What A Day - House Republicans Deal Speaker Another Blow With FISA Bill

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

A group of House Republicans dealt Speaker Mike Johnson another embarrassing blow on Wednesday when they blocked legislation to extend part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. They did so after former President Donald Trump posted to “kill” the bill on social media.Meanwhile, Republicans struggled to deliver a coherent response to Tuesday’s Arizona Supreme Court decision that said an 1864 law banning almost all abortion was enforceable. Trump said Wednesday, that the ruling went too far, just days after he said the issue should be left to the states. Other Arizona Republicans tried to distance themselves from the ruling after previously supporting harsh abortion restrictions. We pulled the receipts.And in headlines: The latest Consumer Price Index report shows inflation is still stubbornly persistent; the Biden Administration announced a first-of-its-kind federal limit on so-called “forever chemicals” in drinking water; and New York City officials want to give rats birth control.Show Notes:What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Thursday, April 11th. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And I'm Juanita Tolliver, and this is What A Day. And y'all, what did we tell you about looking directly at the sun during the eclipse? Like, did you not listen? Apparently not, because Google searches for my eyes hurt spiked right away on Monday, and they have been up ever since then. While you're at it, maybe everyone can Google where you can find some sense.

We told you this. Yeah, you gotta to do better people please on today's show house speaker mike johnson was left adrift once again by his own party plus new york city officials vote on a plan to control the rat population by sneaking birth control into the bait you know totally normal behavior normal behavior. But first, yesterday, former President Donald Trump said that he would not sign a national abortion ban if he was elected to a second term as president, which goes against a promise that he first made as a candidate back in 2016 and maintained throughout his entire first term in office.

This shift comes as his party's liabilities around the issue of abortion rights have become increasingly clear, and it follows the latest of abortion rights have become increasingly clear. And it follows the latest hardline abortion ban out of Arizona. We covered this on yesterday's show, but give us a quick recap before we get into the latest out of the state. Yes. So as we told you, Arizona's state Supreme Court decided earlier this week to uphold a near total ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest. It is literally 160 years old from before Arizona became an actual state. And of course, Democrats in the state legislature are doing everything they can to fight back against this. But Republicans have control and they are scrambling to avoid

that. In the state Senate yesterday, Republican leaders removed one such bill to repeal the law from the day's agenda entirely. And in the House, after a lone Republican joined Democrats to try and get a vote on their bill, Republican leadership quickly called a recess to make sure that that vote didn't happen. Take a listen to the House floor as Republicans attempted to leave afterwards, captured by the news Shame, women, lie! Shame, women, lie! I wish they had a bell like in Game of Thrones. Seriously. Those are not chants from protesters. Those are chants from House Democrats.

And they were followed by chants of shame that continued on for several minutes. It is not typical to see something like that happen on the floor of a state house. But Democratic lawmakers in Arizona are clearly incensed over this. This also comes as people in clinics all over the state scramble to figure out when this ban would go back into effect and what they can do in the meantime. And as you said, this ruling is exposing some fractures in the Republican Party on the issue. Tell us more about that. Yes. So we are watching Republicans continue to realize that their hardline stances on abortion and these bans are extremely unpopular. They consistently lose at the ballot box. So they're trying to bend over backwards to have it both ways and to win both the very vocal hardliners who want nobody to access abortion care and the

more moderate and independent voters that they actually need to win anything. Former President Donald Trump, as you all know, has repeatedly taken credit for overturning Roe. And this week, he said that this was an issue for the states. But when asked about this ban by reporters yesterday, which is a direct result of the death of Roe and Arizona reverting back to this 160-year-old state law, he said that it went too far. This clip was recorded on a tarmac,

so it is a little noisy, but take a listen. In that clip, he says Arizona went too far, but follows immediately with the idea that it's all about states' rights. I feel like the cherry on top for me was him saying the governor's going to straighten this out. Did I dare hear former President Trump say a Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, had solutions? Yes, Democrats have solutions on abortion rights, and that means protections. Absolutely. Arizona, of course, as you all know, is a critical battleground state. Trump is trying to distance himself from the state court's decision there, but he's also responsible for why it happened.

And as per usual, the people who come out looking the worst, arguably of them all, are the Trump acolytes. Take, for example, Arizona's Republican Senate candidate, Carrie Lake. On Tuesday, she came out against the court's ruling, saying in a statement that she was calling on the state's Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, who she actually ran against to come up with a, quote, common sense solution, though she didn't elaborate on what exactly that might mean. But back in 2022, she was out here calling this a great law.

