Title: Friday Morning Politics: DHS Funding Stalemate Likely Over

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Brigid: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Good morning, everybody. Coming up in today's show, my colleague Jessica Gould will be here to talk about some very interesting stories on her education beat, including new AI guidelines for city schools, digital bathroom passes for students at some schools, and whether mayoral control for the city schools will be extended for another four years.

Plus, we'll talk about the verdicts in two social media trials, which each found that companies like Meta and Google are harming children on their platforms. We'll get the details on those verdicts and find out what it might mean for the future of these tech giants. We're going to wrap today's show with a little spring cleaning. That's right. We're going to have a professional organizer here to give us tips, and I am looking forward to that. If you have been meaning to clean out your pantry or your closets, listen up. That's going to be around 11:40 this morning.

First, the breaking news overnight, the stalemate over funding the Department of Homeland Security may be coming to an end. The Senate voted overnight to fund key parts of the agency, including the Coast Guard, FEMA, and most notably, TSA. The package does not include additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol. The bill now moves to the House today.

For Democrats who were holding out to try and force changes to how ICE conducts enforcement following the deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis, what did they actually achieve? For President Trump, who wanted to tie a strict new voter law to any funding deal, is there any chance he will back off the SAVE Act? We're going to discuss all of that and more in a Friday Federal Morning Politics Roundtable, as opposed to local politics. Joining me now is Mary Clare Jalonick, a congressional reporter for the AP, who I think was up very late last night. She's also got a new book out called Storm at the Capitol: An Oral History of January 6th. Mary Clare, welcome to WNYC. Thanks for being awake with us this morning.

Mary Clare: Oh, thanks for having me.

Brigid: Also joining us is Evan McMorris-Santoro. He's a national politics reporter. He writes the morning newsletter at the newish politics site called NOTUS. Evan, happy Friday. Thanks for joining me.

Evan: Nice to talk to you. Thanks for reading all that information out. It's a lot.

Brigid: It is a lot. We're going to break it down. Evan, before we dig into the news, do you want to just tell listeners a little bit more about NOTUS, what it is and how they can find your reporting?

Evan: Yes. We're notus.com, N-O-T-U-S.com. That stands for News of the United States. We're a new version of an old idea, which is just a big newsroom based in Washington that covers everything in politics. We have a bunch of policy stories that we do. We have a bunch of reporting about what's going on on the campaign trail. Our goal is really just to give people the news in a really straight and old-fashioned way, but in a way that is textured to what we want to hear about nowadays. It's very cool. I love it. I've been working a lot of places. This is the newest one for me, and we're having a great time.

Brigid: I'm glad to hear it. As you noted, we have a lot to cover this morning. Mary Clare, let's begin with you. I want to shift to that breaking news about DHS funding, including paying those TSA agents. First, do you think it's fair to say that President Trump and Senate Republicans were beginning to worry that they would be blamed for those lines we've seen at airports all week?

Mary Clare: I think all sides were worried that they would be blamed for it, but I do think that there was urgency on this side of the Republicans and Trump, especially because Congress is headed out on a two-week recess right now, and just the optics of leaving themselves to go home and leaving everyone who's going on spring break right now stranded and in long lines, everyone knew that that just wasn't a tenable option. I think all sides yesterday knew in the Senate and in the House today that it really does need to be solved. Of course, the Senate has passed it now, and it is in the House today, and it's unclear exactly how quickly they'll be able to pass it.

Brigid: Mary Clare, before that Senate vote last night, President Trump said he was going to issue an executive order that would force TSA agents to be paid. That raises so many questions to me, like where would the money come from? At this point, is that still happening since the House still needs to vote on the Senate bill?

Mary Clare: It's out there as an option. If, for some reason, the House wasn't able to pass it, then they would still be able to do that. It is a little bit murky exactly how that would happen. What John Thune told us last night, I believe it was around three o'clock in the morning after the Senate had passed the bill, was that they had found some money that they would be able to use to do that, which raised some questions among Democrats. Why didn't you do that a few weeks ago? They say that they looked at it, figured out a way to pay them if they have to, through an executive order. At this point, everyone is really hoping that Congress can just pass that, and then they won't even have to worry about Trump's announcement yesterday.

