Roundup: Congress Skips Town Without ACA Vote, Trump Reclassifies Cannabis

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Hi, this is Melissa in Pasadena, California.

I just finished baking over 350 cookies in preparation for our 10th annual Cocktails and Cookie Decorating Party.

This podcast was recorded at 12:38 p.m. on Friday, December 19th.
Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show.

I want an invite. I want to see the cookies that are decorated after a few cocktails.
That's so funny. Versus the ones at the beginning.
Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Jeepa Shivaram.
I also cover the White House. I'm Sam Greenglass.
I cover Congress. And it's time to wrap up the week in Washington, where a lot happened.

I want to start with something that remains unresolved, dealing with the health care tax subsidies that are about to expire.

These were financial payments put in place during the pandemic to help people buy health insurance. And without them, a lot of people are going to see their health insurance costs go way, way up.

Sam, Congress has been staring at this deadline for weeks now. It was part of why the government was shut down earlier this year.
What is the latest?

Well, Congress has officially left Washington without taking any action on these subsidies.

The House and Senate did vote on a couple of competing health care bills before they left for recess, but none of those passed.

And neither of the Republican packages, though, would have extended the subsidies anyway.

But then in kind of this dramatic turn, four House Republicans joined an effort by Democrats to force a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies.

And they're using this tool called the discharge petition. But that vote is still not going to happen until January.
And, you know, the Senate has already voted down a three-year extension.

And members, I guess, just hope that this effort recharges bipartisan talks early next year.

Though we should say that the Congressional Budget Office estimates something like two and a half million people are going to drop coverage without the subsidies.

And some of those people are already having to make those decisions. Oh, they already had to make those decisions.

The deadline, if you wanted coverage on January 1st, was December 15th in a lot of states. Yeah.

So this is very real, very now.

But you mentioned a discharge petition.

And when I covered Congress, discharge petitions were a joke.

It was like a thing that the minority party would talk about doing to pretend that they had any license in what was going to happen on the house floor, and they never succeeded.

Yeah, so that world that you described is not the world that we are in right now.

So, just to back up a little bit, a discharge petition allows 218 members to basically sidestep the speaker of the house. And I did a little digging on this.

It's something unique to the house, and it's been around for more than 100 years.

It actually originated during the era of Speaker Joseph Cannon in like the 1910s, who was known as Sar Cannon because he ruled the house with an iron fist, I guess.

But, you know, the frequency and success of its use in this era is really unique. You mentioned some of the situations where it's been used recently.

In November, Democrats and Republicans banded together to force a vote on releasing the investigative files into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

And now here we are with these four Republicans from competitive districts getting together with Democrats to force a vote on the House subsidies. It's really a new era.

Deepa, my sense of the House of Representatives is that they have, in almost every case this year, only acted when President Trump said they absolutely had to.

So has President Trump weighed in on these health subsidies? Like, what does he want to happen here? Yeah, I totally agree with you, Tam.

I do feel like there's this constant like whiplash of like the House like, you know, looking at each other and then like looking at Donald Trump.

And then, you know, it's like this back and forth that we've we've seen for the last 11 months.

What's interesting here though is that this is maybe like one of the only issues where Donald Trump has not weighed in.

There is a notable silence from the White House where you know the truth feed is full of a lot of things but nothing about telling the House what to do, nothing about telling Speaker Johnson like, you know, here's how you should handle this issue.

It's been really, really quiet and I think that speaks to just how one, complicated the issue is and two, you know, that like infighting between Republicans that's going on.

Like if Trump sort of puts his thumb on the scale with this stuff, that really tinkers with a party that's already kind of divided in the House and with Mike Johnson, whose leadership here is clearly not really working.

Well, you bring up Mike Johnson. Sam, let's talk about this because the Speaker of the House, in theory, should be determining what happens in the House.

But there has been a lot of discontent from Republicans about how the Speaker has handled things, including

sending the House home for the entirety of the government shutdown when they could have been doing other things. So

where do things stand with the Speaker and the Republican Conference? So Speaker Johnson was actually asked about this by reporters this week, and he said he has not lost control of his caucus.

And honestly, a stunning thing to hear a speaker even have to say that.

He says that what's happening is just the reality when you have a really, really small majority where just a couple of members can exert power.

But this morning I was talking with Mike Ricci. He worked for former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

And he told me, you know, those were unruly Republican caucuses too, but they were still able to work. And he said, this is absolutely an indictment of Speaker Johnson's leadership.

As you mentioned, Johnson kept the House out during the whole shutdown, and that frustrated a lot of members.

And this discharge petition that we've been talking about is kind of a valve for more of that frustration.

And it's also allowed Democrats to exert power in a way that's really rare for being in the minority.

I think we might expect to see more members looking at these kind of discharge petitions in the new year and saying, oh, it's working. Let me give that a try too.

And we'll be interesting to see if there are further challenges to Speaker Johnson's leadership.

Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was really vocal about her discontent with Johnson as she heads out the door in January. She announced she's resigning.

