[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Before we dive into collection of challenges facing President Biden as he gets ready to hold his first news conference as president this afternoon. I think it's worth taking a step back to just acknowledge how different his approach is than Donald Trump's. In a minute I'll ask my two guests from the Washington Post how different it feels. If Trump woke up every day ready to create a bad guy out of someone and slash away at them to aggrandize himself, Biden seems to be waking up every day to solve problems and be is understated about them as he can get away with.

He's a much more earnest leader, but that doesn't mean history ended on January 20th, or that Biden doesn't have big problems to solve, or that he might not be blowing some things or that he doesn't have strong opinions about how to solve them. It's not just the pandemic or the things Biden would like to make progress on like the climate, racial justice, economic inequality, infrastructure. No president can control events that much. Gun safety has been forced back to the spotlight after the mass murders in Georgia and Colorado. Unauthorized immigration and the treatment of unaccompanied children have been forced back into the spotlight as opposed Trump surge continues to grow.

North Korea is trying to provoke him with new ballistic missile tests. Dozens of states controlled by Republicans are implementing restrictions on voting embracing the premise of Trump's big lie about a stolen election to make it harder, especially for African-Americans to vote. Democrats in Congress are trying to respond. Those things are leading to a really difficult to be within the Democratic Party right now, whether to end the filibuster altogether in the Senate so they can pass bills on all these things with 51 votes rather than 60, or maybe end it only for certain things.

Maybe just voting rights laws because they're so central to democracy or that would be the argument. Here are a few sound bites of that coming to a head in the Senate yesterday as they debated the Senate's version of a bill that did pass the house already known as the For the People Act or HR1 and now S1 in the Senate. One thing the bill would do is make sure early voting keeps being allowed on Sundays which Republicans are trying to ban in Georgia. Here is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor.

Chuck Schumer: In the most reprehensible effort of all might be found in Georgia where Republicans recently passed a bill to eliminate early voting on Sunday. On Sunday a day when many church-going African Americans participate in voter drives known as souls to the polls. What an astonishing coincidence. Outlaw voting on a day when African-American churches sponsor get-out-the-vote efforts. I'd like one of the Republican members on this committee to give us a plain sense justification for that restriction.

Brian: Never mind, he said Sunday. I thought in Brooklyn they say Sunday, but Senator Schumer. Later in a committee hearing, Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi actually gave this rationale for a Sunday voting ban.

Cindy Hyde-Smith: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy so that is my response to Senator Schumer.

Brian: Never mind, the government isn't supposed to establish any particular religion. Maybe next they'll look for a religion whose holy day is Tuesday and ban voting that. More broadly though Schumer took aim at the spate of bills making it harder to vote around the country.

Chuck Schumer: Instead of doing what you should be doing when you lose an election in a democracy, attempting to win over those voters in the next election, Republicans instead are trying to disenfranchise those voters. Shame on them.

Brian: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell argued against federalizing election laws and including voting methods more susceptible to fraud

Mitch McConnell: From here in Washington. Popular policies like voter ID requirements should be banned unless States neutered them with loopholes. Meanwhile, unpopular and absurd practices like ballot harvesting where paid political operatives can show up caring stocks of other people's ballots would not just be allowed, it would be mandatory.

Brian: History has not ended in America folks. Biden holds his first news conference as president this afternoon. Biden's appointing vice president Harris to be the point person for the Border. He's considering unprecedented executive action on guns. Joining me now are Washington Post Congressional correspondent, Marianna Sotomayor,s and Washington Post White House correspondent Tyler Pager. Tyler and Marianna, thanks so much for joining us on a very busy day. Welcome to WNYC.

Marianna Sotomayor: Thanks for having us.

Tyler Pager: Thanks so much.

Brian: Marianna are the Democrats thinking about abolishing the filibuster just for voting rights laws? Or what discussions are they having about that among Senate Democrats?

