[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy birthday Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who would have been 94 yesterday had he lived that long. I don't think he celebrated his birthday on the nearest Monday during his lifetime. Who does that? Now the whole country does that. Only King Abraham Lincoln and George Washington get that nearest Monday honor, except in Mississippi, and King's home state of Alabama. Did you know this where today is also Robert E. Lee Day? Yes, it really is. Lee's actual birthday is January 19th.

Why not make King and the leader of the Confederacy the moral equivalent of each other every third Monday in January? Makes perfect sense. We don't have a state-by-state breakdown, but as Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives, a new YouGov poll on racial equality finds vast racial and partisan differences on a variety of related issues. 80% of Democrats, but only 58% of Republicans say King's, "I Have a Dream," speech still matters a lot today.

Only 30% of Democrats but 50% of Republicans say King's dream of racial equality has been achieved a great deal are quite a bit. By age, the poll might be an indicator of things actually gone backwards. Half of 65-year-olds or older think King's dream has been achieved at least quite a bit. Only 32% of Americans 18 to 29 think so. Young Americans think things are worse today than people who live through the end of Jim Crow think they are today. Maybe it just means young people today have higher expectations for racial equality than their grandparents did. It's possible, and that could be a good thing.

One sign of progress on CBS, Face the Nation yesterday, they played a clip of Dr. King from that show in 1964 and noted that today, this new Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in US history with 60 Black members between the House and the Senate. In 1964, they were only 5. To that point, they cited a Pew Institute stat that 13% of House members now are Black, which is on par with the Black population percentage in the US for the very first time. They also noted that of the 60 Black Americans in Congress, it's 55 Black Democrats and just 5 Republicans.

Listen to how [unintelligible 00:02:53] therefore, this exchange they had on that show back in 1964. That's on Face The Nation, turned out to be as Martin Luther King talked about the Republican Party of that era, digging in against the landmark Civil Rights Act that was soon to pass. This begins with the moderator's question.

Moderator: Dr. King, in light of recent statements of Senator Barry Goldwater in some cases Richard Nixon, do you think there is a real danger of the Republican Party becoming the white man's party in this country?

Dr. Martin Luther King: I think this is a real danger, and I've talked with some Negro Republicans who are very concerned about this. I see trends and developments which will reveal that unless the liberals of the Republican Party play a much more decisive role in leadership positions, this will become a white man's party. I think this would be tragic for the Republican Party as well as tragic for the nation.

Brian: Martin Luther King on Face The Nation in 1964, as the majority of Democrats were embracing a yes vote on the Civil Rights Act leaving many of the old Southern Democrat segregationists, they were really the big segregationists, the Southern Democrats, to switch parties and form the very white dominant party that the GOP has since become as the Democratic Party has become gradually more diverse.What about this new Congress?

With us now on that and other Monday morning politics, classified documents, new debt ceiling dates, volleyball star George Santos, oh, wait, maybe wasn't really a volleyball star-- is Kadia Goba, political reporter for the news organization, Semafor. Thanks for joining on a holiday, Kadia, welcome back to WNYC.

Kadia: Thank you for having me, Brian, and it's good to be back.

Brian: Starting adjacent to the holiday, I see you tweeted a Fox story about former Texas Congressman Will Hurd who is the only Black Republican in the House of Representatives until he left after last term that he's testing the waters for a presidential run, going to New Hampshire, the traditional first primary state, for an appearance. Any sense of Will Hurd? I think he was known as a pretty moderate republican from when you covered him in the House, or how he might run in Republican primaries that might also feature people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

Kadia: Sure, Will Hurd, I think a lot of the speculation around a presidential run from Hurd came last year when he introduced his book. As many of your listeners know, that's somewhat of a precursor to running for presidential office. He's from Texas. Primarily, I consider him a somewhat moderate. I'd imagine if he does run, he'll run on things like border control and possibly diversity. I think one of the points you've mentioned is interesting. When I came to Congress in 2019, he was the only Black Republican and now they are in the House, and now there are multiple Black Republicans. I think it's four of them at this point.

