[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On today's show, the inspirational public theologian, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis from the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village, joins us to talk about revisiting the burned-down sanctuary there at 2nd Avenue and East 7th Street. Also, an election-year-related conference she has coming up next week, and the idea of common humanity, Jacqui Lewis for her latest appearance later this hour.

Also, an argument for getting tech out of schools, even educational technology deployed by educators for educational purposes, that argument from New York Times Parenting and Family Life columnist, Jessica Gross. Speaking of family life, a call then at the end of the show on why you love the children's program, Bluey, even if you're an adult, but also the controversial Bluey special that was recently released about a family, their family, planning to move to another city for the dad's better job, and the controversial ending that Bluey episode had. That's all coming up, but let's start with national politics.

What a week it's been in Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson seems to be facing the latest revolt from members of his own Republican caucus. That could cost him his position as speaker for even bringing to a vote a bill on aid to Ukraine that members are free to vote against. Here's the former Democratic Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, kind of amazed at that revolt, even after Johnson gave MAGA Republicans something they wanted, separating the bill on aid to Ukraine from the more universally popular one on aid to Israel.

Nancy Pelosi: The Republicans should help Johnson. He's given them everything they want. Why won't the Republicans take yes for an answer? You don't want to vote for this, don't vote for it. We split it all up.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy Pelosi, a little different sounding from revolt leader, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: I don't know how much longer our members are going to tolerate the Republican speaker that we elected to pass our agenda in the House. I don't know how long people are going to tolerate this because he's doing nothing but serving the Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, is the polarized Congress in a moment of bipartisan coalition government? We're going to talk about that concept. There was also the impeachment non-trial in the Senate for Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. A shouting match between Democrat Jamie Raskin and Republican James Comer, we'll play a little of that later on the Biden impeachment inquiry. Another Ivy League president, Minouche Shafik from Colombia, grilled on anti-Semitism on campus even as conflict on the campus between the administration and protesters was coming to a head. Congress can agree on renewing a post 9/11 warrantless surveillance act.

Relevant to the campaign trail, remember this is an election year, did you know that? Senate Democrats are ramping up a big spending campaign to try to hold their slim Senate majority, which is definitely threatened considering the states that are in play. With us now, Burgess Everett, congressional bureau chief for POLITICO. Happy Friday, Burgess. Welcome back to WNYC.

Burgess Everett: Good morning, Brian. It's a busy Friday indeed.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Let's start with this Ukraine bill. What did Speaker Johnson do here splitting up the Israel and Ukraine funding proposals?

Burgess Everett: It's a little bit of a jujitsu because as you heard former Speaker Pelosi talk about it, they do get individual votes on each component. What is going to happen in the end is the entire package will be sent over to the Senate as a whole. What's happening now on the House floor is they're debating the rule for this, which is what packages all those things together. While it is technically true, they are all going to get individual votes.

In the end, this is going to go over as a package very similar to the Senate bill that passed in February. That's where a lot of the hand-wringing on the right is coming from because, ultimately, it is a similar package to this Senate package, which Speaker Johnson said he did not like not that long ago.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I'll admit I already don't understand. Probably a lot of listeners don't either. How can both things be true that they're supposedly separating the Israel and Ukraine funding bills or votes, but it's going to be sent over to the Senate as one package?

Burgess Everett: It's a way to let everybody express their individual preference on each component. If a component did fail, it would not be part of the package. However, we expect all of the components to pass. The reason this matters is the house, in a perfect world, would probably prefer to send over each one as an individual bill. As a connoisseur of the Senate, I can tell you that would just take absolutely forever for the Senate to pass, so they need it as a package.

Otherwise, it would probably take a month to pass for individual different bills because of objections from members of Congress on each individual component. Basically, it's an expediency way to get this into law much more quickly by rolling everything together.

Brian Lehrer: The Politico playbook morning newsletter has an intriguing subject line, "Mike Johnson's Coalition Government." I don't think you wrote that one, but somebody on your team did, Mike Johnson's Coalition Government. Coalition government in the polarized moment that we're in in this country, especially in Congress?

Burgess Everett: Yes, it's something that we've been watching basically all Congress because of the divisions in the House being so narrow. The Republicans thought they were going to get a huge majority and be able to steamroll Democrats all over the place. That's not what happened. That's ultimately why Kevin McCarthy had such a difficult time becoming speaker. It's why he agreed to include the motion to vacate, which is the thing that Marjorie Taylor Greene is holding over Mike Johnson's head, which allows one member to spark a referendum on the speaker at any one time.