We'll be interesting to see if we start to hear that from more members.

Though I should say, I don't know if there is really another Republican speaker who would be able to handle this current caucus any differently.

There's something of a joke, Deepa, that President Trump is actually the Speaker of the House. I think it's actually a joke the president himself has made.

How does the president feel about Mike Johnson? You know, as far as Trump goes, he typically makes it very clear if he's unhappy with someone, right? He will, you know, post on social media about it.

If he doesn't like the way someone's leading, he is very quick to weigh in. And that hasn't really happened with Johnson.
Yeah, I think that he's getting what he wants from Speaker Johnson.

You know, they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with items from President Trump's agenda.

And they've done the things he said they absolutely needed to do. And stepped back and let the president do the things that he wants to do from the White House.
Indeed.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment.

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And we're back. And let's turn to an interview that made a lot of news because it's the rare instance where a member of President Trump's inner circle was critical of him on the record.

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles sat down for 11 interviews with Vanity Fair to talk about her job.

She said Trump, quote, has an alcoholics personality and said she thought the administration had made some missteps on tariffs and immigration policy and the wind down of USAID.

Deepa, how rare is it that we get these kinds of unvarnished remarks on the record while the chief of staff is still in the job? Yeah, it is is just an interesting thing that happened this week.

And it's sort of fun to compare it to like the first Trump administration when, you know, people were leaking and talking to reporters left and right.

Like it was a constant part of the first Trump administration to have people who were talking to reporters, who were saying things about the president, who were saying things about their other colleagues and other members of the administration.

There was kind of like this constant swirl of gossip. That's really different, I would say, overall than how Trump's term has gone so far in the second iteration.

Because, you know, I think it's fair to say that Trump is the main spokesperson. Like, even just in terms of policy things or issues, like you don't really get statements from the White House.

They will defer you to the president's truth social feed. Like, he really has this big domination over the messaging and over who is speaking.

And we haven't really seen a lot of big leaks and things like that so far. So, this was a really significant interview in that way.
A lot of tea was spilled, a lot of claims were made.

But it was really interesting to see Susie Wiles kind of get really candid, not only about the president and his personality, saying that quote about him having an alcoholics' personality, but also, you know, being really open about some of the disagreements that she's kind of had about how this White House has moved forward.

And to me, it was really interesting because I think it sort of reflects some of that candid nature that Trump brings to politics, just saying what's on his mind and not really holding anything back.

And that's kind of the energy that Susie Wiles brought to this, too.

What is the White House saying in response to this interview?

Yeah, well, interestingly, you know, we were talking about earlier, you know, how Trump sort of is quick to put his thumb on the scale and weigh in when he's really unhappy with people.

And so far, he's been really happy with Susie Wiles. He was asked specifically if he still had faith in his chief of staff.
He said yes.

He even gave another interview after the Vanity Fair article came out and he agreed.

He was like, yeah, I do have an alcoholics personality and was fully, you know, co-signing what Wiles said about that. So it was kind of an interesting response from Trump.
But so far,

for such a big sort of article to come out, there was this big photo spread that came with it. It sort of didn't really receive a large amount of reaction from the president, to be honest.

Yeah, I mean, this was not a surprise, this article. They all participated on the record.
There were quotes from the vice president and the press secretary. This was out in the open.

And I think that it's important to note, President Trump burned through chiefs of staff in his first term. By this point in his first term, there was already a new chief of staff.

And Wiles somehow has a different relationship with him.

And I think part of that is that many of those prior chiefs of staff were trying to constrain Trump, to control him, to control who went in and out of his office, to put up a guardrail around him.

And based on this interview, That's just not the impression you get of how Wiles is leading. No, it's very much a let Trump be Trump sort of mentality.
Yeah.

Before we close, I do want to talk a little about another move that the Trump administration made this week, rescheduling marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug.

Deepa, briefly, what does this mean and why did they do it?

Yeah, so he basically signed an executive order that would speed up this process to do this reclassifying from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug.

And so originally, marijuana was in the same category as things like heroin and ecstasy.

So this essentially loosens the restrictions on how marijuana can be used for things like medical research, medical usage, treatments, anything like that.

It sort of opens the door for more, which is definitely something the cannabis industry has been advocating for, lobbying for for a long time with both Republican and Democratic presidents.

In fact, Joe Biden, you know, kind of got the ball rolling on this process. So it sort of kind of continues on from that effort.

To be clear though, this does not actually federally legalize weed, which is something a a lot of advocates have been calling for for a very long time, but it does kind of like sort of allow Trump to address the issue of marijuana without getting into legalization.

And Sam, this is something that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have wanted, but also it's something that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have opposed.

It's sort of a complicated thing that cuts a lot of different ways. What are people on the Hill saying?

Well, this week, House and Senate Republicans sent letters to the White House saying that they oppose the reclassification.

The Senate letter was signed by almost half of the Republican Conference, included some of its top leaders too.

And they basically laid out their concerns with marijuana, things like addiction, and wrote that rescheduling marijuana would, quote, undermine your strong efforts to make America great again and to usher in America's next economic golden age.