Marianna: It seems voting rights in particular that being the specific issue that could really push Democrats over the edge. You hear it from House Democrats saying that that is the one issue. If they had to pick one to overhaul the filibuster, that would be it. Of course, in the Senate, that's where it gets more complicated as you mentioned. There are some Senators specifically Senator Joe Manchin also Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. Both of them saying that they are against any changes to the filibuster. Manchin, showing some kind of opening.

Tyler can speak more about what Biden has said, but it seems there could be some compromise on reforming the filibuster slightly and what that would look like is instead of getting rid of it completely, of course, that's the need to have 60 votes and there's only 50 Democrats to see Republicans right now. You would have to be able to have more support to completely get rid of that one provision. They’re really looking at trying to potentially go back to how it was a couple of years ago when we all remember Senator Ted Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham on the floor. Taking up a lot of time standing and filibustering and speaking for several hours on the floor.

That is what they are hoping to bring back more or less because eventually, senators are going to get exhausted. They could try and grandstand for maybe 24 hours, but eventually, they would have to move forward and hold votes. They're trying to bring back at least that right now. If they want to filibuster, they don't have to go to the floor and grandstand in that way. It's just something that exists and that's what really holds them back and that's really what's making a lot of senators very frustrated. It's possible, but as of right now it might just take that one voting rights issue once it gets closer to the floor to really get Democrats to break on that.

Brian Lehrer: I have so many things as you could tell from the intro that I want to get to, but let me follow up on what you just were describing about reforming the filibuster in a way that would make Senators go back to the old days. You can't just invoke the fact that you're calling a filibuster. You would actually have to stand there and filibuster and talk forever on the senate floor to prevent the vote. Do you think that would really make a difference? Would that allow gun rights legislation to pass if it has 51 votes, immigration reform to pass if it has 51 votes?

Any of these things or would in effect the Republican minority just line up their people to take turns and keep filibustering forever? Does it really make a difference? Will it really change the outcome if they go to that in-person filibuster rule?

Marianna: Probably not like you said because that would be the strategy. They would line up one after the other and try and speak. As we all already know naturally, the rules of the Senate take longer because it builds debate and the debate could obviously be extended. Even having Republicans talking one after the other, after the other, it would have to force some compromise for them to move forward to end that debate and start considering legislation. It does in some ways incentivize because at least you could get debate on the floor. It could incentivize Democrats and Republicans to come together to end the debate.

Like you said, it could potentially lead to pulling consideration of votes from the floor because they can't just get to that next step. That is why you hear a number of Democrats calling for a complete removal of the filibuster. Some argue of course, "Oh, well, the filibuster is something that has been part of the Senate forever since the beginning of the Senate." That is not true. The Senate was not established on filibuster rules. It’s something that came down the road later. If you want to argue that this is something that the founding fathers wanted, it actually was not necessarily part of the constitution or part of the establishment of the Senate rules. They could overdo it if they wanted to.

Brian: It might soon become more than a parliamentary footnote that while a filibuster requires 60 votes to clear any piece of legislation. For the most part, you could abolish the filibuster with only the 51 votes. That's why it's so politically tempting right now. Tyler, as a White House correspondent, Biden was on record in the past opposing an end to the filibuster. Is that changing now?

Tyler: Yes. We've seen signs of Biden opening up a little bit on the topic of the filibuster, similarly, as Joe Manchin, the Senator from West Virginia did in an interview saying that he has been frustrated with a lack of action the Senate has been able to take and suggesting along the same lines that they should bring back that talking filibuster.

I think what we don't know is how far he would move on that. He didn't give a lot of clarity about that in saying whether you would still need 60 votes to break that filibuster, if the talking filibuster is brought back. I think that's the crux of the issue here is that 60 vote threshold. Is he open at all to senators removing that 60 vote threshold to move forward with legislation? There's been some talking in progressive circles, that if they're not going to totally do away with the filibuster, maybe change it to apply to voting rights, similarly, they did during the Obama administration on judgeships, to be able to get around the filibuster for those. There's conversations about that.