Their majority has only gotten smaller in recent months because of retirements and people leaving Congress early. To pass pretty much anything of consequence when it comes to government spending, you need democratic votes now. That has just basically become the way the House has run. What's really amped up recently is that you are seeing Democrats likely in the next few minutes vote on what's called a rule in the House, which typically only the majority party votes for.

They're going to help that get over the top. They're going to help the Ukraine bill and the Israel components get over the top. Then if Marjorie Taylor Greene were to spark that motion to vacate the Democrats conceivably, we'll see if they actually do it. It would help him remain in office because he kept his promise on Ukraine to them.

Brian Lehrer: Democrats in our audience, would you like to see your Democratic representative since most of the congressional districts around here are held by Democrats, those seats from those districts? If you're in a Democratic district and voted Democratic, would you like to see your Democratic member of Congress vote to help Speaker Mike Johnson keep his speakership, even though, obviously, he's a Republican who you oppose on most issues? Democrats, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Most of you probably remember that Democrats refused to do that to save Kevin McCarthy in a similar situation not that long ago. Should it be different this time? 212-433-9692, or just let the Republicans sink into more and more public dysfunction here in this election year? 212-433-9692. Democrats and Republicans, too. From the Republican districts in our area on Long Island, north of the city, Staten Island, do you want to see Marjorie Taylor Greene and others oust Speaker Johnson from his speakership? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, or anything else for Burgess Everett, congressional bureau chief for POLITICO on any of these things going on in Congress this week.

I listed a bunch of them in the intro. There are even more. 212-433-9692. For anything you always wanted to ask a congressional bureau chief but never had them over for dinner, 212-433-9692. Let's see. That thing that you said is coming up in just a few minutes, this vote on the rules, this really matters, but this is obscure to a lot of the general public. They know what the issues are, but what's this thing that they call the rules and how does it relate to the issues?

Burgess Everett: Basically, all this does and it's important, but what it does is it unlocks those final votes, which are likely to happen on Saturday to pass this legislation. It structures the debate and how the House will consider this. Unless the House has an overwhelming majority, over two-thirds, they need to pass rules for legislation. It's a typical function of the House. The atypical piece of this is that you have Democrats that are going to vote for the rule.

Typically, even if you would oppose a bill that comes up on the House floor, but you're in the majority, you're going to vote for the rule because otherwise it embarrasses your speaker to say that I don't even like the way you are setting up this debate. Conservatives are arguing they've been betrayed because Mike Johnson said for so long they needed a strong border component tied directly to the foreign aid package, and that is not what is going to end up passing the house. There's going to be a separate consideration of a border bill, but those things are not going to be combined.

Brian Lehrer: Why not? Mike Johnson is a hawk on the border, isn't he?

Burgess Everett: He is, but there's been a fundamental disagreement. Ever since the Senate created its bipartisan border package which changed some asylum and parole laws and also beefed up border security, the house Republicans have wanted a stricter bill called H.R.2, which has remained in Mexico, the border wall, things like that in it. What really happened here is that the Senate was on track to pass something that did link those two things together.

Former president Donald Trump killed it a couple months ago because he wanted to keep this issue alive in the election. He did not want Congress to pass anything dealing with this.

A lot of Republicans think this is their best political argument to keep the house majority, win the Senate majority, and take back the White House, and that political argument ultimately prevailed. That's how we ended up where we are today.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the Trump role in this for a minute because I was very surprised actually to see on Politico this morning this language, "Trump has lent Johnson his qualified support. He had already publicly stood with Johnson in Mar-a-Lago and rejected Marjorie Taylor Greene's push for his removal if Johnson went forward with the Ukraine bill yesterday. Trump held firm in the Johnson camp when he posted something on social media that attacked Europeans for their allegedly skimpy support for Ukraine."

Then it quotes someone familiar with the former president's thinking saying Trump intentionally did not come down on one side or the other. I thought Trump famously is anti Ukraine and pro Putin.

Burgess Everett: Well, what's happened is he's put out a statement that allows everybody to take away a little bit of what they want from it, and so you actually did have people like Matt Gaetz and JD Vance who oppose Ukraine aids saying that was a good statement from Trump that sided with them. You also had people support Ukraine aid who recognized that Trump was not advising people to vote against the bill.

