Thursday Morning Politics: 2025 Congress, Holiday Attack, More

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Happy first BL show of 2025. We hope it's a happy one. We will start with a numerology geek riddle about the year 2025 that we're just beginning. Are you ready? How much is 20 + 25 x 20 + 25? 20 + 25 x 20 + 25. How quick can you get your calculator out? The answer is 2025. Another way to say it. 20 + 25 = 45. Multiply that by itself and you get the year 2025. This is the only year this century that is a perfect square. 45 squared, 2025. 44 squared was 1936. 46 squared will be 2116.

If you want to geek out on numbers with your math friends or confuse everyone you know, like maybe I just confused you, there you go. This is the unique year where we can say 20 + 25 x 20 + 25 = 2025. That thing may never happen again. Welcome to the year 45 squared, the only perfect-squared year this century. We'll do another numbers crunch later on today's show in the latest edition of our 100 Years of 100 Things series. It'll be 100 years of birth rates and population growth in the United States. 100 years of birth rates and population growth in the United States. Some people think we're in a crisis of too few babies being born in this country. Remember childless cat ladies?

We will trace 100 years of birth rates and population growth. We'll also have our first New York City Mayoral election preview today, first New Jersey Governor's race preview tomorrow. In this year, when we elect both, very frequently, locally, the year after the presidential race is the most interesting political year because we elect the Mayor of New York and the Governor of New Jersey. We'll do our first mayoral preview today with clips of some of the candidates. A bunch have already declared. It's a progressive who's who in New York City if you've been following, and a potential battle of the giants.

The most well-known Democratic politicians, at least, in New Jersey, as well as the Republican, who came pretty darn close to beating Phil Murphy four years ago, Jack Cittarelli. Today, we will do a context and a movie segment with a film critic and a folk music historian on the new movie about Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown with ‎Timothée Chalamet. Context and a movie with a film critic and a folk music historian all coming up. This year is starting out with the awful news of the apparent terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year's morning that killed 15 people at last count and injured around 30 and what might be the related explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Tower in Las Vegas.

2025 politics also begin in earnest tomorrow when the House elects a speaker. If you missed it over the holidays, President-Elect Trump has endorsed Mike Johnson for speaker, but will dissent from the so-called Freedom Caucus prove even more powerful than the nod from the incoming president? There's much more. We welcome as our first guest of the New Year, Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball. Molly, always good to have you. Happy New Year. Welcome back to WNYC.

Molly Ball: Happy New Year. Great to be here. I'm so honored to be the first guest of 2025.

Brian Lehrer: We're so honored that you were willing to get up here on January 2nd when it's still a vacation day for a lot of people and do it. First, you're a Washington correspondent, not on the ground in New Orleans or Las Vegas. Is there a political reaction yet taking shape in Washington to the attack or the attacks? Is there any difference in Democrat and Republican reactions, if so?

Molly Ball: First of all, it has brought the issue of potential terrorism and this type of violence front and center. We're still waiting to learn more of the attacks and everybody wants to be cautious and not get ahead of what we know from the authorities. Republicans in particular are pointing to this as evidence that Donald Trump's national security team needs to be confirmed as quickly as possible so that it can start pursuing these types of threats, some of them arguing that the current administration has not been aggressive enough about pursuing particularly threats inspired by Islamist terrorism, as the New Orleans attacker appears to have been.

Now, Trump, of course, as he tends to do, also has been spreading lies about the attack, claiming that there was a link to immigration when the attacker, as far as we know, was a native-born American citizen who was not raised Muslim but later converted. Of course, we remember Trump's attention to the issue of Muslims and terrorism, which was such an animating part of his first presidential campaign in 2016 and led to one of his first controversial actions as president eight years ago, the so-called Muslim ban. We may hear more from him about how he sees this threat, which had not been much of a focus of his campaign this time around, but which has historically been something he's quite concerned about.