Hopefully, we'll get a lot more clarity on what Biden is looking for, or how he feels about the filibuster this afternoon at his press conference. I imagine reporters, my colleagues will press him on that. I think that will be what we're watching for is any willingness to move away from requiring 60 votes in the Senate.

Brian: I think that's right, that you'll certainly hear about it. Maybe you'll be the one asking about it at Biden's first news conference as president this afternoon. Listeners as a program note, if I can throw in a little promo here, I'll be back tonight at eight o'clock for our Thursday night national call-in for the first 100 days of the Biden presidency called America, Are We Ready? We'll devote the hour tonight to playing excerpts from that news conference this afternoon. We'll have a couple of White House Correspondents to break it down and we'll take calls from public radio listeners around the country. That's tonight at eight here on WNYC.

Tyler, would Biden as president need to sign a filibuster ending bill? Or does the Senate do that on its own as a matter of setting its rules, and whatever Biden says to reporters wouldn't even really matter?

Tyler: Yes, that's up to the Senate. As you said, it's something where Biden would sign some piece of legislation, it is a senate rule. It's more about signaling to the Senate where he feels as a leader of the party. As you mentioned earlier, Biden has shown reservations about upending Senate rules and changing the filibuster. Obviously, he spent much time in the Senate and reveres it as an institution. People see him as a barometer of how far the party is willing to go, and particularly what kind of pressure he could put on people like Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema or other senators that have expressed reservations about changes to the filibuster.

Brian: Marianna, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and my guests are Marianna Sotomayor, Washington Post Congressional correspondent, and Tyler Pager, Washington Post White House correspondent. Marianna, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, 43 states are considering bills to restrict voting in some way after this fall's election. In Krysten Sinema’s Arizona, they would ban automatic voter registration and same-day registration on election days, does putting the issue in her kitchen like that changed the politics of the filibuster for her?

Marianna: So far, it hasn't. This is going back to what we were even talking about a couple of minutes ago, once voting rights and that could potentially come forward in the Senate where Schumer has indicated it's likely something could come to the floor, but we just don't know when. Once that pressure really starts to build on this issue, this is what many Democrats say could be the tipping point for people like her, and also for Senator Joe Manchin, to try and reform the filibuster.

It is quite possible. As of right now, though, it's worth pointing out, the Senate and the House are in recess for the next two weeks. They're in their district work period. A lot of these things that we continue to talk about massage out a little bit in these next couple of two weeks when they're gone. We'll see what comes back and what becomes what Democrats want to push and also what Republicans may want to stall in the weeks to come once they're back in April, but as of right now, it doesn't seem like it is necessarily pushing her one way or the other.

Brian: The issues that McConnell raised in the clip we played, he mentioned that he would ban voter photo ID laws, in fact, unless they had big loopholes, or guaranteeing a right to let other people collect your paper ballots at home, which might subject voters to pressure on manipulation in some way, though there are very few examples of it in the real world that we know of, but they could debate those things.

The Georgia bill to ban Sunday voting is so obviously racist and try to make it harder for Black people to vote, that it gives away the game like as they say, saying the quiet part out loud on what's really going on here nationally in the wake of high voter turnout enabled by the pandemic mail-in rules. With 60 court rulings and Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr, all saying there was no widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome in any state. They're obviously trying to address what they see as the real problem, people voting rather than the fake problem, rampant fraud, are any Republicans in the Senate who voted to certify the election, because we know not all of them stood with the big lie, willing to stand up to this?

Marianna: So far, we haven't heard from those Republicans. Of course, that was a very small group of them who voted to try and convict the president. You're right, it is pretty stark what Republicans are trying to do in all of these different states and what Democrats are trying to-- It's why they have this urgency now that they have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House and they have a Democratic president who would sign any kind of voting rights legislation into law. That is why they're really trying to push this forward.

At this point, at least in the Senate, because they are not necessarily picking this up at this point in time, there haven't been necessarily any outreach or negotiations, but it is worth pointing out, there are in some way some allies that the White House has been able to work with or try and convince that, of course, being Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, she's someone that the White House has been courting, and she's someone who also knows that she is in a position to be courted.