Brian: Is it too early to get a sense of where they are on racial equality issues like if there's a Democratic and Republican approach among elected Black representatives of how to achieve more racial equality?

Kadia: That's a great question. I saw a couple of tweets today celebrating Martin Luther King or today, MLK Day, but there's a stark contrast where the Black Republicans or just Republicans in general, how they're commemorating this day. For instance, the Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, I know he's doing an event at BAM in Brooklyn, but also here in DC with the National Action Network. When I reached out to some of the Republicans in the House, or the Black Republicans specifically, they didn't have anything specific on the agenda.

I thought that was interesting considering that the party is trying to evolve into one, the working man's party and the party of diversity. I think outreach is probably something they might want to focus on. I will point out that a new member, John James, gave a very compelling speech during Speaker McCarthy's election the other day. He talked about being a descendant of slaves, and now a member of the House of Representatives. I guess he's someone to watch on how much he thinks or considers or talks about diversity and equality, especially within the Republican Party.

Brian: I mentioned the new YouGov poll on racial equality that found such a split by party 80% of Democrats, but only 58% of Republicans say King's, "I Have a Dream," speech still matters a lot today. Only 30% of Democrats but 50% of Republicans say King's dream of racial equality has been achieved a great deal or quite a bit. Obviously, the talk about race on the Republican side of the aisle seems less focused on the fact that there's so much income and wealth inequality and things like that, and very much on how too much Black history is taught in the schools today or taught in a way that they find offensive to whites.

That seems to be where the politics of race very much live right now in this country. I was actually surprised watching the Sunday talk shows yesterday how little mention there was at all of the King holiday. There was that stretch on CBS that I referred to. I think I saw all of them, and that was about it. Except for a little dialogue between Cornel West and a white conservative colleague at Princeton, Dr. Robert George, which wasn't really about race even. I don't know. Does it seem like a big thing in Washington for you as a political reporter?

Kadia: It actually doesn't. I reached out to one of the offices and they said that they was going to be doing steering committee business. Right now during a federal holiday, Republicans are choosing their committee assignments. I think probably the person that stood out to me who was projected to be a presidential candidate is Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina. He made a big deal on Friday. He rang the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange. That to me was, again, based on-- he's been someone who has been promoting racial equality among different races.

That was the biggest contribution that I've seen from a Republican lawmaker. Was that specific of incident? I really haven't seen a lot. I think Capito from West Virginia sent over a press release, but in terms of the floods of press releases I usually get, don't see a lot commemorating this day, Republicans specifically.

Brian: Kadia Goba, political reporter from Semafor, our guest here on WNYC. Let's go on to some other news of the day and of the weekend. Classified documents. Whatever Biden did is not the intentional defiance of Trump, we should say, but much of the conversation over the past weekend has surrounded the classified documents found at President Biden's Delaware home in addition to those at his office. Is there any understanding yet of how those classified documents ended up at Biden's home?

Kadia: I've heard some speculation, and to be clear, this is from six years ago while he was vice president. I've heard some speculation that Vice President Biden at the time was not packing up boxes. This could be something that a staffer did, but either way, it doesn't look good for the administration. I'll point out the stark difference is that this administration has been extremely compliant with the people they're supposed to talk to.

There was some criticism around how NBC was the first to ask the question, but the administration knew about this a little earlier. They weren't transparent with the media, but they were transparent with the appropriate offices. Anyway, I want to point out the contrast between Trump who had actually defied a subpoena, so the willingness between the two camps is notable.

Brian: Important to point out. Trump has this whole defiance thing going on as you indicate about, "They're mine. I won't even show them all to you." It's 300 documents. Biden's is about 30, but Biden keeps being slow to reveal more documents before he does reveal, and that happened again this weekend, right?

Kadia: Yes. Again, pointing to that criticism. Well, he's been slow to alert or to acknowledge it publicly, but from what I understand, they have been alerting the actual people who are supposed to know, the Justice Department.

Brian: Like the National Archives.

Kadia: And NARA. Exactly. They've been very compliant with them.

