaster. I mean, this is a president of the country that performed the Berlin airlift. So there are people who suggested that while Florida and Texas were states that Trump won, Puerto Rico generally votes

Democratic, and he wasn't as interested in that. Since then, the president, of course, has tried to dispel that impression and talk about how great a job the federal government is doing, what good reviews he's getting from the Puerto Rican government. But presidents often fail or succeed based on their response to these kind of external events. So that's what we're going to see. Marco Rubio says in the days to come, when we get into these areas of Puerto Rico, we're going to find out exactly what the damage is, and we'll see how the United States government responds. One interesting thing that I learned from this floor speech that Marco Rubio gave where he was sort of talking about the situation. President Trump has been saying, yes, it's an island and it has bad infrastructure and it owes a lot of money to Wall Street.

Marco Rubio in his floor speech sort of gave some context to that and explained why that actually is a real issue here, which was fascinating to me. So the typical way that FEMA, according to Rubio, the way FEMA normally responds is they're there to be backup to the state government. They're there to be helpful as the state sort of coordinates everything. Things have broken down, according to Rubio, in Puerto Rico, where the territorial government, this is an overwhelming crisis. This is the second hurricane they had in basically as many weeks. And also there is all of this debt and all of these preexisting problems. And so Rubio was talking about how basically that sort of backup role just isn't enough for the current situation. And the other thing that that Wall Street debt matters because people have to believe that they're going to get paid, you know, like power companies that would put their trucks on a barge and send them over to Puerto Rico so that they can put these power lines up.

Those companies need a guarantee that they're going to get paid. And and the federal government is now saying you will get paid. It's 100 percent. But that had to be put into place. But that was that should have been known within the first couple of hours. That's what the federal government is there to do, is to make sure that the money and the funding is there for everybody who has to put out resources in a disaster. Yeah. And of course, it has been in the news this week. We have talked about it on Monday's podcast. As all this was happening, President Trump, who had been, again, very focused on Texas,

very focused on Louisiana and Florida when those states went through recent hurricanes, he was much more engaged on other fronts. To me, the NFL situation is a very important situation. I've heard that before about was I preoccupied? Not at all. Not at all. I have plenty of time on my hands. All I do is work. And to be honest with you, that's an important function of working. It's called respect for our country. And here's what Trump did say about Puerto Rico. We are unloading on an hourly basis, massive loads of water and food and supplies for Puerto Rico. And this isn't like

Florida where we can go right up the spine or like Texas where we go right down the middle and we distribute. This is, you know, a thing called the Atlantic Ocean. This is tough stuff. But Mara, as you pointed out, there is a thing called big military cargo plans. Yeah, it sounds a little whiny to say that the greatest country, the most powerful country on the face of the planet can't get supplies to Puerto Rico. Of course, it's harder than just driving there. But he kind of had a contradictory message. On the one hand, we're doing great. Everybody loves what we're doing. On the other hand, we can't do anything because of the ocean. So a big part of the supplies getting to the island on barges, a big hurdle has been something

called the Jones Act, which President Trump just announced he is waiving. Can somebody help me out with what the Jones Act is? The Jones Act very simply says that Puerto Rico is not allowed to receive any ships under foreign flags. They have to be on American owned and run ships. Obviously, there's a big shipping lobby that wants the Jones Act in place. But the president correctly lifted it for this case. And President Trump has said he will go visit Puerto Rico next Tuesday. Yes, that is what he has said. We haven't gotten that scheduled or we don't have official notice of it. But that is what the president is saying. And as all this has happened, I noticed in Congress

this week, especially this became an increasingly high profile political football. Democrats are starting to really publicly criticize the Trump administration for the slow response. And a handful of Republicans are, too. Again, Marco Rubio has been pretty forceful on this issue. Yeah, I mean, he keeps sending letters to the president. He keeps holding press conference, giving these floor speeches. There is a very real sense here that not only does this need to be in the headlines right now, that this is going to be a sustained problem. Mara, how much of the problem when it comes to the response here, how much of the problem comes down to the fact that that Puerto Ricans are Americans, but they are not a state,