Brigid: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Join this conversation. Did you fly anywhere this week, or are you planning to fly anywhere in the coming week? What was your airport experience like? What were you bracing for? What kind of lines did you face, and how does this TSA funding deal sound to you? Call us at 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692. When we get into the question of winners and losers, how do you see the parties walking away from this six-week DHS shutdown?

Do you have other questions about the news out of Washington this week for my guests, Mary Clare Jalonick of the AP and Evan McMorris-Santoro, politics reporter at NOTUS, whose morning newsletter had a very apt headline this morning? Again, that number, 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692. We can take your calls or texts. Evan, as I alluded to, your newsletter headline kind of put this breaking news in a very Capitol Hill context. It reads, "It's the House's problem now." What are the next steps here? I know the House was scheduled to gavel in at 9:00 AM. Is there actually a vote expected today on this funding bill?

Evan: I'll tell you, Mary Clare would know a lot more about this. She's the House maven here. We are looking at a very live legislative situation. This is a thing that lawmakers do not like to do, which is, one, work on a Friday, and two, work incredibly quickly on a Friday so they can get out of town for their planned recess, which is what has happened here. I think that there's a lot of questions because the House dynamics, it was a tough one in the Senate, and mostly because Democrats remained united on this one.

If you think back to that shutdown from last year, that longest ever shutdown in American history, which, of course, most people have already forgotten by now because shutdowns are, in their nature, anticlimactic, that one was really about the Democrats not being united. The Democrats overall had this vision of what they wanted to do with that shutdown, but you could always find senators who were saying, "We shouldn't be doing this. Let's open the government back up. We don't like this."

This shutdown, which is specifically about Americans' distrust, and in some cases, disgust with what they've seen from Trump's immigration enforcement efforts, that one united the entire party. Moderates, liberals, they're all on the same side with this one. When this moves into the House, the problem is the Republicans have to deal with the fact that they have a fractured party this time. They have a very, very narrow majority in the House, which they have to cajole into doing something.

They have people who are, "Let's hold out. Let's not pass this because this is really giving a victory to the Democrats." There are those who say, "Let's do this because I don't want to talk about this issue. I'm running in a purple district. I would like to move on from this issue." It's not all figured out what they want to do yet, and that's what the House has got to do today if they want to pass this very quickly right now, which is a really, really hard thing to do.

Brigid: We have a listener who texts a question. I'm not sure if either of you can answer it, but they ask, "Can the guests explain why the airline ticket surcharge for TSA security isn't used to pay TSA?" Do either of you know the answer to that?

Mary Clare: I'm sorry, I don't. I've been focused on the congressional side of this, but it sounds like a really good question.

Brigid: It sounds like we've explained that.

Evan: We don't tip these people directly. When you pay your taxes, the Congress has the power of the purse here to do appropriations. What this argument is really about is an appropriations bill, which is that, are you going to fund the Department of Homeland Security, all the things that it does, from the Coast Guard to the TSA to everything else? What happened was the Democrats said, "We are not going to do that. We have the leverage here to tell you that we're not going to do that unless you make some actual legal reforms to the way immigration enforcement works."

The White House refused, Republicans refused, and so then you have a thing where what is really an argument about immigration enforcement becomes a situation where people from the TSA don't get paid. That's really how it works. Those surcharges and things, it's not like it's a direct cash payment to the TSA. I would say those who are flying, be nice to your TSA agents. They are working without paychecks right now. You don't have to give them a tip, but give them a hat tip or shake their hand or something.

Brigid: A smile, I think, is probably, at some of our airports, enough to ask for at this point. Evan, lawmakers, as you mentioned, are leaving for a two-week recess, which must be nice. Is it too cynical to wonder if part of what prompted this sudden overnight action was maybe even their own desire to avoid those terrible airport lines? I know there was talk about a Delta counter for congressional members that had to shut down as well. How personal is this?