I think Trump is very clear when he wants to stop something. You saw that earlier this month when he said, "Kill FISA." He wanted to kill the FISA bill. The house Republicans did exactly that. They regrouped, shaved some years off of it, and eventually passed it. When he wants to stop something, he's very clear about it, he's very effective at it, as we just talked about with the border bill.

When he puts out this statement yesterday that attacks Europeans, says Ukraine is important to us but more important to Europe, when you look at that, it's for Trump, very nuanced. It gives people a little bit on all sides of the debate, a little bit to work with, but it does not explicitly say, stop this bill. That's what it would take, I think to really amp this up a notch on the right.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about that FISA bill. That's the post 9/11 surveillance act that I thought had most of its opponents on the left, but Trump and the [unintelligible 00:13:35] writer coming out against that, and Trump successfully killed that bill as you were just describing. Hold that thought, we'll get to that part of it. Let's take some phone calls. Desiree in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau Chief for POLITICO. Hi, Desiree.

Desiree: Hi, Brian. I would want my representative, who is Yvette Clarke. I would want her to vote to keep Mike Johnson in office just because I think the Republicans thrive on a lot of the chaos and we don't need it. Unless we have enough votes to be able to get in a democratic speaker, then all bets are off. I have a question because I want to know if the same way we need Democratic input to advance these bills, and to get votes, and stuff like that, is there any way that Democrats could vote to get rid of this one-house representative can challenge the speaker thing or do we not have enough leverage for that? Is it an internal thing and we can't interfere?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Desiree. Burgess?

Burgess Everett: There had been discussions about adding something that would increase the threshold on that motion to vacate. Adding that to this whole package. The thinking being that the people that are going to vote against the Ukraine bill are the same people that would probably come for the speaker's head after this bill passed. The problem with that is that it shows weakness, and so internally it shows that you don't have your whole party coalition together, which seems obvious to all of us who are watching the house on a daily basis, but doing that and having to rely on Democrats to increase that threshold, it seemed like a bridge too far.

The speaker actually put out a statement yesterday saying there was not majority support in the house for doing that. I would think the next speaker, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, is going to deal with this in some way. The Republicans just didn't have the votes to elect Kevin McCarthy speaker without making this concession, and he eventually allowed this concession, and they've been unable to change it since then. It's really a little bit of an internal politics thing for Mike Johnson why that didn't ultimately get included in this package.

Brian Lehrer: Desiree, thank you. Stephen in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Great show as always, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Stephen: Thanks for your great service to the whole world.

Brian Lehrer: You're very kind.

Stephen: Yes. I definitely support attempting to keep this guy in. If he's going to follow through-- Ukraine is in a critical situation. It's a life and death struggle over there. God only knows what that country will look like if Putin succeeds. In my view, he's not satisfied to stop at any particular signpost. It seeds power to the Democrats. Our fellow from New York. Now, minority leader, all of a sudden he has power now. This power sharing deal could work out, in my opinion. I definitely support the idea and that's all I have to say about that situation. Thank you once again for taking my call. Have a great day.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. You too. Thank you, Stephen. It's really interesting what we're getting on the phones. A lot that are like those two callers who we just heard, Burgess, and I'm going to read some of the text. "We need to get aid out, especially to Ukraine. I have no love for anyone or anything Trump supports, but we can't let Ukraine go down." Another one, "If the Democrats work with Mike Johnson, that would be the best thing to happen in Congress in years." Yes, damn, is another text. "Vote for Speaker Johnson. He shows a fiduciary responsibility to his position even though I don't agree with his ideology."

We're getting many, many texts like that. I'll read you one on the other side from a different Democrat in a second, but, Burgess, I can tell you that when we did the same kind of call in and invitation for people to write in, at the same point in Kevin McCarthy Speakership, we had basically zero people calling with, "Yes, save Kevin McCarthy because he helped fund the government with democratic votes. Instead it was, "No, Kevin McCarthy is an insurrectionist." Well, Mike Johnson is an insurrectionist. Now the script, just based on a small, informal, thoroughly unscientific sample, the script has completely flipped.

Burgess Everett: Yes, and I think frankly that's just because Speaker Johnson's just taking a bigger risk politically than Kevin McCarthy did. If you recall when Kevin McCarthy was ousted, he had not made a formal commitment on Ukraine. He was just passing something to fund the government for six weeks. We've seen Mike Johnson pass a longer funding bill that was honestly pretty close to what he said he was not going to do, which was a big sweeping, what they call in Congress an omnibus.