We know that he was very focused on the immigration issue as he prepares to assume the presidency again in a few weeks. Again, there does not appear to be a link to immigration in this case but that is not going to stop him from trying to argue that there's a link there and use that to get momentum for his agenda. When it comes to the national security positions, that also could be easier said than done, given that many of the people he's nominated for those roles are some of the most controversial among his nominees, including his nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who we still don't know if he has the votes in the Senate to be confirmed and who's scheduled to have a confirmation hearing two weeks from yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Part of the international context is that ISIS as a force is so much weaker than it was in 2016. Trump takes, and maybe rightly, some credit for that. There was U.S. military engagement in the Middle East at that time that went from the Obama administration into the Trump administration. He says, maybe as an exaggeration, but maybe partly correct- He defeated ISIS, but certainly it was on the wane over the years as a force in the Middle East and internationally. Now, you wonder, and this is just speculation. Is this adherent of ISIS, even though he's a U.S.-Born American citizen? Convert to Islam, as you say, but maybe in conjunction with some larger group that he coordinated with.

The authorities are saying that that does seem to be very possible. Is somehow whatever is left of ISIS trying to say to Trump, "Hey, you're coming back, but we're still here, we're still a force." Are people talking like that?

Molly Ball: That's certainly possible. Again, I think we need more information. As you say, the authorities say they do not believe that the attacker in New Orleans acted alone. They still do not know whether there was any link with the Las Vegas attack. They do not know what, if any, coordination there was with foreign terrorist groups. These are all very important questions, but they're essentially factual questions. Another important factual question is going to be whether this attacker was on the radar of authorities and whether they had leads that they could have pursued. Particularly as Trump looks to reform the FBI, I think those questions are going to be very important.

I'm not a terrorism expert, but we have seen a lot of these lone-wolf attackers who are inspired by the idea of ISIS and its ideology, and may or may not have links to overseas terrorists, but are engaged in rather a different goal than the fighters who are trying to create an Islamic state in the Middle East. The Middle East is a quite complicated situation right now with the weakening of Iran and the end of the Syrian regime. These are all important front-burner crises that the Trump administration is going to be confronting as they come in.

It's too soon to say whether this attack is, as you say, a laying down a marker by a resurgent ISIS in the Middle East or whether it is a more homegrown situation. We need to know more about it.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Part of the complexity over there is that in Syria, where of course, Assad was just toppled and where ISIS had been strong, the new government says, they want to be open to everyone. They don't want to be an ISIS state. That's going on, on the one hand, this as maybe a lone wolf with very few overseas connections and ISIS being marginalized. Then, of course, it probably should go without saying, but then again, we should probably say it out loud, such a tiny, tiny, tiny fringe of any American Muslims or world Muslims who would subscribe to this attack being a good thing.

We don't know the context. If anything, the ISIS brand of Islam seemed to be on the wane globally. About domestic terrorism, though, Molly, in recent years the FBI has labeled right-wing domestic terror the top political violence threat. That was after the earlier ISIS and Al Qaeda years. Now in the last year, we've had two assassination attempts on Trump, the murder of the United Healthcare CEO, and now this. Are people in D.C. saying that balance of where threats are likely to come from this year seems to be changing again?

Molly Ball: Certainly Republicans have long seen the focus on so-called right-wing terrorism as misguided and as an attempt to criminalize or marginalize people with conservative views. I would expect that to be less of an emphasis in a Trump administration as indeed it was when he was president before. We have Trump posting on social media, just today, that he believes there needs to be more of a focus on the threat of Islamist violence. I do think that that is something we will see more of a focus on and as you allude to potentially left-wing ideological violence as well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, Molly Ball, Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent, is our guest. We can take any January 2nd national politics thoughts or questions. It doesn't have to be about terrorism. We're about to get into the interesting challenge for John Thune as the new majority leader. Some of the particular tensions for Trump administration policy that Molly has written an article about, that his nomination set up the Musk RFK environmental wing, believe it or not. If that's not how you think of them generally, of Trump world-- I know Musk isn't somebody who's dominated officially, but somebody who's a very close advisor to the President-Elect now.

That wing versus a fossil fuels wing, other things. We'll be talking about that with Molly as we go here for another few minutes. Anything you want to say or ask 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text. Let's talk about Congress. Tomorrow, they elect the speaker of the House. I saw that in print yesterday and I thought, "Oh, wait, I forgot. They do this before the inauguration of the new president on January 20th."