Evan: It's very personal. There's a non-cynical way of looking at this. I will say a couple of days ago, a few days ago, and in the heat of this thing, we didn't really see an ending in sight. Trump had shot down this deal that he has now seemed to say he would sign. I spoke with a travel and tourism industry lobbyist, very powerful lobbyists, and they said, "Look, our entire plan has been based around the idea--" They were trying to pressure Congress to do something about this. They said our entire plan was based on the idea that spring break would come, and it would be this pressure point because it's not just that lawmakers want to go home, it's that a lot of Americans are flying around, they're going to hear about this stuff.

Look, we've always seen the idea that leaving town is very important to these people, but especially now, the listeners need to remember this, especially now, because we are in an election year. The election is not supposed to be about, "Is TSA open?" The election is going to be about affordability and the people's feelings in their pocketbooks and all that stuff.

There are these lawmakers who are facing, especially the Republicans, are facing increasingly tough headwinds, are eager to get back to their states and do some campaigning, talk to their voters, and try to build their support back up so they can get into this midterm cycle. Part of it is they do love their recesses. They do love their short weeks in Congress. The other part is this is an attempt to turn the page back to what these politicians actually want to be doing, which is talking to voters about the economy.

Brigid: As you mentioned there, Evan, these lawmakers do not want to talk about how bad things have been at the airports. They don't want to be talking about TSA. Just to underscore how bad it was, Mary Clare, I know you did some reporting about just how much the snarl at airports has escalated across the country. We saw it compounded this week here in New York after that deadly runway collision at LaGuardia Airport that killed two pilots and then ended up shutting down one of the runways until just yesterday. Across the country, how bad were the delays getting because of these TSA funding issues?

Mary Clare: I think we saw delays in different places at different times. There were some reports that it wasn't as bad as in other places, but we saw in Houston and other cities where it was really just lining up. There's really just nothing worse for a lawmaker-- That's such a bad moment when you're standing in a TSA line, and you're blaming your congressman for it. As Evan said, it's election year, and they really don't want their voters to be focused on this. They want to be focused on the economy, but that has been hard with all of these other things coming up.

The other thing to remember is this is not the first shutdown. Shutdowns used to be really rare, but now we've had in the last 6 months two 40-something-day shutdowns. Not only have these workers not been paid for 80 plus days out of the last year, but it is something that just signals dysfunction in government.

As much as the Republicans have tried to pin this on the Democrats, who are the ones who didn't vote to continue the funding, there is just a general sense also that people around the country know that the Republicans are in power and really do, in the end, blame the people who are in power. Different polls show different things, but I do think there's been a lot of anxiety about the idea that this is their government and it's not functioning right now, and that parts of it have been closed for a lot of the last year. I think everyone had that urgency of trying to get it back open.

Brigid: I want to play a little tape from how the two Senate leaders framed that vote last night. First, let's hear from minority leader Chuck Schumer.

Chuck Schumer: This long-overdue agreement funds TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, CISA, strengthens security at the border and the ports of entry, and keeps Americans safe. This could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn't stood in the way.

Brigid: Majority Leader John Thune.

John Thune: They wanted an issue. Politics over policy, self-interest over reform, pandering to their base over actually solving a problem. It's an appalling commentary on the state of the Democratic Party.

Brigid: Evan, Mary Clare, I want to get both of your reactions to this. Certainly, both sides are trying to frame who are the winners and losers here. What are you hearing in that, Evan?

Evan: Look, the people I have talked to, I mentioned earlier that the pressure on this entire shutdown has really been on the White House and on Republicans. You draw a line from that awful day in Minneapolis when the activist Alex Pretti got shot by armed federal agents at a protest, all the way to today. You have basically the thing where you've seen the Republicans and the White House try to shrink back from one of their 80, 20 issues, their strong, powerful issues, with this idea of this mass deportation program that they were going to do and that they're still doing.