Brian: Is it possible to say why they've been slower to reveal publicly? I think there was a statement from one of the White House officials, maybe it was the press secretary, on Friday, saying, "Okay. We've told you about all the documents now." Then on Saturday, they told people about more documents that from the reporting that I've seen, they probably knew about on Friday. Tell me if I have that timeline wrong, but there's this trickle out to the public that people don't seem to understand.

Kadia: I can't totally speak to that, but my understanding, they came across these latest documents when the attorney was told to go and look. I'm not sure, but either way, it doesn't look good. No matter how the administration wants to spin this, it doesn't look good that there are classified documents almost six years old that the president is in possession of, especially when he came out as a big critic to Trump on a very similar issue. This is the talking point, as you would imagine, that many Republicans are saying that how dare he speak ill of Trump when he did the same thing. I guess the second thing is making sure their point-- Republicans have been very bent on ensuring that the Justice Department handled this as much as or the same way they handled President Trump.

Brian: Right. Therefore, the attorney general has appointed a special counsel, as they're called. There are investigations of both now going on, which until you look at the details, makes them seem equivalent. There's still so much in there that's already known that makes them not equivalent. Then there's the Republican point about documents being found before the midterm elections in November, but the Biden people didn't reveal publicly until after. Maybe that's silly because people weren't voting in November on classified documents. They were voting on inflation and abortion rights and crime and democracy.

If Biden has a slow-to-disclose problem on documents, so apparently now do the Republicans have a slow-to-disclose problem on George Santos. I know you've been covering the Santos saga. One of the new wrinkles here is some other Republicans knew about his major lies before the election campaign but didn't reveal or move to have some other candidate be the nominee in that Queens and Long Island district. What do we know about that?

Kadia: There was a New York Times report that suggested lawmakers on the island knew about his past. For your audience, this is a second congressional run for Santos. He ran against Tom Suozzi two years earlier, which is why there's so much discrepancy on his disclosures and how much money he had then versus now. There apparently was a lot of speculation or a lot of criticism and unwillingness to back Santos, but apparently, it was pushed through. I just personally want to know where that oppo research was, and why I didn't find it when I was covering the race.

Brian: Meaning, how did the Democrats not find that out? Is that what you're asking?

Kadia: Yes, sure. How did the Democrats not find it out? How did Republicans not leak it? I have great relationships with Republicans. I just think it's interesting. I chalk it up to obviously them not having another opponent to replace him, or you know what? Who knows what was on the mind of those people? I don't. I want to also point out that a lot of people didn't think this race was winnable, the New York three and the New York four, the Anthony D'Esposito and George Santos. Those were long shots.

These were seats that were represented by Democrats for a very long time, but I know there were a lot of stimulants including the governor's race with Lee Zeldin and crime or I should say bail reform that became very important for people in the suburbs. This was a long shot, so I'm not sure if people understood fully that Santos would win that race.

Brian: Interesting. I actually thought, and I know you're originally a New Yorker too, and so you were probably watching this as a homegrown person as I was, even though you're covering D.C. now. I think it looked to a lot of people around here that Tom Suozzi, who was the previous representative in that district, one of the reasons he decided to run for governor besides that he really did want to be governor or he did for a long time want to be governor. Besides that is that he thought he was vulnerable in his district, even just running for reelection, even as an incumbent because Long Island was trending so Republican in the last year or so. The Republicans, I would think, thought they had a chance. Maybe if they had the right candidate, and this is just speculation, but maybe they saw that Santos' public story was so attractive for that district, Latino, Jewish, gay, married, that they couldn't resist, but I don't know. I guess time will tell. Oh, did you want to say something about, Kadia?

Kadia: Oh no, I was just going to point out I think you're right. Of course, I'm not in their heads but I think both Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi thought they would be in the minority. I think they thought they would've had a hard run. I don't think they chalked it up to New York being-- losing all of those seats. I think they thought it was going to come from other congressional districts throughout the country, but they would have had to campaign. I do think they would have been in the minority. I'm not totally sure they thought they were going to lose those seats.