It ended up being a couple components, but it was basically that. Now he is making a commitment on $60 billion in Ukraine aid with the threat of the speakership hanging over him. I think Democrats are seeing frankly some courage from the speaker taking on his own party, and that's something I think they didn't think they were seeing from Kevin McCarthy, who I would argue was doing more to try to placate his party's right flank than Mike Johnson is doing right now.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a question from a listener that they wrote in. Question for your guest, what is the root of the Republican opposition to funding for Ukraine, and have those reasons shifted at all in the past two years, meaning since Russia invaded?

Burgess Everett: Yes, I think part of it is honestly rooted in Trumpism which I know is a generality, but I think for the Republicans, it's on war. It's not starting new wars, it's getting out of old ones. It's getting rid of an adventurism in foreign policy. The argument has been that funding Ukraine is a slippery slope that is making the war worse with Russia, and that they just need to cut a deal with the Russians and end the war. That's been the argument we've been getting from a lot of the conservatives who oppose Ukraine funding.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's been saying she doesn't think Putin is going to keep sweeping through Europe in the same way that Nazi Germany did. That's been the argument that we've been hearing, but I do think a lot of it is rooted in where former president Trump came down on this issue. I'm not sure we would see the same hand-wringing over this, honestly, if he hadn't become tied into the Ukraine political fight.

Brian Lehrer: Now, here's a Republican calling in, who I think is unhappy with what Speaker Johnson is doing. Aalam, in Queens, you are on WNYC. Hey, there. Thanks for calling in.

Aalam: Hey. Thanks for having me. I wouldn't call myself a Republican, but I'd say one issue with Johnson, for example, really, both the Democrat and the Republican Party, is neither are representing their respective parties or their people. Honestly, it's just become a blurred line, where everyone does whatever they want. My thing is, someone like Thomas Massie, for example, who is a Republican, would be a better fit, more objective, looking at Ukraine in one way, more of an isolationist viewpoint.

For example, Israel aid, which is conditional, all aid to every country is conditional upon how they use it. What do you think the reality of someone like Massie getting into a speaker position is? Is it there at all? Also, Johnson continues to go back on his word and is not doing what he says he'll do. Let's go back to Jefferson's isolationist ideas, it's better. No more wars. Let's focus on the United States.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Thank you very much. Burgess, a lot in there.

Burgess Everett: Yes. I would say that Thomas Massie, he's got a Rand Paul viewpoint. It's almost a pre-Trump tea-party, libertarian era strand of thinking on foreign policy. I do think Thomas Massie does represent a sliver of the Republican Party, but I do think it's a bit of a sliver. I don't believe he would have the internal juice, nor I think would he want to be speaker. I don't think he'd be in position to win the speakership. That's not to say that his politics don't represent a lot of people in this country, but I would say the way that the Republican Party is divided now, he's still on the outer fringe, for lack of a better word, of the conference.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting texts coming from our listeners, like one who writes, "Americans claim to want our elected officials to work together, but consistently vote for chaos." Another one, "We have evidence that people are actually a lot less polarized than their elected officials." I said I was going to read another text from the Democrat who doesn't want their party to cooperate to keep Speaker Johnson speaker, but we have a phone call to that effect now. I'm going to take Jay, in Somerset County, to articulate that. Jay, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling.

Jay: Hi, Brian. I don't trust this guy, first of all. He goes and meets with Trump. I mean, what does Trump have to do with any of this stuff? He goes and meets with him. I don't trust him. You help him today, and who's to say that he's not going to turn on the Democrats? Secondly, I want to see the Republicans in chaos. I think the US population, overall, is tired of their drama. I just want to see this play out, and see what the idiots, Marjorie Taylor Greene, call her bluff and see what happens. I would not help this guy because I don't trust him. Period.

Brian Lehrer: Jay, thank you very much. What about the campaign overlay of that? One of the reasons that Jay gave. The Democrats are hoping to take control of the House, they're only a couple of votes shy of that right now, a couple of seats shy. If they can flip a few seats, they could control the House of Representatives next year. Why aren't their campaign officials telling their members, "Look, let's just make this Republican Party look as bad as it possibly can, as dysfunctional as they actually are," the Democrats might say, and that'll help them go down in flames, or at least not have the majority come November.