They said that the winners would be communist China and that the losers would be Americans who were left footing the bill.

This

also comes after the funding deal that ended the government shutdown included a provision that would have effectively banned CBD products, which honestly I had not realized was tucked in there.

And Trump's order this week, I guess, also asked Congress to reconsider that.

Okay, one more break, and then it's time for Can't Let It Go.

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And we're back and it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

I am going to go first.

And the thing that I cannot let go of is the Presidential Walk of Fame.

So this is something that President Trump has installed along the West Wing colonnade. So it's visible from the Rose Garden at the White House.

And first, it was a bunch of gold-framed photos of presidents being installed. All of the presidents, including Trump himself.
For Joe Biden, he put up a picture of an auto pen.

And then this week, a bunch of plaques showed up with some factually challenged information, to be sure. So let me just read a couple for you.

Sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history, taking office as a result of the most corrupt election ever seen in the United States.

Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters. Fact check, Joe Biden did win the election in November.
Donald Trump lost, though he continues to deny the results.

And then for President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama was the first black president, a community organizer, a one-term senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American history.

Tam, what do we know about who wrote these platforms? My goodness, I take it Doris Kern's Goodwin did not write. L-O-L.
No, definitely not.

One more. At at the end of an otherwise like relatively normal Bill Clinton bio.
It says, and in 2016, his wife lost in the race for the presidency against Donald J. Trump.
So, yes, who wrote these?

Well, I got a statement from Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. She says, the plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each president and the legacy they left behind.

As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself. Okay, but did he write like Calvin Coolidge and Benjamin Harrison? Or?

maybe I don't know.

I still have a lot of questions,

I will say. But this is very much of a piece with what President Trump has been doing lately, which is putting his stamp on

so many institutions, so many pieces of the White House, so many everything,

including the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace and now the Donald J.
Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
That is so true. Trump's name going up as we speak.

Deepa, what can't you let go of? Mine's gonna take a hard pivot here for a second.

Mine has nothing to do with politics. Basically, the thing that I'm really obsessed with, I don't know if we have covered this, but I was a big dinosaur girly growing up.

I wanted to be a paleontologist at some point. I just thought dinosaurs were so cool.

And so, this is the thing I cannot let go of.

There is a wildlife photographer in Italy who discovered, like, think of like a giant rock wall, essentially, like this huge cliff, and it is just covered in dinosaur footprints.

Really cool because like genuinely, if you go look at the photos, you see like the toes of these dinosaurs essentially.

And like this was in an area where no one knew that dinosaurs had walked on this part of the earth.

It dates back to like over 200 million years ago to the Triassic period for the fellow dinosaur girlies who are listening.

And it just was like a really cool moment, like the fact that this photographer saw this and then had to make a call to the Natural History Museum and be like, hey,

P.S. found this.
Like, it's kind of, could be something.

And it's just like a really astonishing thing to see.

Like, just the vastness of it. And basically, paleontologists have, you know, tried to study how dinosaurs travel.
And it just really shows that they travel in these big packs.

And they all like have, you know, a little dinosaur family traveling together.

And it just, yeah, made me, made me really happy you know it's just amazing that we are still discovering things on this planet

there's still cool stuff out there sam what can't you like

okay i want to talk about a lawsuit over taxes but this sounds way more fun than you thought that one goes okay so hang on

hang on hang on so the plaintiff is named finnegan mary reynolds and finnegan is an eight-year-old golden retriever.

Okay, so I guess the plaintiff is maybe technically Finnegan's mom, who is a New York attorney named Amanda Reynolds, and she is suing the IRS to be able to claim Finnegan the dog as a dependent on her taxes.

Yes. Dogs are people.
You know, dog food is really expensive. Okay, well, yes.
So according to the lawsuit.

Yes, according to the lawsuit, Finnegan is entirely dependent on her mom for food, shelter, medical care, training, transportation, and daily living.

Finnegan has no income, resides exclusively with her, and has annual expenses exceeding $5,000, which

are the qualifications for being able to be claimed as a dependent, except for they currently need to be human.

In this lawsuit, the plaintiff writes that for all intents and purposes, Finnegan is like a daughter and is definitely a dependent. So there you have it.
So funny. If we reclassify dogs as people,

like what?

I thought it would be years before I could claim a dependent. So, you know, maybe

it's going to be sued.

Oh, my God. This is, this would, like,

can you imagine people who like hoard pets being like, well, I have six dogs.

I will say the district court has indicated that they're probably going to dismiss this case. So don't get too bad.
What a bummer. But thank you for giving us something to talk about.
Yes.

You said lawsuit and I was like, swipe left, like don't care. And then I was really engaged.

Okay, that is it for today. Our executive producer is Mathani Maturi.
Our producers are Casey Morell and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay.
Special thanks to Kelsey Snell and Krishna Dev Callimer.

I'm Tammer Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Deepa Shipram.
I also cover the White House. I'm Sam Greenglass.
I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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