This shutdown is really about something, and it's something that the Republicans have not figured out what they want to actually do. You have seen when they put forward a new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, he has promised a different kind of approach, kinder, gentler immigration enforcement. You've seen the White House signaling that they want to make some changes. That conversation is the conversation that has dominated this entire thing.

At the end of it, you have seen effectively the White House attempt to do a thing where it's our way or the highway. Democrats, you sign on to our plan for DHS, or the airports are going to shut down. The Democrats blinked at that, and now you see the end of the Republicans saying, "Okay, fine, we'll just fund TSA, and we'll just talk about ICE later." I think some of these things, it's very difficult sometimes to figure out where the dynamics are in the politics of these kind of events, but in this one, I think it's a pretty clear L for the White House in this shutdown.

Brigid: Mary Clare, I want to get your take on it, too, but I'm going to prompt you with a text we got from a listener who writes, "Are Democrats not effectively failing in their original goal of the shutdown? From what I've read, ICE has funding anyway, and Republicans can just ram through the rest of the funding later via budget reconciliation. Why not let the president use his executive order to solve the immediate problem?"

Mary Clare: A couple of things. I think one thing just looking back a little bit that gets forgotten in all of this is the reason that we're here is because the White House did originally agree to withhold funding or to pass a bill that did not have Homeland Security funding in it back soon after that shooting when they were concerned as well, apparently about the way that that looked, that they had shot an American citizen. The White House originally the original idea was that the White House and Democrats were going to negotiate this.

That fell apart. Majority Leader John Thune said, "Republicans, this is really between the White House and the Democrats," but of course, the Republicans in Congress had to get involved as well. It just was this revolving episode of different proposals that were shooting past each other, and no one really wanted to support anybody else's proposal. The White House did originally create this issue by saying that they would negotiate with the Democrats on this funding.

In terms of doing the rest of it in reconciliation and just ramming it through, yes, that's true, but at the same time, reconciliation is not going to be an easy thing. Both the Senate and the House have very tight margins. Even getting something through on party lines is difficult because they can't lose very many votes, and they're not always united within their own party. We asked John Thune about that last night in the middle of the night, and he said he was very cautious about it.

He's been saying that he didn't know if reconciliation was going to work well. He said last night, "It's tough, it's going to be tough, and we're going to try and get it done." It isn't totally a sure thing that they are going to be able to fund ICE and Border Patrol through reconciliation. That's the win the Democrats say that they have is that this agency is still unfunded, even if there is still a lot of money there from the bill last year. I think everyone can find an argument for whether they won or lost.

Evan: I can say that we had some reporters at the House retreat at Trump's golf course in Florida earlier this year. House Republicans, they do want to do reconciliation bill, period, but they have found our reporting has found that they have a really big struggle within their caucus because part of reconciliation bill, which is a very esoteric kind of spending bill that you can do without going through the motions of this 60 vote cap in the Senate, that there has to be spending cuts attached to that and that there is not much appetite for that among these moderate Republicans who have to run in these purple districts or even these sort of pinkish districts now the way the polls are going.

I think that it's very difficult to imagine how this reconciliation goes forward. It's not like fingers being snapped here. This is a lot more like, as Mary Clare mentioned, kicking the can. First, they kick the can when it was, "Okay, we'll just do DHS later." Now it's like, "Okay, fine, we'll just do ICE later." I think it's a very common thing for those who've watched politics for a long time to see that Congress is just saying, "Okay, wait, actually, this is tomorrow's Congress's problem." That's kind of what's happened right now.

Brigid: We need to take a short break. We're going to have much more Friday morning politics with my guests, Mary Clare Jalonick of the AP and Evan McMorris-Santoro of NOTUS, coming up. We'll be right back.

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Brigid: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today, and we're talking Friday morning politics with my guests, Mary Clare Jalonick of the AP and Evan McMorris-Santoro, who writes the daily NOTUS newsletter. I want to take some of our callers. Let's start with Richard in Babylon, Long Island. Richard, you're on WNYC.