Molly Ball: That's right. It's coming up tomorrow. All indications are that it could be quite a drama. Mike Johnson needs 218 votes to become speaker again. There are 219 Republicans in the House and one of them has already said that there is no way he will vote for Johnson. A dozen or so others are undecided. We got a preview of this a few weeks ago with the government funding drama that nearly caused a government shutdown right before Christmas. Johnson was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute there, but it cost him quite a bit of trust and goodwill with his members in the Republican caucus.

This is a new Congress that is coming to town tomorrow to elect a speaker. Again, this very narrow margin is going to make it very difficult for Johnson to get the gavel. Everybody, I think, remembers how difficult it was for Kevin McCarthy just two years ago, who went through days of ballots and had to make a lot of really crippling concessions to his dissenters. We'll see if Johnson, who does have Trump's support and endorsement, will be able to get through easily on the first ballot or whether he also will have to go through that humiliating spectacle.

If he does, the other big milestone that people may not realize is coming up before the inauguration is the presidential certification on January 6th. Again, a date mandated by the Constitution, but if Congress is not yet constituted by that point, there could be further chaos and delays in officially certifying Trump's win of the presidency in the election.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think Trump came out the other day and endorsed Mike Johnson for speaker right after he tried to undermine Johnson's continuing resolution on the budget?

Molly Ball: Well, Trump has been getting a lot of calls and a lot of pressure from a lot of Republicans, both for and against Johnson. He's been hearing from a lot of people, including Johnson who's become quite close to Trump, who are making the argument that, first of all, Johnson may not be the best speaker of the House who's ever lived, but try to find someone better. There's a reason that he got this job after several others failed in a messy three-week power vacuum back in 2023, and that is that nobody else could get the votes. There's a feeling that he may be the best the Republicans can do.

He's willing to do this difficult job, and he's managed to do it pretty well over the past year. There hasn't been a government shutdown. There hasn't-- Although he was faced with a motion to vacate, he was able to defeat it. He is still more trusted by members on both sides of the aisle than McCarthy was. This has been what Trump has said publicly, that he thinks Johnson is a nice guy who's trying to do the best that he can under difficult circumstances, and that while there are others who might like to do the job, Johnson is-- What Trump said the other night is, "He's a nice guy, everybody likes him."

Trump appears to be making a pragmatic calculation here that he could wade in here and show more chaos, but not only might it prevent him from being inaugurated if it goes to an extreme, but it's unlikely to also lead to a better outcome in terms of producing a Speaker who is more effective or more loyal to Trump or both.

Brian Lehrer: Are we seeing an unexpected balance of power story here in D.C? While the media had previously been focused on how much power will the Democratic minority have to affect Trump's agenda, another storyline that we now saw in the budget fight the other week is, will the further than Trump right-wing caucus, the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House, be even more powerful than Trump in crafting at least any policy that has to go through Congress? Because they're going to hold a numerical veto. We saw Trump lose to that Freedom Caucus contingent, at least temporarily, the other week and now here we may be again.

Molly Ball: Yes, it's a bit of a replay of 2017. People may not remember, but one of the things that Trump was exercised about during the early months of his presidency- He went after the Freedom Caucus because they had become an obstacle to his agenda. These two phenomena that you reference, the Democrats' leverage and the Freedom Caucuses' leverage, they're both products of the same phenomenon, which is these tiny margins that the Republicans have in the House and in the Senate for that matter. It's the first time in many decades that the House has had a smaller margin of majority than the Senate has.

For that reason, any individual representative, Democrat or Republican, has a much larger amount of leverage than they would in a situation with a larger majority. That's what's going to make the Republicans' job so difficult. It is an interesting cognitive dissonance where on the one hand, you have a Republican Party that feels much more energized, emboldened, unified, loyal to Trump and his agenda, focused on what they want to do going forward than was the case eight years ago. On the other hand, they have much, much less room for error than they did eight years ago when their majorities were larger.