Burgess Everett: I think there's no question that if that were to occur, and if Speaker Johnson were to be ousted and devolved into chaos again, it would hurt Republicans' position, not only in keeping the House, but nationally. Back in October when Kevin McCarthy was ousted and they could not get another speaker in for several weeks, everyone we talked to was saying that it was bad for the Republican Party as a whole. I do think there is that argument.

As we talked about a little bit earlier, the difference is what Mike Johnson's commitment has been to Democrats and following through on it, and how that would play within the Democratic caucus. I also don't know how many votes you really are going to need to prevent demotion or vacate from succeeding. There were eight Republicans who voted to get rid of Kevin McCarthy. That means you really wouldn't need to see that many Democrats help Mike Johnson if it was a similar level of rebellion. You might be able to have all the party leaders and most of the party vote to get rid of Mike Johnson, and just have a handful of Democrats help protect him.

Brian Lehrer: I see. It might only take a handful of votes, because there may only be a handful of Republicans who actually vote to vacate is what you're saying, right?

Burgess Everett: Correct. Or you could even play games with voting present on something like that instead of voting yes, or even there might be absences that help you out, too. I still think you get to that vote, and it makes the Republican Party look bad no matter what, because it's going to weaken Mike Johnson's internal position, having to rely on Democrats to save his job.

Brian Lehrer: Could it also be that there are enough Democrats who actually just think it's important enough to support Ukraine that they would rather play ball with Speaker Johnson and maybe sacrifice a little bit of electoral advantage in order to do something that they think is really important for the world?

Burgess Everett: I think that is definitely probably the case with some of these folks. I also think if you look at a practical level of what is it like being a member of the House of Representatives on a daily basis, it's been a pretty crummy year and a half. I don't think people want to have a crappy job to go to every day. I do think that there's a little bit of pragmatism in a semi-functional House of Representatives for the next six months so these people don't tear their hair out.

Brian Lehrer: When's this vacate vote likely to happen?

Burgess Everett: The way its structures is, it would be probably after a recess, which is scheduled for next week. That would be my guess. Marjorie Taylor Greene could play with the timing on that and bring it up later. She's not able to bring it up right away. It would be something that would play out in the days and weeks after presumably the House passes this foreign aid package.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We're going to take a short break and bring up some of the other issues in Congress this week that I set up in the intro with Burgess Everett, congressional bureau chief for POLITICO. Stay with us.

[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, as we continue at the end of this very busy week in Congress, with Burgess Everett, congressional bureau chief for POLITICO. Burgess, I want to move on to the two impeachment proceedings this week. There was one of Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, that got all the way to the Senate. We'll talk about that. Second, there is also still this Joe Biden impeachment inquiry going on in the House.

I'm going to play about a minute of the shouting match between the Investigations Committee Chair, Republican James Comer and Democrat Jamie Raskin. Do you want to set this up for us before we listen to them yell at each other? What exactly was going on in this committee?

Burgess Everett: Look, we've been seeing this impeachment inquiry play out for months now, without really a smoking gun necessarily tying Joe Biden to Hunter Biden's illegal activities and shady activities overseas. There's been frustration building in both parties with regards to that. I think Republicans initially had thought they were going to be able to get there and send an impeachment trial over to the Senate for the President, which as we'll get to in a minute, is very different than an impeachment trial for a cabinet secretary.

Democrats have been really getting increasingly angry that this is still going on and has not been totally derailed at this point. I think they know Republicans don't have the votes to impeach the president, and I think they think that there is not going to be that smoking gun in the end, so they want to stop the innuendo. Comer, who is the chairman of this committee, has been sending out fundraising solicitations, saying he's going to make a recommendation, a criminal referral with regards to the end of this investigation, rather than an impeachment vote. That's the backdrop of what went down this week.

Brian Lehrer: The Democrats would say, no smoking gun, no vaping gun, no edible gun, no any kind of gun, no evidence. That's at the heart of this exchange between James Comer and Jamie Raskin. It'll be obvious to you who's who.

James Comer: I don't know who you're talking about.

Jamie Raskin: What business is the Comers in? You're talking about lots of people. There's lots of people.

James Comer: I'm a farmer. I have land. I lease land. I sell honey.

Jamie Raskin: Your impeachment investigation must identify a high crime and misdemeanor.

James Comer: What did the Bidens do? What did they do with the $1 million?