they are not represented in Congress, they have this American citizen with an asterisk in terms of how it actually plays out status? I think that definitely plays a part. They don't have representation. Marco Rubio represents a tremendous number of Puerto Ricans in Florida, as do the New York congressional delegation, too. And so, yeah, that's a factor. But as soon as relief organizations can get to Puerto Rico, more and more journalists will get to Puerto Rico. And we're going to be seeing these images, I think, for quite a while. And you can tell that the Trump administration over the course of this week realized that they have a problem on their hands because every day there have been more briefings. There have been more pictures of President Trump on a teleconference with the governor of Puerto Rico. They they clearly realized that the weekend

of tweets about the NFL did not create the image that they wanted of an engaged president. And now they are working overtime to make it clear that they are working very hard on this. And we should say, as we talk about Puerto Rico, the situation in the U.S. Virgin Islands is very bad as well. All right. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. Taxes, health care and what to make of that special election in Alabama, where the candidate favored by President Trump, by Mitch McConnell, by the Republican establishment, lost by a big margin. All right, we are back. Repeal and replace is dead again. And now Republicans are moving on to taxes. They've released the outline of a plan that could, and I say that as a key hedge, be the most sweeping overhaul of the tax code in more than 30 years.

But there are also a lot of details that just haven't been fleshed out yet and big promises being made that do not seem to line up with what we do know about the plan. President Trump gave a big speech about it in Indianapolis yesterday. This is a revolutionary change and the biggest winners will be the everyday American workers as jobs start pouring into our country as companies start competing for American labor and as wages start going up at levels that you haven't seen in many years. Republicans are framing their plan as being all about helping middle class families. Here's Paul Ryan, the House speaker. Cutting taxes on hardworking Americans so that you can keep more of your own hard-earned paycheck. Simplifying the tax code so that you can file your taxes on a form the size of a postcard. Reforming our tax system so that businesses, particularly small businesses,

can gain a competitive edge on our foreign competitors. And taking bold steps to bring jobs and profits from overseas back home to the United States of America. Democrats are saying that Ryan and Trump are talking about a very different tax plan than the one they're actually rolling out, though. Here's Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate. Each of these proposals would result in a massive windfall for the wealthiest Americans and provide almost no relief to middle class taxpayers who need it most. So, Tam, you were with President Trump in Indiana for the speech yesterday. Which which one is it? What do we know about this plan at this point in time? So what I can say is that we have a lot of detail on aspects of the plan that would benefit the wealthy.

So we know that the top tax rate would come down from thirty nine point six percent to thirty five percent. We know that businesses, corporations would be taxed the death tax, that basically only really wealthy people with an estate larger than $5 million ever pay, that that would go away. The estate tax would go away. So these are things that the plan that would help middle class people. What the president and his administration say is they want this plan, when it's all figured out, to be as progressive as the current tax code, which means that it doesn't help rich people more than the current tax code. But they've left a lot of those details to be worked out by Congress. So, Mara, if the tax plan is focused on the middle class as it's being sold, why would those details not be in the big picture rollout? Because they haven't figured them out yet. It's hard to make it all add up. It's hard to make it add up in a way that doesn't increase the deficit. There are a lot of questions that they don't have answers for yet. What strikes me that's such a

difference with the way they're trying to sell this tax cut plan versus the way they've sold ones in the past is in the past they said, look, the rich pay the preponderance of taxes. Of course they should get the preponderance of cuts. They're not saying that anymore. We're living in an era of economic populism. They have to say this is a populist plan. This is for the middle class. But by saying that, they're setting up a test for themselves. They've got the rhetoric out there. Now, when we finally do find out the details, people will determine, does it measure up? And who benefits the most? And we're not talking about a Reagan era cut where the top rate was something like 90% and we're going to bring it down. We're not living in a political period where vast majorities of voters are clamoring for a big tax

cut for the wealthy. So that's reality check part one. Reality check part two. Sounds pretty complicated. And yet Republicans are talking about it as something that they can do very quickly. We've we have long made fun of the tax time frame shifting here. It's happening soon. It's happening in two weeks. But here we are. It's late September. It is happening now. The process is beginning. And there is talk that this can be done by the end of the year. How hard would that be to do? Well, let's talk about how they would do it. So right now they have this framework that has a lot of details missing that the tax writing committees would need to figure out. The logistics and just sort of the process of making the sausage of building a tax bill that people could support, that will be difficult in and of itself. They want to do this through the reconciliation process. We've talked about this a lot before. The reconciliation process is what they were using to do health care, to try to do

health care, which is that it's a budget trick that allows you to pass legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president. In order to use said budget trick, they need to pass a budget. So first, the House and the Senate will need to pass a budget bill. Then they will attach reconciliation instructions to it that would say do taxes. And then they're saying they want to try to get this done by the end of the year. Great. Let's see if they can do it. There's so many tax cut fans who believe that as as admirable as it is to aspire to big sweeping tax reform, which means you get rid of a lot of deductions and do actual reform. They think in the end what they're going to what what the Republicans will end up passing is just tax cuts. So simpler, smaller, easier to do.