You have an administration and a party with perhaps larger and more intentional ambitions but a smaller aperture to execute them. That is going to produce a lot of difficulty when, and if, Trump wants to get things through Congress. I think it also bears saying that a lot of the things he plans to do don't go through Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners. My guest is Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text? Here's a text message coming in. We haven't talked about this topic yet, Molly. Listener writes, "Please ask Molly why Trump wants to take over Greenland. Is there something that would benefit Musk?" By way of a little bit of background for people who don't know, Trump did talk about this during his first term as president, and he raised it again the other day. He wants to buy-- Denmark, technically owns Greenland, and he wants to buy Greenland from Denmark. Denmark says it's not for sale. What's all this about Greenland?

Molly Ball: Well, I think it is of a piece with a larger set of territorial ambitions that Trump has been talking about. Joking about making Canada the 51st state. We don't know of any concrete plans to invade or otherwise try to acquire Canada. It's something he keeps referring to. He's talking about retaking the Panama Canal, which former President Jimmy Carter gave back to Panama decades ago. Unexpectedly, since this is not something he talked about on the campaign trail, he seems to have his eye on expanding U.S. territory. It's, as usual with Trump, impossible to know if he's joking or trolling or trying to use threats to gain leverage over countries that he wants to negotiate with in some other way, or if he wants these territories and plans to put in place some process to acquire them.

Greenland does have a lot of natural resources that, from what I understand, could be useful for things like electrical components. As you say, this was a preoccupation of Trump's long before he was friends with Elon Musk. That does not seem to be the genesis of the Greenland preoccupation. It seems to have more to do with the fact that he has his eyes set on expanding America's borders at the same time as he is vowing to seal those borders.

Brian Lehrer: Boy, it's the next level of nationalism, right? People say, "Well, you can't compare Trump to the 20th Century hypernationalists, or even fascists, because part of their thing was territorial expansion, not just their cultural nationalism." Here we are, with Trump talking about acquiring territory like Greenland or even Canada. I was thinking about Greenland, and it's interesting. Half the reason Greenland is valuable to Trump, tell me if you disagree, is because global warming has been melting the ice there for decades. All of a sudden, you can send ships through those waters, that used to be ice sheets and save a lot of money on shipping and trade.

It's a shortcut to, say, China, if you go over the top of the earth instead of all the way around closer to the equator. There's a competition with China, as I understand it, for shipping dominance there. The other reason, ironically, which you were mentioning, is that now that the land there is more accessible under the ice, it turns out there are a lot of minerals there to maybe drill for. Coal as well as zinc, which might be that material for machinery you were talking about, and other things. As this administration comes in, that might be climate denying. Here is Trump wanting to buy Greenland, which is valuable in large measure because of global warming melting the ice sheets, making it a good shipping lane.

Molly Ball: Well, I have to say, Brian, you know a lot more about Greenland and its geography than I do. We have now completely exceeded my reading on this topic, and I am sure you are right. I think what this all points to is that there are serious considerations here. The first time Trump started talking about buying Greenland in his first term, it was treated as a joke, or a troll, or another one of his weird tweets. Now I think people are looking at it quite seriously and saying, "Okay, there are potential advantages for the U.S. here in various geopolitical areas, including shipping, including resource exploitation."

There are practical reasons that this might be a good deal for us. Whether or not it's something that's possible when both the Greenlanders and the Danish government say they're not interested. There are real reasons that a person might want to do this, beyond the Putinesque hubris of saying, "I want America to be bigger."

Brian Lehrer: Right. This brings us back to who's going to run Congress, believe it or not. We talked about Mike Johnson and the Speaker's vote tomorrow. We also have a new Senate majority leader already. That's John Thune of South Dakota. You wrote an article about him the other day called He's Not Going to Please Everyone: John Thune's Delicate Task Under Trump. Here is Thune just recently after the vote, saying he will support Trump on Trump's agenda, including border security and government efficiency, and this--

John Thune: We will work to restore American energy dominance. Not just our energy security, but energy dominance, which will lower costs and bolster our national security.

Brian Lehrer: There again, we get energy versus climate implied. Talk about John Thune and the challenges that you think he faces, as implied by a headline that he's not going to please everyone.

