National Politics: Biden Comes to NYC and NJ, Dems Push Infrastructure, Texas Abortion Ban

Jami Floyd: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Jami Floyd, senior editor for Race & Justice at WNYC and I'm filling in for Brian today. Shanah Tovah to our Jewish listeners. Coming up on today's show as the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks approaches, we're going to talk about how 911 changed policing in New York City. Plus the ongoing crisis in our city jails, including the shortly rising rate of self-harm at Rikers Island where five people have taken their lives since the pandemic began. First today, President Biden is visiting parts of Queens and the town of Manville, New Jersey.

He's surveying the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida as remnants of the storm hit our region killing dozens of people. This will be President Biden's first official stop to New York, and it comes five days after the White House declared a state of emergency ordering federal assistance to supplement local relief efforts. As our colleagues in the newsroom reported over the weekend, some residents are still complaining that no official has yet been to their block days after the flooding. Here's Woodside resident, Litzka, talking to WNYC on Saturday,

Litzka: We're just cleaning and cleaning and there's no help from anybody. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how we're going forward. The city needs to do something. This is blocks and blocks people, this is their homes,

Jami Floyd: Since that report, the Mayor and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez did make a visit to Woodside. The city says it's working tirelessly to help New Yorkers who've been impacted by the storm. The city says people should go to nyc.gov/ida, that's nyc.gov/ida for more information about assistance. They've opened up emergency centers in each borough for people to get resources. As President Biden comes to New York, the debate over how to confront climate change via legislation rages on in Washington with Democrats continuing to push for a $3.5 billion reconciliation bill in addition to a $1 trillion infrastructure deal. Here's Senator Chuck Schumer on Thursday,

Senator Chuck Schumer: Global warming is upon us and it's going to get worse and worse and worse unless we do something about it. That's why it's so imperative to pass the two bills, the infrastructure bill and the budget reconciliation bill. The second deals with climate change and will reduce the amount of carbon we've put in the atmosphere by 50% by 2030. The first bill deals with infrastructure and built into that infrastructure is something I started fostering with Sandy that we don't just build infrastructure, but we build resilient infrastructure so when these floods or fires or anything else occurs, they are much more resistant.

Jami Floyd: That was Senator Chuck Schumer last week. Of the two pieces of legislation, the budget bill faces the more perilous path as Republicans plus Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are uniformly opposed to the price tag. In this moment when hundreds of Americans died from climate-related weather disasters just this summer, will local and the federal government step up and provide immediate relief and future production, or will politics as usual get in the way.

Here with me now to talk about this and other political news from over the weekend, including new polling showing waning support for the President in the midst of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and anxiety around Delta infections, is Jonathan Lemire, White House reporter for the Associated Press and Political Analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. Jonathan, welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Lemire: Good morning. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Jami Floyd: What's on President Biden's agenda today? Where is he going? Let's start there. What does he want to accomplish?

Jonathan Lemire: He just moments ago left the White House for his trip to the Northeast to inspect the pair of storm-damaged states who that was, of course, the torrential rain as part of the remnants of Hurricane Ida last week. That includes right in New York City. It'll be here to Vegas' first stop. After touching down at Kennedy Airport, he'll actually take a helicopter to New Jersey first, a town there to inspect what happened. Then return to the city and wIll be in Queens touring a storm-damaged neighborhood, and will expect to give remarks. Of course, he's going to use this moment to ideally do two things, White House officials tell me.

First to express concern and sympathy to those impacted by the storm. Then secondly, to also make another pitch for the part of his agenda to deal with climate change. As you know, right now there are two big pieces of legislation heading towards Congress. A bipartisan infrastructure deal, which already passed the Senate but still needs approval on the House, and this $3.5 trillion reconciliation package which will have quite a bit of climate change spending in there. Its future remains uncertain as it won't be easy for Democrats to all be on the same page moderates and liberals alike. The President did say though as he left the White House that he was confident that it could still happen.