Which leads me to reality check number three. We're going to talk about this in a few minutes. But but Republicans in Congress are just getting crushed by their supporters right now for their failure to pass Obamacare. I have heard two very different arguments on tax reform versus health care changes. And the first is this will be so much easier. We all agree on cutting taxes. We're Republicans. And the second one is, as Sue Davis once put it, if passing an Obamacare repeal is a 5K, tax changes is a marathon. And this is so much harder. And if you couldn't get on the same page on the first one. Best of luck. There wasn't a lot of health care industry people engaged in these last couple of Obamacare repeal fights, but every tax lobbyist

in the country is going to be focused on this. So I don't know whether it's going to be harder or easier. I can tell you that the pressure on Republicans to just pass something, even a ham sandwich, is so overwhelming now that because they didn't get Obamacare and they're afraid of going home empty-handed to their base, they begged them for years, just give us complete control of government and we'll be passing things left and right, and they haven't been able to. So I think they're under such pressure to pass something. I find it hard to believe that they won't be able to pass even tax cuts by the end of tax cuts. Which gets to my question, Mara, which is there's been this populist revolt that we witnessed in Alabama and we're about to talk

about it. But like this, you know, the Bannon wing or whatever the heck we want to call it of the Republican Party is on on the rise. It seems to have power. And sort of the chamber wing of the Republican Party is not so much, I mean, they're actually in power, but they're not where the heart and soul of things are right now. So are the people who voted for, you know, the base, are they clamoring for a tax cut for businesses? Look, a lot of them are small businesses. I think that tax cuts is so part of the DNA of conservatives and Republicans, even the Trump wing. Sure, they want this. If you wanted to list the truly top issues for the Trump wing of the party, it would be immigration. It would be the border. It would be trade. But the point is they want to

see the Republicans do something. They couldn't get Obamacare. I think that they would be it would go a move on to other topics. He has been doing more events allegedly focused on pushing this tax plan. Tam, you were there yesterday. Was this a big full scale sales pitch or was it a few minutes on tax stuff and then the typical Trump rally? No, this is a legit rollout. This is like, you know, if this if it was President George W. Bush, it would be a very similar rollout. Oh, this was a speech that was almost entirely focused on taxes. He you know, he went a little off script, talked about trade a little bit, talked about how some companies going to bring something in. almost entirely just a straight ahead. I am pitching a tax system overhaul kind of speech in a room full of people wearing suits. It was a policy rollout. This is something that they are definitely trying to do in a more serious way than they ever did with health care.

All right. Well, stay tuned because this will be a main topic of conversation on the pod going forward. But one last thing on health care. You may be wondering, so what happens next on the Obamacare repeal? Excellent question. Short answer is that it's going to come back, Republicans say, but it's not going to come back for a while. They're going to do taxes first. They have to use the reconciliation bill for that. But then Lindsey Graham, who made the big push for this latest version, says we'll be back in early 2018 with an Obamacare repeal. I believe this is the most important thing I can ever do for the country. Working with my colleagues is not to just repeal Obamacare, but to replace it with a system closer to where you live, controlled by people you can vote for. And we're going to get there. To my Republican colleagues, we're going to fulfill our promise to repeal and replace. To the American people, we're going to improve health care for you, because at the end of the day, that's the only promise that matters. Now, to say something obvious, doing this in early 2018

puts it that much closer to an election and right in the middle of Republican primary season, which will raise a whole different host of political challenges. All right, so let's let's shift gears to our final main topic. Let's talk about Alabama, because there's a lot of connection here. There's connection between what happened in Congress so far this year and the results of the state special election. And there's also a connection between that result and what might happen next year. I'm sure you know by now, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore beat incumbent Republican Luther Strange and beat him by a lot. Moore has a very controversial track record, but he was embraced by the grassroots hard right

and figures like former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who's now running Breitbart again. I told you all last night that a vote for Judge Roy Moore is a vote for Donald J. Trump. And I want to thank all the good folks in Alabama for supporting Donald Trump today by voting for Judge Moore. But Trump did not support Moore. He supported strange and strange lost.