Molly Ball: Sure. I think, Thune has flown under the radar for a lot of people, but he is poised to be perhaps the most important man in Washington in the coming months and years. It has been 18 years since Republicans had a new leader. In all that time, they've been led by Mitch McConnell. Thune is different. He's a bit of a McConnell protégé, but he's got a different style. He's younger, he's got different priorities. He's quite well-liked by Republicans, which is why he won the job. There are divisions in the Senate caucus similar to the ones that there are in the House, and conservatives are going to want him to hold the line on principle at the same time as the more institutionalist or moderate members want him to work across the aisle and compromise.

We don't know what Trump's going to ask him to do. Right out of the gate, Thune is going to be responsible for managing the nominations and the confirmation process. We know that that is going to be contentious and difficult because of the, shall we say, unorthodox nominees that Trump has put forward in several areas. When I spoke to Senator Thune just a couple of weeks ago, he was careful not to make any promises in this regard. He said, "We'll give all of them a fair hearing, we'll give all of them a fair process, and we'll see where it goes." He is not promising that all of Trump's nominees can be confirmed. He's promising to let the Senate work its will.

He's vowed to defend the filibuster. He has been non-committal on Trump's demand for the Senate to do so-called recess appointments for nominations. There are multiple ways in which he could come into conflict with the White House on these matters. Then there's legislation, once they get around to trying to legislate. Thune has this plan to do two separate large party-line policy packages that would only need 51 votes to get through the Senate. Again, he's got a pretty small margin. 53 Republicans in the Senate, plus the vice president, J.D. Vance, can break a tie. He said he wants that first package to be about energy production and border security, and potentially military funding.

If he can get Republicans together quickly on that package, then he wants the second package to be the tax overhaul that would renew the Trump tax cuts enacted in 2017 that expire this year, and also potentially fulfill some of Trump's other tax promises. That's going to be enormously complicated, and difficult, and contentious, even among the Republicans, who again, will need everybody to fall in line with this if they want to get it passed. This is all going to be up to Thune, who, while he has been a senator for 20 years, has not been in this leadership position before.

Everything with Trump is difficult to navigate because he's so unpredictable. It's going to fall to Thune to make a lot of these very difficult decisions and juggle a lot of competing interests and priorities in the year ahead.

Brian Lehrer: I'm interested in what you said about Thune being noncommittal on recess appointments. We have covered that on this show as maybe the first threat to democracy coming from an incoming Trump administration trying to get the Senate to voluntarily give up its constitutional privilege to advise and consent. Meaning have a confirmation process and accept or reject presidential nominees. I thought Thune had already said, "No, we're not going to do that. We're still the Senate. We still confirm your nominees." Are you saying he's still open to standing down and giving up that privilege voluntarily, with respect to some of these controversial nominees?

Molly Ball: No. What he said to me when I asked him about it was that he wants the Senate to be faster and more effective at its job of confirming personnel. For the cabinet nominees, there will be a confirmation process. There will be hearings. The Senate is not going to recess and let Trump stock his Cabinet in that way. Don't forget that the Senate also has confirmation authority over hundreds, if not thousands of lower-level appointees. That's where Thune believes that the Senate-- Because of all these procedural roadblocks, spends too much time on these matters. If he believes that the roadblocks being thrown up are being done in bad faith or are unfairly or improperly inhibiting this process, that's where he might be open to something else.

His priority is to just make the Senate function better and to have the Senate do its job in a more expeditious manner. There were nominees to some positions that Biden never filled over the entire four years of his administration. Thune is determined to make sure that that doesn't happen to Trump. That's why I say he's somewhat noncommittal in the sense that he says he is open to alternative procedural solutions if he feels that the confirmation process has broken down in ways that are making it difficult for the administration to function. That's very far from the commitment that Trump has asked for, which is for the Senate to just abdicate its constitutional responsibility. Thune is clearly not interested in that.

Brian Lehrer: Good. That's important and that's good to know. Of all the serious things that we've talked about this half hour, it's getting all the reaction in our text message thread, Greenland. I'm going to read you some of these. Some of them are the opposite of each other. One says, "I saw something online that said the reason Trump is talking about all these annexations is because he is under Putin's thumb. Trump is talking about annexing Greenland because there are NATO bases there." Presumably it would help Putin if NATO bases were more under Trump's control.