Richard: Good morning. Good morning, Brigid. I was curious if anyone on your panel there has any idea if this funding bill that they're pushing through now is going to offer the jobs back to the TSA employees that were forced to quit to find alternate means of employment and support their families and such and maybe throw in some kind of bonus to bring them back as they are doing with, I guess, the recruitment for the ICE employees. The other thing I noticed is that news coverage around JFK showed that many of the ICE agents that were wandering around didn't have any masks on. I'm not sure if that's an issue that is under the table now or gone from being taken into consideration.

Brigid: Richard, thanks so much for those questions. I'm not sure, Evan or Mary Clare, if either of you have some information about what this funding bill would do for some of those TSA agents who've been at this point going six weeks without a paycheck, and if this changes the debate around masking for ICE agents.

Evan: Look, it's not--

Mary Clare: So sorry, go ahead.

Evan: No, no, no, no, no. Mary, you go ahead, please.

Mary Clare: Sorry. Just in terms of the masking, nothing has changed on that front in terms of this bill. That is something that the Democrats did not win in this is there are no reforms in the bill. They're still considering it a win that they're not funding Homeland Security, but the list of reforms, including on masking in getting rid of it, and that was something the Republicans said from the beginning, they were not interested in. No, nothing has changed with masking. If people are going around without masks, that must be something else or their own choice.

In terms of that on the TSA agents, I'm not sure of the specifics on that, but whatever they were receiving before, this will just be fully funding the department as it was before. We're still digging into the bill and looking at the details and any potential changes, but we did not hear of anything on that front last night in terms of any real changes on their pay.

Evan: I'll just add that Trump did specifically on Truth Social "order" those ICE agents at airports not to wear masks. He said, "It's up to you, but I really wish that you wouldn't." I do think there was some conversation and some hope here that this might change the perception a bit of ICE. ICE is sort of a catch-all term. A lot of the folks that people have been upset with have actually been from Customs and Border Patrol and not specifically Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.

There was a hope, I think, among some ICE supporters that this could maybe rehabilitate their image a little bit. Part of that, I think, was this Trump Truth Social post where he's like, "Hey, take the masks off in the airport if you could." We have seen that, but again, as Mary Clare says so well, there is no actual legal change around whether or not they wear them or not.

Brigid: That's interesting. Mary Clare, I want to talk about what I understand is one of the other sticking points in reaching a DHS funding deal, which was President Trump's insistence on linking his strict voter ID law to the funding. Do I have that correct? Can you tell us what the current version of what's known as the SAVE Act would do?

Mary Clare: Yes, he did originally try to over the weekend. Obviously, these negotiations, they have a flow, and that was something he was demanding last weekend. Then there was a White House meeting with some senators, and he dropped that particular demand. Yes, he still wants to see passage of the SAVE Act, which they just don't have the votes right now to do that in Congress, but he has really been pushing them to try to either get rid of the filibuster, which is something that John Thune has said he won't do.

What it would do is it would give strict new requirements for people to prove citizenship of the United States when they register to vote. That is the main thing that it would do. It would also require voter ID nationally. Currently, there are 36 states that require some sort of ID when you vote. A lower number require photo ID. This would require photo ID for every state, which is really what the Republicans and Trump have been focused on.

The Democrats who strongly oppose this are more focused on the proof of citizenship requirements, which they say would be much more burdensome for people because most of our current IDs don't prove citizenship. People would have to bring their passports, they would have to find their birth certificates, and other things. Military IDs wouldn't even be enough. You'd have to have a proof of citizenship and a proof of service. It's a complicated bill that both sides have really tried to boil down into a more simple thing.

Bottom line, they don't have the votes for it, and it has created a headache for Senate leader John Thune, in particular, because they would need to scrap the filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold, which they don't have. Republicans aren't willing and haven't been for a long time. Even when Democrats tried to scrap the filibuster, Republicans have always said they have no interest in doing that because they want to preserve minority rights.

It has been a tough spot for Thune and Republicans, but what they're doing now, or what they said they were going to do, is spend a few weeks really debating it on the floor and trying to satisfy Trump that way, and they will be doing that again when they get back from that two-week recess. We'll see how that moves forward.