Here's what Moore said on primary night after he had won. Together we can make America great. We can support the president. Don't let anybody in the press think that because he supported my opponent that I do not support him and support his agenda as long as it's constitutional as long as it advances our society our culture our country i will be supportive

as long as it's constitutional but we have to return the knowledge of god and the constitution of the united states to the united states congress okay so we've had a few days to think about this. So I want to start this off this way. I want to ask both of you what the main big thought takeaway you've had from this election is, just in terms of what happened or what it could mean going forward. Mara? My biggest takeaway is that the Republican Party is more fractured than I thought it was. I was talking to people before this race and somebody said, you know what, there's three

parties in America. They're the Democrats, the congressional Republicans and the Trump Party. And the Trump Party elected Roy Moore, even though Donald Trump was supporting Luther Strange, because Donald Trump has been deeply ambivalent about where he belongs in the Republican universe. And he's been toggling back and forth between the establishment and his base. And he was dragged kicking and screaming to support Luther Strange. He was asked by many Republicans to do it. And his guy lost, which shows you his voters might love him, but they're not willing to transfer that affection to Republican establishment candidates just because he asks them to. And here's the thing that I was confused by in all of this. You have Steve Bannon out there campaigning, given a fiery speech saying this is the beginning of a revolution.

You just elected the president of the United States. You have power. And yet people like Bannon and a lot of voters out there still seem just as angry, just as frustrated, just as on the outside when Donald Trump is in the White House. Anger is the they are as angry at Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan as they were at Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And that's in other words, tribalism has now devolved to every level of politics, even inside the Republican Party, their tribes. And that does not bode well for a party that wants to unify and pass a legislative agenda. Tim, your big thought. I think it is very possible that Mara is right about everything she said, that this is a sign that that, you know, sort of the insurgency within the Republican

Party is very powerful and gaining steam. There's another possibility and all these things could be true. But Roy Moore is sort of a unique character in a unique state. Alabama is a very conservative state. Alabama is a religious state. Alabama is a state where Roy Moore is a celebrity because he was this guy who basically got booted from the state Supreme Court twice for violating federal court orders. He you know, in his remarks, he talks about we have to return the knowledge of God and the Constitution to the United States Congress. God is a very significant thing here. People at his election night party were singing hymns as it became clear that he was winning. A big part of his base were people who like that he, you know, has very strong views about bringing religion into government.

And he also benefited from Alabama's former governor being hugely unpopular and Luther Strange being appointed by that former governor as he was supposed to be investigating him. So there were some interesting dynamics in the state that maybe Steve Bannon was writing the coattails of. Steve Bannon often comes in late, but he does. He came in late to Trump, too. But he immediately left Alabama, went out west to meet with more of these primary challengers who are going to run with the same kind of anti-establishment, anti-Mitch McConnell, Trumpist energy that Roy Moore did. And I do think there are always unique features of every single election, but I don't think that Moore is a one-off,

even though he is unique in many ways. What's interesting to me is that this happened before. In 2010, some Tea Party candidates that weren't quite ready for prime time won Republican primaries and they lost the general election, thereby depriving Republicans of said, we are going to crush them. And he did. He crushed every single anti-establishment challenger in the Republican Party. This time, this wave might just be too big for Mitch McConnell. So here's what we were talking about the Capitol this week, though. I think this could create a feedback loop because, OK, Republican voters or let's just call them Trump voters. Yeah, let's do that. There's clearly a difference at this point.

Trump voters are mad because things aren't getting done. So they elect someone like Roy Moore, who will make it harder to get things done. Because look, we were saying Roy Moore could make Rand Paul look like Mitch McConnell's best friend in the Senate in terms of where he is, in terms of following the lead and being a reliable vote. But the feedback loop started long before. Mitch McConnell's whole rise to power was about stopping Barack Obama from getting things done. And as long as the Republican Party has wedded itself to this kind of anti-government ideology, it doesn't believe in governing. It believes in opposing.