Here are two that are the opposite of each other. One says, "Regarding Greenland, Canada, Panama, Trump just says a lot of nonsense to see what sticks with his base and to create chaos to distract leaders. None of this is serious." Then the next one that came in said, "Trump has no sense of humor and does not joke. He's floating ideas. 'I was only joking' is the oldest and most often told lie in the history of language." There was one more and then one more from a listener who does have a sense of humor writes, "He just wants to name it Trumpland."

Molly Ball: Well, I think these comments are wonderful because they vividly illustrate how difficult it can be to discern Trump's true motivations. Now, he tends to tell us why he wants to do things, and certainly those around him would regard the Putin idea as a conspiracy theory. We know that he does admire Putin in certain regards. Without saying that he's being literally bossed around by Putin, it's not that far-fetched to say he may see him as an example in some ways of what he considers strong leadership. He also does joke around quite a bit. He's not someone who laughs. I agree with the listener in that regard. He does joke around a lot and he does float a lot of ideas that he then doesn't try to pursue to get a reaction out of people or to see how they go over.

We just don't know how serious this is. When you are covering the things that Trump says and does, you have to exist in that ambiguity and give the information to readers so they can draw their own conclusions. We simply don't know at this point how serious an initiative it is going to be for the incoming Trump administration to attempt to acquire Greenland. Because with Trump, something like this could be a middle-of-the-night troll and it could be a serious diplomatic initiative. We will have to find out by continuing to report and watching what he says and does.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, you wrote an article about Trump's nominations generally and that some of them set up policy tensions. For example, you wrote that the environmentalism of Robert Kennedy and first friend Elon Musk might chafe against the fossil fuel zeal of his appointees for the Energy and Interior departments as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. Can you talk about that for a minute? Do you think there will be any meaningful environmental, especially climate-oriented wing of the Trump cabinet that might have him take climate into account in any way?

Molly Ball: I don't know. I do think that it's one of many potential ideological conflicts among the cabinet that Trump has assembled. Trump was elected by a very broad coalition ranging from the former Democrats and anti-war and natural food activists represented by RFK Jr. and Tulsa Gabbard, the Techno Utopians of Silicon Valley represented by Musk and his cohort. The more populous nationalists represented by J.D. Vance and many in the Trump orbit. We've already seen these conflicts play out with the H1B visa issue that erupted into a Twitter fight over the past couple of weeks, with the Musk wing saying we need highly skilled immigrants in the tech sector and the nationalists saying we don't need to import more foreigners, we should pay Americans more to do those jobs. On the environmental front, I don't think we know how that's going to play out.

RFK is someone whose background was as an environmental lawyer and who's quite passionate about these issues. Although he has not been as out front on climate as on other things. Musk started an electric car company, in part because he believed that climate change was an existential threat to the planet, and that's part of why he wants to go to Mars as well. Now, his views on climate have evolved somewhat in the sense that during Trump's first term, he quit a presidential advisory commission because he was angry that Trump had exited the Paris climate accords.

He now seems to believe in different, more unconventional solutions to the climate crisis, but he does still believe that it's a problem, unlike many of Trump's appointees. Is he going to use his clout with Trump and his incredible megaphone and bully pulpit to call attention to those issues? At the very least, will he fight to save the tax credit for electric vehicles, which Trump said he opposes and many Republicans have campaigned against electric vehicles? If the U.S. Changes EV policy in a major way, it could be a big hit to Elon Musk's bottom line.

These are the kinds of tensions that are going to play out. Of course, everyone who wins the presidency has a large and somewhat conflicting coalition. I think that these conflicts are particularly pointed in the case of Trump, and it could mean there will be some interesting tensions both inside and around the White House.

Brian Lehrer: Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Molly, thanks again very much for starting off your New Year with us. Happy New Year and we'll talk to you during the year for sure.

Molly Ball: Happy 2025, Brian. Great to be with you. Have a good one.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer and WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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