It could be trying that kind of outreach, that lowkey trying to do that right now rather than later, that could start to happen. Again, you would still need those 60 votes. 10 Republican senators, if they don't overcome the filibuster for an issue like this to be able to pass such legislation.

Brian: Tyler, turning to guns, the Senate seems ready to go nowhere on guns just like after Sandy Hook, just like after Parkland, just like after everything, even as this country has five times more gun deaths per capita than the next closest country Canada, according to stats from the UN, and three times more guns per person than the number two country, and fewer guns do correlate with fewer gun deaths when you look down the list of countries according to the United Nations. What's this about Biden considering some kind of executive action on guns and going around Congress entirely?

Tyler: This is something that actually surprised gun control advocates as Biden signed a flurry of executive actions in the first week in office. They had expected some of those to include gun control measures and they were done. I think there is more urgency or we know that there's more urgency in the White House to act on gun control measures after these two mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado. There are a range of different actions that he could take some of which President Obama signed when he was in office in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting that Trump rolled back.

Those are some that they could just immediately put back to his desk that he could sign. It is striking that he didn't sign some of these executive orders because he ran on a platform of more gun control legislation of trying to institute some of these policies that Democrats have been calling for years, and he didn't do anything. He'd often talked about on the campaign trail his success in passing the assault weapons ban, and beating the NRA. That's something that we haven't heard as much from him until the aftermath of these shootings this week. I expect the White House to move ahead on some of these executive orders in the next few weeks as the pressure continues to build for action.

Brian: As you know, a number of Obama and Trump executive actions have been struck down in federal court as unconstitutional because they contradict laws passed by Congress or they're not the executive branch's purview according to Supreme Court rulings. Do you know if or how they're vetting anything like he might do on guns to help make sure that it would hold up in court?

Tyler: Yes, I think that's always an ongoing question with these executive orders on any issue and gun control is definitely one of them. They work with the Counsel's Office to try to vet these. I think they are going to try to be as aggressive as they can be within the limits of the law. I think sometimes the strategy is to put some of those executive orders out there to just see how far they're able to go. Within the legal limits, obviously, this was something that Obama grappled with quite a bit.

I also think the other thing to note about Joe Biden is he has been reserved about how often and how wide of latitude he can take with signing executive orders. Often on the debate stage in the Democratic primary, he chastised his competitors for the nomination, saying, "You can't just fix everything with the stroke of the pen, you need to use Congress." The president should not just rely on executive orders, often criticizing his more progressive counterparts on that front. I think that's important to understand. As we think about Joe Biden's actions with regard to gun control and executive orders is his natural reservation about signing some of these and how far he can go. I think that's an important point to note.

Brian: Marianna, I hate to put it this way, but is there a sense that as the pandemic lifts a little bit, these mass shootings are a sign of returning to normal in the United States because I think they had kind of taken a break for the last year, and now we're being reminded of what normal is in the US compared to other countries, or have they just fallen out of the news?

Marianna: Yes. I had a very similar thought, the fact that there were two mass shootings in less than a week time span. I think a lot of people realize, "Oh, right, this is now that people are out more and now just starting to [unintelligible 00:21:52] for doing regular things that we were even able to do when we were all locked down, which was go to the grocery store." It does seem as if it's happening more often, but we had the Washington Post, and also, I think, a number of, of course, Democrats who are really trying to push for gun legislation, again, they have been noting that 2020 wasn't a year without mass shootings.

There was still a steady increase from 2019 when we've seen an increase over the years. It went up by 25% from 2019, so mass shootings were still happening. We were just very much and even I think in the news we're obviously trying to inform the public about the coronavirus pandemic, the latest on that because some of these things fell through what we would usually be covering. That's not to say-- I cannot speak to if any of these mass shootings were of large numbers that we have seen in the last week, which was 18 killed, but gun violence is still very much prevalent in the country.

Of course, you are seeing a ramp-up by Democrats especially to try and do something again, but this is the most polarizing issue I think of all of the many that keep Republicans and Democrats divided. It's unlikely so far that we'll be able to see anything change on this front.

