A thin majority of the GOP house prevents representative Elise Stefanik from joining the Trump administration, Elon Musk’s participation in the Wisconsin special elections and the benefits of the signaling application scandal.
Eyder Peralta, host:
This has been said on several occasions and will be said on several occasions while President Trump pushes to pass his agenda thanks to the congress – the majority of the GOP house is thin. This reality was underlined last week when President Trump withdrew his appointment from New York MP, Elise Stefanik, as the United Nations Ambassador. I have joined myself now to talk about it, as well as some of the fallout from the scandal on the leak of the signal, is the main national political correspondent of NPR, Mara Liasson. Hello, Mara.
Mara Liasson, byline: Hi, there.
Peralta: So we expected Stefanik to be easily confirmed by the Senate. What does this withdrawal of his appointment on the president’s thought say?
Liasson: It is said that it is quite nervous about this major house that he is ready to put the branch on someone who was very faithful to him. You know, there are two special elections this week in Florida. Both are in very red districts. They had to send two other Republicans to Washington, but the fundraising of Democratic candidates and the survey makes the Republicans nervous. Trump therefore decided not to take a chance, and he decided not to let Stefanik’s siege go up for another special election because it was a risk that a democrat could place himself.
Peralta: OK. So, I mean, what is the importance of these special elections on Tuesday? It’s not just Florida. There is a race for Wisconsin for the Supreme Court of the State which also attracted a lot of national attention?
Liasson: It’s true. All of these special elections are the first chance that voters must weigh on Trump administration, and Democrats have already won a lot of special elections for state legislative seats. But now, the Court of the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin is the first race with national implications. Unlike Florida, it is a state of battlefield. The balance of the powers of the Supreme Court of the Wisconsin State is to be won. This short could determine the redistribution of the congress.
Currently, the State is roughly a 50/50 division between republican and democrats. You saw that during the presidential elections, how close she was of Wisconsin. But in the Congress Delegation in Wisconsin, there are six republican members of the Chamber and two Democrats, and the Democrats want to redraw these districts to be more competitive and reflect the partisan composition of the State, and the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin will weigh.
This race therefore attracted a lot of national attention. Elon Musk has so far spent about $ 20 million in Wisconsin. He said that today, he was going to give two checks for a million dollars to two voters during a rally. And not only is Musk the biggest spending in this race, but he became a problem in the race. Democrats are trying to make the Supreme Court of the State a referendum on Musk and its involvement in the government.
Peralta: So we are now a week in the signal application scandal, where Trump administration officials used a conversation to discuss a military operation in Yemen, and inadvertently understood the journalist of the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg. Are there any benefits?
Liasson: Well, there are no big political benefits that we see for Trump. But inside Washington, there are republican members on defense and intelligence committees in the congress who are upset about it, and, of course, the members of the intelligence community and the military are worried about the apparently cavalier attitude of the Trump administration about the secrets.
But this cat also revealed something on the animal of the administration towards Europe. Vice-president JD Vance and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, expressed real hostility towards Europe on this cat. They were – they described Europeans as pathetic freeladers. And this sends an even more explicit message to Europe than their former ally, the most important military protector, is no longer on their side.
And not only does the United States want Europe to pay more for its defense – which is something that the presidents of both parties have requested, for years and years and years – but that the Americans may not be inclined to see them as allies at all. You know, Trump said last week when he announced new prices, he said, quotes: “The friend was” sometimes “much worse than the enemy”, and it is the vision of Trump’s world.
Peralta: So this brings us to another Trump priority, pressing a cease-fire in the war of Russia in Ukraine. Where is it?
Liasson: Well, Ukraine has accepted a complete ceasefire. Russia has not done so. Ukraine and the United States continue to speak of a mineral agreement. The latest version of this agreement shocked the Ukrainians. It would seem that this does not understand any security guarantee and retroactively transforms all the support that Ukraine has so far received from the United States in loans to be reimbursed with interest and gives the United States nearly 50% of each Ukrainian resource, not only minerals but oil and gas, perpetuity. I therefore think that this shows you how a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia can be for a conflict that Donald Trump has promised to resolve even before he is sworn.
Peralta: Finally, Mara, I want to ask you questions about the continuous use of decrees by Trump. It seems that every week now he uses them more. He issues more, a range of actions – in particular by reshaping the federal workforce or by targeting the law firms that he does not like or demanding proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. And it seems that every week, a judge blocks some of them. Is there a method of this?
Liasson: Yes, I think there are. This is the presidency of the OE, the presidency of decrees. And this is the concept of Trump of the executive branch – all -powerful, without control. He likes to do things by himself, without judicial review or maintenance of the Congress – Legislation. But these orders must go from conduct with the Constitution. This is something that judges decide.
And the latter that you mentioned on the voting rights – the executive has no control over how the elections are managed. States do so and congress can modify voting laws. But at one point, the Supreme Court will examine all these cases, all these EOS, and we will discover to what extent they agree with Trump than the executive power should be made much more powerful than the other branches of the government.
Peralta: This is the main national political correspondent of NPR, Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you.
Liasson: You are welcome.
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