Brigid: As I understand, there was floor debate already, as you mentioned last weekend, and so much of it has been framed by Republicans about this concern over non-citizen voting, despite the fact there's very scant evidence that this is even an issue. Then Democrats raising concerns about voter suppression, that this could potentially lead to massive voter purges if people don't have the paperwork to prove their citizenship.

What are some of the concerns the Democrats have raised? I know that there have been other bills by Democrats introduced. I understand Senator Gillibrand and a member of the House introduced a bill this week. It's a very divided partisan bill that they're calling a Voter Empowerment Act. Does that even get airtime in such a deeply divided state of the House?

Mary Clare: Probably not so much. It really is up to the majority party, what goes on the floor and what's debated, and they're really trying to keep that focus on the SAVE Act. I think something you just mentioned is another important point about it that Democrats have said, which is that another part of the bill would allow the Department of Homeland Security to review voter rolls from states, which Democrats say is maybe what they're most opposed to, because they think that would potentially lead to--

If they could look at voter rolls from states and then compare that to their own lists of citizens or whatever, that that could lead to purging of voter rolls. It's unclear exactly how that would play out, but that's their fear. That is another part of the bill that Republicans don't talk about quite as much. A lot of Democrats are extremely opposed to it and really portray it as kind of a run-up to this midterm election. Trump himself has said that they can't win the midterm elections without it, even though the Republicans had major victories in 2024 without this.

He's not being shy about portraying this as something that they think could help them win elections. Democrats are trying to use that against them, saying, "This is just an attempt to get rid of Democratic voters, basically." It doesn't have a path forward in Congress right now, but it is certainly being used for messaging, I think, on all sides, and certainly, Trump is using it to talk about how he says Democrats can only win by cheating. Although again, there's no evidence of that, or really that illegal citizens or illegal people in this country are voting in any sort of large numbers.

Brigid: Evan, I wonder if you can pick up on that thread a bit. We've heard President Trump talk repeatedly about his concerns about losing the midterms and what that could mean for him personally. Where do you see his push for the SAVE Act fitting into that?

Evan: I will say this. Here's a political 101 for anybody out here who wants to run for president. If you want to pass a bipartisan voting reform bill, don't run around saying we need it because the other side cheats all the time and all the elections are fake. If we don't get it, my side will not win. This is what the problem has been with this argument all along, is that this president has been absolutely flat-out vicious about how elections are run in this country.

Not that long ago, I talked to the Secretary of State in Oregon. I called him up because the White House had mentioned that his state, Oregon, was among the states that they wanted to get a look at this voter file. They thought that something was going wrong with this voter file. Local control of elections is a very important part of how America operates. It's very valuable to not just progressives or Democrats, but a lot of Republicans also are pretty focused on this idea of this local control of elections. It's very important to them.

Anyway, I called the Secretary of State of Oregon to ask them about this, and literally, they said, "I'll call you back because I'm in a meeting right now planning for the potential of federal agents to come and seize our voter records, which we had seen in other places across the country." There is a lot of fear among people who run elections right now that this administration is not really on the level when it comes to these voting reforms they are talking about.

This is specifically aimed at creating a situation where he wins the midterms, and the Democrats lose, and whatever makes that happen is totally fine with him. That's how people who run elections and people who are in the Democratic Party, that's how they feel about these reforms.

Part of this is that he has just simply not made the case to the American people, or to his own party, really, because that's why they're not giving up the filibuster to pass this thing. He has not made the case that these reforms are on the level. It's very, very important to him. They talk about it all the time. They have a lot of things to talk about, Voter ID. Some of these things that they talk about are in this bill are universally very popular, but I don't think that anybody is picking up on the stuff that they're doing and thinking, "Oh, this guy is really concerned about reforming elections." We haven't seen that politics move that direction since he started talking about it.

Brigid: I want to bring another caller in. Let's go to Rebecca in Manhattan. You're on WNYC.

Rebecca: Hi. I was curious, just to bring it back to DHS funding. Now that the Senate has passed it, what's the timeline for when people expect it to actually pass? Because I saw a report this morning that House leadership was dragging their feet on it.