Brian: Are Republicans standing together on every detail of absolutism on gun rights, Maryanna, no universal background checks for gun purchases to check for criminal or violent mental illness histories, no ban on the military-style weapons like was used in the boulder shooting, and so many of these others which people don't need to protect themselves from intruders in their homes.

Having an AK-47 or limits on the size of magazines, Forgive me while I finished this rant, or limits on the size of magazines, how many bullets they could hold, so want to be mass shooters would need to at least reload before they kill that many people and that would be an opportunity to stop them, are Republicans dead set against every single one of those things uniformly?

Marianna: Yes. Forgive me for interrupting. I cut out for a second, so I thought [unintelligible 00:24:15] Yes, so far, Republicans very much are united on this. However, there are a number of Republicans who are retiring. Those tend to be the key people that we watch, especially on the Senate side to see if they may be willing to compromise. One of them is Senator Pat Toomey who actually joined with Senator Joe Manchin several years ago to try and pass a background check legislation.

As of right now, he's been pretty coy in saying how or if he will try and propose that with mansion again, but there are a number of Democrats, including Joe Manchin himself who still believes they could find and strike a deal with Republicans at least on background checks or potentially extending the days of trying to get a background check from purchasing to actually getting the gun. That, of course, is called the Charleston loophole. They're starting conversations.

They're not seeing this in the past history of not being able to get anywhere close on reforming any kind of gun violence legislation and trying to put that forward. They're not using the past as something that's going to stop them, there are some conversations happening. Again, whether that actually goes forward is in question. Again, for the Senate to vote, you need those 60 votes. As of right now, I really don't think there are 10 Republicans who would join Democrats even on a very modest gun reform bill.

Brian: My guest Marianna Sotomayor, Washington Post Congressional correspondent. Tyler Pager, Washington Post White House correspondent. Tyler, Biden has named vice president Harris, I see as his point person on the border. Maybe she's saying, "Thanks a lot, Joe, couldn't you have named me the infrastructure czar or something?" What's her actual job going to be in that role?

Tyler: Yes. She's going to be the point person on trying to work with the countries that migrants are coming from to improve conditions in there. My colleagues and I wrote a pretty lengthy story over the weekend about the struggles that the Biden administration is having with immigration. One of the things that he's kept talking about were the push factors that push people to leave their homes and try to come to the United States and the urgency to deal with poverty and violence in these countries so that they can improve conditions.

The Vice President is going to take the lead in working with America's partners in these countries, distributing aid and other programs to try to improve those conditions to deal with some of the problems at the border.

Brian: Let me read a couple of tweets that have come in and I'm going to end with a tweet that's a good question. Let's see. Andy tweets, "Americans are not stupid, arguing against federal voting rights rules is truly unpatriotic. We need to end the filibuster now, give them hell Senator Schumer, the people have your back." Listener, Noah writes, "We're the only democracy that punishes the majority party with minority control of legislation. When McConnell locked up the party, the party of no, he calls it in 2010, it's been obstruction ever since. We must pass these policies to know if they'll work or not, look at the Affordable Care Act."

Then, RL tweets, "Important to know, Democrats use the filibuster to block George W. Bush privatizing Social Security. Don't give it away totally." Marianna, let me go to you as Congressional correspondent on that. We certainly can find clips, we've certainly been seeing them on Cable TV, clips of Democrats under President Bush and at other times when they were in the minority in the Senate, preserving the filibuster as some kind of sacred right. Now, the script is flipped, everybody's on the other side because the circumstances have changed.

Is there queasiness among Democratic senators about giving it away totally because party power changes hands over time, they'll be in the minority again someday?

Marianna: Exactly. That's exactly it. There is that hesitation because if you take it away for legislation, Democrats sure will be able to pass a number of things easier, quicker. Republicans would be able to do the same things as well. They would be able to roll back, let's say if they were able to pass any immigration reforms, they would be able to easily roll that back through legislation. If the House is Republican, they would obviously vote for that. If the President is a Republican, they would sign that role back into law. You definitely saw that, especially when the Senate did that to-- Got rid of the filibuster to consider first the state local judicial nominees and then the Supreme Court nominees.