Take a listen to this interview that she did with podcaster James T. Harris. Incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that's already on the books. So it will prohibit abortion in Arizona. And I think we're going to be paving the way and setting course for other states to follow. Meanwhile, there is Republican Congressman Juan Sisco Mani of Arizona, who, per the National Journal, happens to be the eighth most vulnerable House Republican as we head into this fall. He also has a particularly egregious side by side. Back in 2022, when Roe was overturned, he tweeted applauding the, quote, historic day and calling himself proudly pro-life, saying that he will always defend life. But flash forward to Tuesday, and he took to X to say that this ruling is a disaster and

archaic, and that his record shows that he is a strong supporter of empowering women to make these decisions. You can imagine the laundry list of people who have these about faces. And it would be one thing if these people actually changed their stance and believed the things that they were saying. But I think it's abundantly clear to all of us that they don't. They don't believe it. They should stand firm in those previous statements. And shout out to everybody circulating these clips because voters need to understand who exactly they're dealing with. And Republicans need to understand there's no way that they can contort themselves out of the reality that they cleared the runway for these abortion bans. Absolutely. Pivoting to Washington, D.C., Republicans. Another day, another round of chaos for them,

as 19 members of the conference voted against a GOP-proposed rule and tanked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization bill yesterday. We can add this latest revolt, which is typically a routine party-line procedural vote, to the growing list of embarrassing defeats Republicans have dealt their leader, Speaker Mike Johnson. And naturally, Donald Trump was involved in this moment. Similar to his angry social media post ahead of the failed bipartisan border deal,

Trump posted online, quote, kill FISA, it was illegally used against me, hours before the vote. And this post is a bit of a one-two punch as Trump flexed his continued control over the GOP and fanned the flames of his long-standing beef with the FBI for investigating his 2016 presidential campaign for possibly coordinating with Russian intelligence officials. Okay, so before we get into all of this, please break this down for us. What exactly

is FISA? It's a national security law passed in 1978 that regulates how the U.S. spies on foreign agents via electronic monitoring and physical searches without warrants. Now, even though Section 702 of FISA, which is set to expire on April 19th, only allows surveillance of foreigners, it can include American entities and individuals who are in communication with foreign targets. As a result, the intelligence community would be able to review electronic records of both foreign targets and American entities they engaged. The law is controversial because it allows surveillance without warrants

and because there have been legal cases in the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that prove that the federal government has violated the Fourth Amendment and illegally collected bulk phone data that belonged to Americans. So there are reasonable concerns about FISA. Got it. Okay, so where were Democrats during this FISA reauthorization vote? Democrats sat back and watched the chaos. Take a listen to what Representative Pete Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Conference, had to say just before the vote. So whatever the vote count is or whatever happens to that, it's because the speaker has chosen not to advance this issue in a single standalone process.

If he chooses to go a different route, then we'll reassess. But right now, the rule vote is very clear. It has partisan resolutions attached to it. And so I would not anticipate any Democrats supporting it. According to reports, the measure Aguilar was referring to was a partisan resolution criticizing Biden. So that's why none of the Democrats jumped in to save Republicans from themselves yesterday. Aguilar also added that Democrats understand the need to reauthorize FISA for the sake of national security, but they would only do that on a clean bill. Good. I mean, as they should. So what comes next in this FISA saga? House Speaker Johnson told reporters that he and Republicans would, quote,

regroup and reformulate another plan and that his conference understood the need for the FISA reauthorization. To drive that point home after the failed vote, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters, quote, if we lost 702 of FISA, we would lose vital insight into precisely the threats Americans expect us in the government to identify and counter. We'll keep following this story as we approach the April 19th FISA expiration date, but that's the latest for now. We'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The everyday prices that we pay for groceries and gas ticked up in March,

according to yesterday's new Consumer Price Index. The report showed that consumer prices are about three and a half percent higher than they were last March. It may not sound like much, but it's still a quicker jump than experts predicted. Plus, we know that the state of the economy is a driving issue for voters and may impact how they show up for Biden. Yesterday's report also showed that housing prices continue to rise. It is pretty frustrating all across the board, not only for consumers like you and me, but also for the Fed. They were hoping to see inflation cool a bit more so that they could lower interest rates by early summer. The Biden administration announced yesterday that for the first time ever, the federal government will limit so-called forever chemicals in drinking water.

