Do political scandals matter anymore?
6/5/202630 min
As recently as a few days ago, it looked like President Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund might prevent Congress from passing funding for immigration enforcement agencies. Even though it passed in the end, Trump's fund made the process harder. We discuss how the president is testing the limits of Republicans’ willingness to push through his agenda. Plus, do political scandals matter anymore?
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt, and White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.
This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Miles Parks· Host0:16
[upbeat music] Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
Barbara Sprunt· Host0:24
I'm Barbara Sprunt. I cover Congress.
Danielle Kurtzleben· Host0:26
And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House.
Miles Parks· Host0:28
And it has been another busy week in the world of politics, and another week of President Trump pushing the boundaries of Republican support on Capitol Hill. So I wanna start there, Barbara. The Senate overnight, early this morning, passed a funding package for immigration enforcement agencies. Immigration is a clear priority for the Republican Party, and yet this was not a simple process. Can you explain what happened?
Barbara Sprunt· Host0:50
Yeah. It feels like Groundhog Day, [laughs] right? Like, it feels like we've been talking about funding immigration enforcement, uh, agencies for a long time, and that's because we have. Um, earlier this year, if we can, like, cast back, Senate Democrats blocked funding the Department of Homeland Security, and this was in the aftermath of, um, federal agents shooting and killing two US citizens at protests in Minneapolis. And Senate Democrats basically said, "We cannot fund the Department of Homeland Security in good faith unless we see some of the sort of reforms and changes that we would like in terms of enforcement policy." Um, that never happened, and so what, what did end up happening was there was a shutdown, which I'm sure we all [laughs] remember.