Jamie Raskin: I'll tell you what Joe Biden did. He was the senator of the United States, then he wrote a book, and he said he made the most money he ever made in his life, millions of dollars on his book. He gave a million dollars away to charity.

James Comer: That's what his family did. That's why Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, China, Russia, that's why they paid the Biden family money because of Joe Biden.

House Member: None of those governments paid anyone any money.

Jamie Raskin: Somebody needs therapy here, but it's nobody on our side of the aisle. Okay?

James Comer: All right, enough. Back to the trial hearing. Order.

Jamie Raskin: Honestly, you had your chance. I would like my time restored.

James Comer: No, your time was expired.

Jamie Raskin: No, you interrupted me. I want my time respired.

James Comer: No, you had your time. You went above, and I let Ms. [unintelligible 00:31:26].

Jamie Raskin: You know what?

James Comer: Sit down. Everybody, come back. This is about China. We asked a simple question. Now, Ms. Pressly, you're out of order. Sit down. You're out of order.

House Member: Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman.

Brian Lehrer: The grownups of the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, modeling for the children of the United States of America. To actually peel that back, Burgess, on what the alleged issue was, it sounded to me like what the Republican, Comer is saying is, Joe Biden made a lot of money in the years after he was vice president, so we have to investigate to see if it was corrupt. We know that Hunter Biden was involved in companies in Ukraine and China. Therefore, the president maybe did something impeachable. Is that a fair summary?

Burgess Everett: Yes, I think that's a pretty fair summary. I do think that it's in Comer's best interest both internally and nationally to keep there some sort of mystery about they never got to the full bottom of the truth here.

Brian Lehrer: What comes next, if anything?

Burgess Everett: I think this will ultimately end in some sort of referral or overstatement from Comer about what the Justice Department should do with regard to Joe Biden. We have an excellent reporter, Jordain Carney has been covering this for us for months. She's written that it's very unlikely to culminate in an actual house impeachment of the president.

Brian Lehrer: What happened with Mayorkas, that came and went so quickly. For people who may have heard a headline on a newscast, the house impeached, and remember folks, an impeachment is like an indictment. It's not a conviction that would have to take place in the Senate. Mayorkas was impeached by the house, which means it goes to the Senate. For people who watched the Trump impeachments, for all the people who watched the Clinton impeachment, when there really were trials in the Senate, that actually wasn't here, right?

Burgess Everett: No. I did cover both of those Trump impeachments, and this was just extremely different. This was about three hours of essentially dilatory motions from Republicans to try to get the Senate to adjourn the court of impeachment, or go into closed session to debate it. What happened was the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer and a bunch of Republicans, basically had signed off on a deal to have some actual debate about the merits of the impeachment, have a couple of votes on whether it should go to trial, or whether to create an impeachment committee.

That was rejected by Eric Schmitt, he's a Republican from Missouri. He said, "Anything short of a full trial is being complicit and you guys shutting this down." We ended up with just a few procedural votes on the Senate floor, and Schumer started things off. He's the majority leader, so he gets the first recognition. He started things off by raising a point of order that the impeachment was unconstitutional.

Republicans tried to knock that off, but Democrats have the majority, and in the court of impeachment, the majority rules the day, and found both articles to be unconstitutional, then adjourned the impeachment trial, and that was the whole shebang.

Brian Lehrer: What's the Republicans' best argument, if there even is a best argument, on why allegedly Mayorkas committed an impeachable offense, as opposed to they just have a policy disagreement with him about the border?

Burgess Everett: It was funny, actually. The argument at least in the Senate was very different than the House because the argument in the Senate wasn't even necessarily focused on that, it was merely focused on debating and hearing the evidence of those things. I think, ultimately, if a trial had gone through, you would have had a bipartisan acquittal of Mayorkas.

The Republican argument in the Senate was less about the merits and more about Democrats being unwilling to basically turn the Senate floor into a referendum on the Biden administration and Mayorkas' treatment on the border. They didn't even get that far, and they were banned from even debating the merits of it because they didn't accept that deal to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Another very interesting thing. This week, an issue that some people are very involved with, a lot of listeners may not really know what it is. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I mentioned before that originated as a post 9/11 law. I know it's been revised since then. Trump was against it and killed it, but I thought the left was originally against it in the post 9/11 years as too much surveillance without enough court supervision. Tell us about this FISA reauthorization, and who was for it, against it and why?