Mary Clare: It could be today. If I had to predict, which I probably shouldn't do, it will probably be today. I know that they do have some ways to go in the House. It's a thin margin. Speaker Johnson is fairly noncommittal this morning. If you follow Congress, they usually figure out ways to do these sort of must-pass things and get out and go on their recesses. I would predict they will figure it out today. I don't know that they will. If they're discussing it now, they could vote in the next few hours, and Trump could sign it. If all those things go according to plan, then it could be fully funded by tomorrow. We will see what happens. Congress can be pretty unpredictable sometimes. Stay tuned and watch the news today. We'll see what happens.

Brigid: Evan, Mary Clare, I want to get each of your takes on two other stories that caught my eye, which, frankly, are pretty bizarre to me. Evan, let's start with you. Another breaking story in your newsletter this morning. President Trump plans to put his name on the $100 bill. What's going on here?

Evan: Yes, that's true. He is figuring out a way to change it. The US Treasurer comes off the bill, and the president's name goes on for the first time ever. I don't really know much about this, but I actually had an occasion this week to talk to an economic historian who is absolutely up in arms about this change that Trump is talking about and the change about this idea of putting these commemorative coins out that he wants to put out for the 250th anniversary of America that will have his face on both sides.

Folks who really pay attention to this stuff find this to be absolutely bizarre and out of bounds. I think that anybody who has watched this second term of this president has seen how focused this administration has been on putting Trump's face and name on things. It's not a huge surprise in the global sense of what Trump is up to, but this particular thing has never been done before, and a very, very big change to something really fundamental to American lives, the money.

Brigid: Speaking of things that have never been done before, Mary Clare, the president held a cabinet meeting yesterday. I understand there was talk about these airport lines, the war with Iran, his threat over reopening the Strait of Hormuz, reverberations on Wall Street, and then he talked about Sharpies, as in the markers. Is that right?

Mary Clare: That's correct. We actually have a story on this that he just started talking about Sharpie markers and how much he likes them and how he has replaced expensive White House pens that they used to give away at bill signings with Sharpies. This was in the middle of discussing the war in Iran, the security lines, rising oil prices, and all of that, and he went off talking about the Sharpie. I think that that probably just shows that you never know what to expect in the Trump White House. We're always on our toes for the next story, I guess.

Brigid: As we look ahead to the next week for each of you, what storyline are you watching next week? Evan, why don't you start?

Evan: [laughs] All right. Okay, I'll go. I will say I myself am getting on an airplane tomorrow for a little bit of relaxation. My personal thing is what are the airports going to be like tomorrow and for the rest of the week? That's very important to me personally. I also think that we have now dealt with the most direct conversation around this immigration issue coming out of Minneapolis, which is this funding bill. They've now come up with this plan to kick this down the road.

There will now be a real conversation once again about what actually is politically possible and people actually want to do about changing immigration enforcement efforts going forward. The Democrats have been united, but now comes back their conversations about, do they abolish ICE? Do they talk about something different? All this politics that has been pushed to the side by this shutdown is all going to come back, and I'm quite interested to see how that plays out.

Brigid: Mary Clare, how about you?

Mary Clare: I'm also about to go on spring break with my family, so I will also be doing a test of the TSA lines. Congress is now out, or at least the Senate is now out. The House may soon also be out for two weeks. I think it'll be really interesting to see what they hear when they go home. It is an election year. There's all of these different things swirling. That is often what sets the theme for what happens when they return.

How upset are people about any of these things? Are they talking about the SAVE Act? Are they talking about the shutdown? I assume a lot of them will be talking about the war in Iran and the economy. What do they decide to focus on when they get back, and what are people really most focused on in an election year? That'll be interesting to see.

Brigid: My guests have been Mary Clare Jalonick of the AP and national politics reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro, who writes the morning newsletter at the politics news site NOTUS. Thank you both for joining me. Have a great week off.

Evan: Thanks.

Mary Clare: Thank you so much.

 

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