And yet its base is mad when it can't govern. Yes, which is the contradictions that it's had a hard time squaring. If you are a Republican thinking about retiring after seeing Roy Moore win in Alabama, you're thinking a lot harder. And if you are a primary challenger thinking about taking on an establishment Republican, you are feeling pretty good after seeing that. So I think that it's injected an element of instability into what Republicans thought was going to be a super good year for them in the Senate because they were hoping to pick up more seats. The map really favored them. It still might. You know, Democrats are still on the defensive in the Senate races next year. The map technically really does still favor them.

Yes. But they now have to spend a lot more money and resources defending incumbents from these kind of challenges. And Scott, also this week, Bob Corker, who is the junior senator from Tennessee, and a solid Republican vote in the Senate. He announced he was retiring, right? Yeah. So and again, it just gets harder because you have the likelihood that that more will become a senator. There's a Democrat running, but it's pretty tough for a Democrat to win in Alabama. But you have the governing wing of the party, as a couple of them like to call themselves,

saying that they're starting to retire on the House side, people like Charlie Dent, Republican for Pennsylvania. But Bob Corker in the Senate this week says he's going to not run again. Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a very thoughtful voice on foreign policy. It's interesting, Bannon name-checked him, saying that he was going after him. Corker started as a Trump ally. Corker was on the shortlist for secretary of state, but he's gotten pretty critical of President Trump. was going to have a terrible primary challenge from his right, because, among other things, he said that Donald Trump has not exhibited the stability or competence needed to be a successful president. And he stood by that. He stood by that. And that was going to be in every single ad against him. And he in his statement, he said something to the effect that the most important

work I can do is in the next 15 months. Yeah, I've got it right here. Let me read the full thing, because this was cryptic and also pretty interesting. I also believe the most important public service I have to offer our country could well occur over the next 15 months. And I want to be able to do that as thoughtfully and independently as I did the first 10 years and nine months of my Senate career. But that was cryptic and interesting, given all the big things hanging over the Senate when it comes to checks and balances of the administration.

All right, one other thing to talk about before we get to Can't Let It Go this week, and that was a really nice moment that happened on the House floor earlier today. The chair wishes to mark the return to the chamber of our dear friend and colleague from Louisiana, Mr. Steve Scalise. Scalise, of course, was shot and very seriously injured this June when a shooter aimed at Republicans practicing for the congressional baseball game. He was seriously injured. He couldn't walk for a long time, but he's been recovering. And three months later, he returned to the Capitol. Something else I saw firsthand wasn't a surprise to me, but it was the outpouring of love from you, my colleagues, both Republican and Democrat. I know right after the shooting, we were practicing on the Republican side and the Democrats were

practicing too. And my colleague and friend and sometimes arch rival in baseball from back home in New Orleans, unfortunately the star of the game too many times, Cedric Richmond somehow figured out which hospital I was sent to and got there, probably the first person there on the scene in his baseball uniform to check on me. So many others of you, again, both Republican and Democrat, reached out in ways that I can't express the gratitude and how much it means to me, Jennifer, and our whole family. It really does show the warm side of Congress that very few people get to see. And so I want to thank each and every one of you for that. You don't know how much it meant to me. And when I come back into this chamber here today, just seeing the faces of all of you, it just means more to me than you can

imagine. So thanks for all of that love and support. So many news stories have happened this year that this shooting really faded from popular attention pretty quickly. But within Congress, it really didn't. This was a really traumatic day for lawmakers, for staffers, for everybody who works in the building. when it happened, not only the obviously violence and the fears that come when somebody takes an assault rifle and goes after elected officials, but also the way that it just kind of really underscored how so many people just don't view politicians as human beings. And so many people beyond that don't view people House floor with Democrats and Republicans being genuinely happy that Steve Scalise was back. show with Can't Let It Go, which we do every week where we all share one thing we can't stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. And I'm going to go first. And I want to clarify that this isn't Can't Let It Go, but this is actually a really serious news story this week. We just literally couldn't find anywhere else to fit in the show.

So I'm going to talk about it right now. And that is the fact that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is under incredible scrutiny for the amount of private jets he has used and the amount of taxpayer money that has gone toward these private jets, upwards of $400,000 at this point. And we should say we primarily know about all of this because Politico has done an amazing job digging into this story day after day. There's a new update on Politico.