Democrats definitely spoke out in regret of doing that for the Supreme Court because we saw just how easily Trump was able to put three conservative judges on the Supreme Court. That could now tilt the balance or has tilted the balance, and it will most definitely affect future ruling. Democrats have learned that lesson since they were the first ones to undo the filibuster several years ago. Now, if they do that for legislation, they have seen the consequences of that. That's why there's a hesitation to get rid of it completely, not necessarily bringing back some of those rules like we were talking about standing on and speaking for a long time on the Senate floor, but getting rid of it completely could be a dangerous path to go forth on.

Brian: Tyler. I see you reported in the Washington Post on Biden planning to release a massive infrastructure bill with Universal pre-K, free community college, and climate measures included. We generally think of infrastructure as transportation projects and internet access. I can certainly see how climate infrastructure or green infrastructure comes into that, but can you explain how the education pieces would fit?

Tyler: The White House is currently drafting up legislation to putting to place the build back better agenda that Biden proposed on the campaign, which was a four-part a trillion-dollar agenda that covered a lot of things. There's two pieces of legislation that they're drafting to go in tandem. The first being the more traditional infrastructure bridges and roads and broadband access. The other is what people are saying are more people-focused policy. That one includes free community college, universal pre-K, paid family leave. It's unclear exactly what the legislative strategy will be in terms of pairing those in one package or trying to do them separately.

This comes back again to the question of the filibuster. Biden would like to do infrastructure in a bipartisan matter. Potentially, they do the bridges and roads just separately and try to get 10 Republican votes and then use the budget process called reconciliation to push through the free community college in some of those more domestic people-focused priorities, but that is what the white house is trying to figure out now. We're expecting to see a more formal announcement on these policies next week.

Brian: Tyler for you as a white house correspondent, this is day 65 of Biden's administration. This is going to be his first news conference as president this afternoon. Why has he been avoiding that setting with White House correspondents like yourself and why is he doing it today?

Tyler: I wish I knew the answer to that. We would obviously always prefer more access. I think the White House has said he's done TV interviews, he did an interview with People magazine, he's done some other things and they say, he's accessible and available. As a White House correspondent, I would disagree that he's been very available to take questions from the press. I think there was pressure mounting from the press Corps really pushing on Jen Psaki and other senior administration officials to make Biden available to talk.

That's something that he wasn't doing. I'd like to think that there was an element of public pressure that eventually got to them, but I also think it is standard for a president to take questions from the press. Biden is actually doing it much later than his predecessors. I think that that element of "other people done it, we need to do it as well" finally caught up to them and the result is what we'll see this afternoon.

Brian: All right. We're almost out of time, Mariana for you as a congressional correspondent. One more question from a listener via Twitter. This is a listener who goes by My Rebut and is proposing a grand bargain compromise on voting rights here in 280 characters or less. It says, "Let Republicans have voter ID and give Democrats the rest. I want only registered voters voting. Issue a voter ID when registration approved." Do you think any compromise like that would fly?

Marianna: Well, if the Republicans get what they want, but Democrats get a lot more, could be a little difficult. It would have to be a tit for tat instead of a tit for a lot more, but it could be something that Republicans and Democrats could agree on. I know many Democrats see that as very racist policy and discriminatory, but it could be someplace. I could see this back in a Joe Biden congressional era when he was in the Senate, it could be that compromise that could bring both sides together and maybe pass something but I don't think Democrats are just going to try and again, do just one thing for another. They really want to push a lot of legislation. I don't think Republicans would be in it for that.

Brian: All right. Brian Lehrer Show listeners for federal political mediators we nominate. Marianna Sotomayor, Congressional correspondent for the Washington Post. Tyler Pager, White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Thanks so much for coming on with us today and covering so many subjects.

Tyler: Thanks so much.

Marianna: Thank you.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.