Brian: Fair enough. Listeners, we can take some phone calls on this Monday Morning Politics segment for Martin Luther King Day with Kadia Goba from Semafor, relatively a news organization, but staffed with some major people including Kadia herself with all the background that she's had in political reporting and others. Kadia Goba from Semafor, political reporter, as we talk Monday Morning Politics today and on any of these topics. Listeners, comments or questions, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Is there a Democratic and Republican path to racial equality? You heard some of the differences by race and party. In the intro, if you were listening, a little bit ago, you heard some of those dramatic, persistent economic inequality stats. Is there a Democratic and Republican way to achieve King's dream? Or your questions or comments on other national politics of today, classified documents, the debt ceiling, George Santos, the new Republican bill, which we're going to touch on to ban the banning of gas stoves.

We'll touch on that as a climate and climate backlash story banning the banning of gas stoves if a new Republican bill becomes law. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Can I ask you about that gas stove spell? I saw you tweeted out a version of it. I don't know if you've reported it at all on your own. I think we're going to do a separate climate story, our climate story of the week on that probably tomorrow. A bill from House Republicans to prohibit the banning of gas stoves, it's a ban on banning things. What do you know?

Kadia: [chuckles] Very briefly. This started when Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka suggested that they were going to put restrictions on gas bills. After that, a growing number of Republican state legislatures passed bills to do exactly that. Ban, the ban. Recently, Congressman Huizenga introduced the bill that we all knew was coming on specifically that point. It will probably pass in the House. I'm not sure it will go do anything in the Democratic-led Senate.

Some of the resistance, this is the age-old Republicans who might support fossil fuel versus Democrats who are pro-green energy. Just so people know, that's what this fight is over. There are a lot of suggestions that gas stoves could be harmful and cause asthma depending on the environment. Just as a mechanism of minimizing our dependency on fossil fuels, there's been rules or legislation or support around getting rid of things like so. I don't think it's going to happen, but it is a very interesting fight.

Brian: It will be interesting to watch if it passes the Republican House when it goes to the Senate and whether it's enough of a wedge issue to get Democratic senators from a few relatively more conservative states where there might be a backlash against banning gas stoves for climate purposes to get on board with that. That will definitely be one to watch. Okay, we're going to take a break. Then we'll come back, your phone calls and more with Kadia Goba from Semafor. Also your tweets, @BrianLehrer. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Correction from something I said earlier. I was talking about Dr. King's activism and the irony of Alabama and Mississippi still retaining today as Robert E. Lee's birthday in addition to Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. Alabama and Mississippi. I said King's home state of Alabama. Well, I know his home state was, of course, Georgia. He did so much of his central activism in Alabama that I was thinking that at the moment but of course, obviously, Martin Luther King from the state of Georgia, so I correct myself. Let's take a phone call. This is a George Santos call from Gia in New Jersey. Gia, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Gia: Yes. You were both speaking, I'm sorry, the lady who is on the phone. I'm sorry. I just can't recall her name, but you were both speaking about [crosstalk].

Brian: Kadia Goba, political reporter for Semafor, just saying, go ahead.

Gia: Correct. We Brazilians knew through social media that Santos was charged where they tried to charge Santos in Brazil for stolen checks. He admitted on Orkut at the time, which was a social media site. We Brazilians knew that during the campaign because he's the first president to run for Congress in the United States, and people were talking on social media.

I wondering why the research didn't talk about this because he admitted to the shop owner, and the only reason he was not charged in Brazil officially is because they couldn't find him because he came to the United States. A lot of people like Bolsonaro right now steal a bunch of money in Brazil. They do crimes in Brazil and they come to the United States. I wonder how did they not find that because it was all over social media for Brazilians. We knew a lot.

Brian: It's a question that people are going to have to answer. I guess we touched on this before, Kadia. You don't know. I don't know. The reporting hasn't surfaced so far how people did not know about the criminal charge in Brazil. How did they not know? Gia, if you're still there, let me ask you. How did they not know in Brazil? If there was a criminal charge against him in Brazil, and then suddenly, instead of hiding in the United States, he puts himself out there as a public figure running for Congress. How did somebody there not see it?