They just keep finding a new flight day after day after day. It's remarkable. There's a new update on Politico. They just keep finding a new flight day after day after day. It's remarkable. And it's gotten more serious because a couple things happened this week. One, the House Oversight Committee requested from the Trump administration a list of not only every private flight taken by a political appointee in the administration, but also a list of any government jet used because, of course, you'll remember from multiple can't let it goes over the last few months, Steve Mnuchin and his request for for for government jets. President Trump was asked about this yesterday, and he gave not the answer you want to hear from the president when he was asked about his concerns about about Tom Price's use of

these jets. I was looking into it and I will look into it and I will tell you personally, I'm not happy about it. I am not happy about it. What are you going to do about it? I'm going to look at it. I am not happy about it. The thing that makes this stand out is that in past administrations, people like a Health and Human Services secretary, cabinet members, they didn't take private jets. They flew commercial. And some current cabinet secretaries are still using normal aircraft.

A Politico playback noted this morning. Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation. Transportation flies coach. Flies coach. Yeah. So this is an ongoing story, especially since Politico keeps finding more and more details about this. So we'll see where this goes. Yeah.

Tam, what can't you let go? So I am a Californian, or at least for the first 30 years of my life, I was a Californian. I think that still counts. Yeah, I know. It's still in my blood. And California is doing something which is kind of fun and could totally, if it ends up sticking, shake up the presidential primary system. Yes. California has decided that the legislature voted, the governor signed the bill. They are planning to move their primaries in 2020 to early March. Which is a big difference from California's typical spot in the primary process of like just about 10 last.

Yeah. So, I mean, last during the primaries in 2016, it was basically the last big primary. It was in June. Things were pretty much decided by that point. If it's March, they could be something like the fifth primary. Now, maybe some other states will move up. There will be jostling. But March is much earlier in the primary process. And here's the thing about California. It's a very big, very much more diverse than like an Iowa or a New Hampshire, also very liberal state. So that could shake things up. I mean, I'm thinking about the Republican primary. If the Republican primary had been held in March in 2016, there's a somewhat decent chance that like a John Kasich or a Marco Rubio.

Can we just remember? Maybe things have changed. because the Republican primary would nominate these extremely far right politicians. In other words, California is super important state, huge up until now. It seems to have been satisfied with being used only as an ATM machine for politicians. Now it's finally getting up on its hind legs and saying, hey, I want to have some say. It tried it another time, like maybe 15 years ago. It tried moving up its primary and then it ended up like not panning out and they moved it back. I can promise you this. Yes. In late February or early March 2020, I am quite confident I will find a reason to do a really important story with the critical key voters who live in Lake Tahoe.

Sir, can I ride on this chairlift with you? I have a few questions about the California primary. Check in in February 2020, and you will probably find me there, editors willing. Mara, how about you? The image that I can't let go this week is Roy Moore, who we discussed earlier in the show, the very Trumpian candidate who won the Alabama Senate runoff. He was pacing around on stage and he brandished a little itty teeny bitty gun to show his fealty to the Second Amendment. It was a tiny little silver pistol that was shocking to me because it reminded me of the kind of gun you'd see a brothel owner in an old Western hide under her petticoats. It just didn't seem like the kind of gun that a macho Second Amendment Republican would wave around.

He rode his horse to the polls that day. He did ride his horse to the polls. We'll see if he can carry that into the U.S. Capitol if he wins. I don't think he can, actually. I think that many a staffer has gotten in a big load of trouble accidentally carrying a gun into the Capitol. I have a hard enough time leaving my keys in my pockets trying to get in. Okay. All right.

That is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. Keep up with all of our coverage between now and then on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. We've told you about our upcoming live show in Chicago. You can go to WBEZ.org for more information about that. But there's more. If you live in the D.C. area, we are headed back to the Warner Theater in January for a live taping of the podcast. We're doing it alongside our local station, WAMU. Tam, we were there just about a year. It will have been a year in January. We sold out the theater.

It was a great night. It was so much fun. We're going to do it again. So you can find more information and buy tickets on nprpresents.org. That's nprpresents, all one word,.org. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, Friday, 10 o'clock Eastern. So we'll be there and we would love to see you there. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason,

National Political Correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021