Burgess Everett: First of all, there's some urgency here. It expires in about 13 hours. There's debate on whether it really matters whether it expires, but the law would lapse without action by midnight on Saturday. You're correct that the liberals had typically been the biggest opponents of these programs, but basically going back to your listener who mentioned Thomas Massie and also Rand Paul on the Senate, there's been a growing strand of anti-surveillance Republicans in the Senate and House, and I think, Trump actually accelerated that.

You definitely have what we would call colloquially estranged bedfellows coalition who are seeking to at a minimum change, this FISA law. The FISA law allows for warrantless surveillance for foreign targets. This was Ssection 702 program that we're debating. It's a lot of acronyms, a lot of numbers, but at its heart that's what it does, it allows warrantless surveillance of foreign targets. The issue here has always been, in doing so, it sweeps up some communication of Americans.

The big debate has been whether the intelligence community should be able to access Americans' information without a warrant. That's probably the biggest thing that we're going to see here, the Biden administration's and fighting efforts to change that. Very hard, they've been on the hill all week, House officials, briefing Senators, classified, unclassified, trying to kill these attempts to change the bill. Here we are just a few hours before the deadline, and we're waiting for the Senate to come up with a voting deal on those amendments that we just talked about on warrants, and pass it before midnight after voting on those amendments.

Brian Lehrer: Would it be fair to say that Trump and the MAGA right oppose what war on terror era Republicans used to be very much for because the biggest terrorism threats in this country these days come from people associated with the MAGA right? They don't want people like these January 6th convicts who Trump calls hostages, being investigated by the government?

Burgess Everett: It's interesting because Trump wanted to kill FISA last week, but after some changes he backed off that, and after they changed the expiration date from five years to two years, which if Trump were to win, would expire during his presidency, he would be able to handle the next reauthorization. I think, mostly, that opposition has come from the Russia Investigation and how that swept up some of the Trump campaign's communications. It's important to look back though at what Trump did when he was president, he signed a reauthorization of this program, the very reauthorization that's expiring now.

It's something that you can throw eggs at from the sidelines but once you're governing, and I think Mike Johnson is experiencing this as well because he was one of these FISA critics before. Once you're governing, you're getting all this intelligence, you're seeing what these programs actually do. It has a way of making members of Congress and presidents like Trump end up embracing this program at least to some degree to keep it going.

Brian Lehrer: How one campaigns and how one governs not necessarily the same. Last thing, you wrote an article for POLITICO on the Democrats' new spending campaign to try to hold their slim Senate majority. Does this relate to FISA in some way?

Burgess Everett: I would say not necessarily related to FISA. I do think that the Republicans are likely to use the Mayorkas trial in a lot of their paid advertisements this fall. I do think these votes this week will probably show up there. I don't know how salient they will be. Because of that strange bedfellows coalition we just talked about, where Republicans like Josh Hawley are working with Democrats like Ron Wyden it's a lot harder to weaponize, for lack of a better term, these FISA votes in Senate races, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: We talked so much on this show, and I think the political national media generally talk so much about the presidential campaign, but the Republicans have a teeny tiny majority in the House. The Democrats have a teeny tiny majority in the Senate. Both houses of Congress are really in play, and that really matters. These campaigns deserve a lot of attention between now and November, right?

Burgess Everett: Totally. The Senate races are just very challenging for the Democrats because of their exposure across the map. Joe Manchin retiring in West Virginia basically loses them at that seat. You're basically starting at a 50/50 seat cap unless Democrats can surprise and win in Florida and Texas. Those are both pretty hard states to win in. To keep the majority Democrats have to keep the White House, win Senate races in Ohio, Montana, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Those are all tough states especially Ohio and Montana.

It's a very weird thing where a lot of people who've studied this stuff for a living think the House is likely to flip to Democrats and the Senate is likely to flip to Republicans. That's because of the way these Senate seats come up. Only a third of them come up every two years. That creates a very different dynamic than these House races, which are really tied to national politics. Joe Biden could have a great day and win and Democrats could still lose these Senate seats in Ohio and Montana because they're in such red states.

Brian Lehrer: Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau chief for POLITICO. Thanks for this Friday morning shot. When you have so much to cover, you're even telling us in real time about things that are going to happen any minute. Thanks a lot for today, Burgess.

Burgess Everett: Sure, Brian, thanks. I'll come on anytime. Appreciate you.

 

Copyright © 2024 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.