Gia: Once he became bigger in the campaign, and he did in the campaign, Brazilians were talking about it on social media. I believe that's why the sheriff to say he is the one who mentioned that on social media. That's what the charge came back. If he goes back to Brazil right now, he will be arrested.

Brian: Thank you for your call. I really appreciate it. Kadia, did you want to say something about that?

Kadia: No, I was just curious if those were specific Brazilian chat rooms, or how wide that was. I believe that the Brazilian officials brought the case up or reopened the investigation or his case after the New York Times piece broke. Not before, from what I understand. I remember there being a secondary report after the New York Times report came out to say that they were reopening the case. That's really interesting that it was in circles that that chatter was out.

Brian: That's when they were reopening the case. My understanding roughly is that they had closed it some time ago probably because they couldn't find him because he was out of the country, but then poof, he's running for Congress of the United States twice in three years. Jeffrey in Dobbs Ferry, you're WNYC. Hi, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm curious to know whether your guest knows if former Presidents Obama and Bush and perhaps to Kenya scouring their own archives and records and homes to see if they've got classified documents.

Brian: It's it's a great question. The Biden situation makes you wonder, Kadia, doesn't it, how much does this happen routinely assuming there was no nefarious intent on the part of Joe Biden. Does it just wind up as each president or vice president leaves office given all the classified documents that they've been dealing with that some of them might inadvertently or for some little bit of ongoing business that's legitimate wind up in their possession?

Kadia: Yes, that's a great question. Some of the experts on this have suggested that former presidents and even their aides are doing so right now. I believe I heard a professor talk about this. What will probably happen or what should happen is there needs to be some independent agency, or person, or group of people with clearance to handle classified documents actually monitor or go through all the documents that are retrieved from a president or their age at the end of an administration.

Again, the suggestion here is that not all of this is nefarious, but that the idea of those documents being in places that they shouldn't be is problematic, and because it might just be carelessness of a really rushed pack-up that there should be an independent agent monitoring this. We'll see how that develops. They're probably going to be hearings on this and everything, congressional hearings around this.

Brian: No question. Let me just touch one more story very briefly. We'll dig into it in more depth on a later segment because it's complicated. I think since our last show on Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress that the US is on track to hit the debt ceiling this week, this Thursday, and could therefore begin defaulting on loans, the full faith and credit of the United States government at risk by June.

The Republicans are going to dig in. They've made it very clear in the house leadership on not raising the debt ceiling without certain cuts to government spending so the debt itself doesn't continue to go up. What kind of fight are we in for?

Kadia: Brian is exactly right. When you talk to Republicans on the hill, they say when I ask, "How are you going to address the debt ceiling?" They say, "Well, presumably we'll have enough cuts so we don't have to do that at the end of the year." What they're not talking about is this big, big issue of discharge petitions. Let me just explain this. Republicans don't want to raise the debt ceiling, right? Democrats, I'm speaking on a large scale, likely do not want to default.

I don't think either party wants to default, but what's going to happen or I guess the best-case scenario if they can't get the support from all Republicans, Democrats will start a discharge petition. What that means is because they are not in the majority, if everyone signs onto a bill to raise the debt limit, if every Democrat does and then they recruit about five or six Republicans because that's the disparity or the difference in the majority, then they can push this bill to the floor without it going through the normal committee process.

Essentially, if Republicans don't bring up a debt ceiling fix in the rules or in the rules committee, then Democrats can do it independently through this process. It is not that easy. Semafor has reported on this. It takes time and because the debt ceiling is such a-- it's tenuous, we don't really know when it's going to happen. You hear Yellen came out recently saying, "We need to address this by June."They're going to have to start on this immediately.

There is going to be a big fight because Republicans are not going to be happy if this happens sooner than they anticipated. They're not going to be happy if they haven't instituted those cuts that they think they need to decrease the US debt essentially.

Brian: Obviously, a lot more on this to come. Kadia Goba, national political reporter for Semafor. Thanks a lot for coming on with us on the holiday. Really appreciate it.

Kadia: Thanks for having me.

Copyright © 2023 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.