The new standard for the Environmental Protection Agency requires public water systems to reduce six types of chemicals collectively known as PFAS to near zero levels. They earned the nickname forever chemicals because, well, they never really degrade and they're almost impossible to destroy. They're also everywhere in everything from drinking water and soil to food containers and some cleaning products. They're even in dental floss, which if you floss regularly like me, I'm sure you do. They're in our gums now. And the EPA says exposure to PFAS can lead to all kinds of health problems like decreased fertility, developmental delays in kids, an increased risk of some cancers like prostate and kidney, and higher cholesterol levels. The EPA says the rule will quote reduce PFAS exposure to approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses. Public water systems will

have three years to complete their initial monitoring for PFAS and will have another two years to address levels that exceed the new standard. Reducing this exposure for a hundred million people is a huge deal. Obviously we all wish this happened sooner and this wasn't an issue in our society but I'm so glad that they are doing something about it now. The Tennessee's GOP-led Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would let public school teachers and staff carry a gun on school grounds. The move comes about one year after the tragic Covenant School shooting in Nashville

when a former student opened fire, killing three nine-year-olds and three staff members. And instead of advancing gun control legislation in response, Republican lawmakers have sought to arm teachers. Under the measure, teachers in grades K- 12 would be allowed to conceal carry a handgun in the classroom, meaning that they would not have to disclose that they are armed to their students or to their parents. And Republicans argue that this will somehow make schools safer because it would help teachers confront shooters. No, it won't help make anything safer. I promise.

Absolutely no. About 200 protesters were in the gallery on Tuesday as senators debated this bill, some of them parents of kids who survived the Covenant shooting, and they made clear that they were against the idea of armed teachers by interrupting proceedings with chants of, quote, kill the bill, not the kids. The crowd got so disruptive that state troopers eventually cleared the gallery. Beth Gebbard, a mother whose children were at Covenant the day of the shooting, told the Tennessean newspaper, The bill now heads to the statehouse for a floor vote.

Some news out of Trump world. The longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization and right-hand man was sentenced to five months in jail. Allen Weisselberg was convicted for lying under oath in Trump's civil fraud trial. This is the second sentence that Weisselberg is carrying out after he pleaded guilty in 2022 to tax fraud charges with the Trump Organization. And this all happened just days before the beginning of Trump's hush money trial. We called up Nick Ackerman, a former prosecutor in the Watergate investigation. He said that the Weisselberg news could foreshadow losing time for Trump as his trial kicks off next week. The evidence came out that Weisselberg was given $1 million by Donald Trump, essentially as hush money, which, by the way, is the same amount that Nixon approved for the Watergate burglars back in the day.

So taking all that history into account, I think that what Donald Trump has basically done here has reserved the space for himself at the presidential suite at Rikers Island if he's convicted. I mean, if that's how this ends, then we've got our popcorn ready. Not opposed. Truly not opposed. Also just continually amazed

that Donald Trump is like the Oprah of hush money, apparently just handing it out left and right. You get a payout and you get a payout. Yes, yes, everybody. And we're gonna call it a campaign expense. Exactly. New York City officials have come up with a new battle strategy

In their forever war Against the city's Rat population That strategy is Rat birth control Yes A new bill Said to be introduced

At the city council today Calls on the health department To scatter These fatty salty pellets That can sterilize Both male and female rats Those pellets will be scattered Across two city neighborhoods

As part of a pilot program. How do I sign my neighborhood up? New York has actually tried rat birth control before, but officials say that it's worth trying again because of advancements in both the way

the city stores trash and in rodent birth control. Who knew they were innovating in this area? Look, there was a statistic in the New York Times write-up of this bill that said

that a pair of rats has the potential to produce 15 000 descendants in a year a single year i don't know after reading that how you can come to any other conclusion other than the fact that we must just give up like the rats completely run the city we don't it's a losing battle i don't know if i'm ready to submit to my rat overlords but i see the writing on the wall or perhaps the pellets in the subway the pellets in the subway for subway rat for pizza rat for all of the rats who have earned nicknames in new york i guess they're coming for you they are they really are and those are the headlines one more thing before we go in the mood for unexpectedly sore abs from laughing They are. They really are. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go. In the mood for unexpectedly sore abs from laughing too hard?

Tune in to Love It or Leave It's miniseries, What a Weekday. Every Tuesday, John Lovett sits down with crooked staffers to make fun of the latest news to come out of our insane political nightmare factory. Cue Trump pretending he won't sign a national abortion ban. You can catch What a Weekday and a bunch of other exclusive content on Love It or Leave It's YouTube channel. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, listen to us about your eyes, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just receipts

that prove the hypocrisy of Republicans like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Juanita Tolliver. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And no more gender reveals for you, rats. Wow, I'm picturing a rat running around with a piece of cake and it has pink or blue frosting in the middle.

I was just picturing 15,000 baby rats a year. Juanita, we don't need the pro-lifers to start defending the life of the fucking rats. We don't need that. Please, no. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Natalie Bettendorf. We had production help today from Erica Morrison,

Michelle Alloy, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our showrunner is Leo Duran, and our executive producer is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.