Jami Floyd: I do want to dive more deeply into that bill, including the op-ed Senator Manchin wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week about it. First let me ask you, Jon, about the major disaster declarations. President Biden approved aid for people in six New Jersey counties and five New York counties more immediately than bills on Capitol Hill. What does that disaster assistance mean for people needing it right now?

Jonathan Lemire: This is part of the course and sadly far too common in recent years, these major storms decimating parts of the United States. Then these emergency disaster declarations being signed by the President, it streamlined the process. It directs more federal funding to these areas will help in terms of homeowners insurance. It will allow federal regulators to get in there more quickly. Teams are on the ground, of course, in Louisiana, which was the first state to face the brunt of the storm. Then here in the tri-state area where the President will be later today.

It cuts on the red tape and devotes more federal funding, but it's a small piece of what actually needs to happen, the White House argues, saying that though certainly, it will help, what is needed is more widespread structural change. Stuff that can only be accomplished with major pieces of legislation and the amount of money needed that has to come from Congress.

Jami Floyd: Say a little more about that, Jon. How is Biden trying to turn this destruction brought by Ida and other disasters into an argument for infrastructure spending? He's been pushing that all along, is that messaging working?

Jonathan Lemire: It depends who you ask.

Jami Floyd: : [laughs].

Jonathan Lemire: White House officials say yes, and they point to public polling that shows that the majority of Americans are in favor of infrastructure spending. It's one of those things that's broadly popular on both sides of the aisle. It, of course, was noticed by many that the piece, that legislation in the Senate, after some torturous negotiations, did in fact receive bipartisan support and even the blessing of Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, not one to usually back the Biden agenda. There is some belief there this is something that Americans understand and want.

The question is how much spending will occur and the difference between the traditional infrastructure, the piece that's already passed the Senate, which is roads, highways, broadband, things like that. The much larger reconciliation package has softer pieces, childcare, family matters, things of that nature. Also, the thrust of the climate change agenda, which the President has certainly said is not the green new deal, which we've all heard so much about, pushed forward by more of those on the left in the House of representatives, but does draw some from that.

The President has outlined pretty ambitious carbon emission targets, and the need to shore up the resiliency of coastal areas from storms, just one example. It's something they believe can be done, but it will be hard for some Democratic senators like Joe Manchin, let's say, to make that pitch to his voters perhaps in West Virginia, such a coal-mining state. It's just one example. Even though they're all Democrats here and they all should be on the same team, that's not quite a sure thing that this will get passed.

Jami Floyd: You mentioned the folks on the left, let's start there, support Senator Bernie Sanders and other Democrats touring the country in recent weeks going to Republican-leaning districts and explaining, trying to anyway, what's in this big, fat budget package. Universal pre-K, paid family leave, free college tuition, climate regulations, which we started with today, Jon. Here he is talking to the cost issue at a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This is on August 29th.

Senator Bernie Sanders: My Republican colleagues are saying, "We can't support this bill because it's going to raise taxes." They're right. At a time when billionaires in this country don't pay a nickel in federal income tax in a given year, we are going to raise taxes on the billionaire class.

Jami Floyd: Why do you think Senator Sanders is trying to make this case through outreach to Republican voters? Do you think that's going to work, Republicans voting this way or even Republican lawmakers switching sides on this one?

Jonathan Lemire: Any time a politician holds an event in Iowa, eyebrows are raised.

Jami Floyd: [laughs].

Jonathan Lemire: Senator Sanders, of course, has already run for president twice, there's not an expectation he is considering a third run here. What he is saying, at least what he's saying publicly, is that he wants to take thIS message to the voters, that Iowa is not going to be the only stop on his trip. That he believes that Democrats need to talk to voters who perhaps 10, 15, 20 years ago might have voted Democratic, but have now shifted to the Republicans. He feels like those voters can come back.

They can be one again if the Democrats would make their arguments about how Democrats can take care of them, to be attuned to their needs and explain really what legislation is going to hold. Whether it works or not is anybody's guess, but as noted, infrastructure is popular, even among Republicans. It's something that a lot of Republican lawmakers like to talk about in their districts.

This is something that's easy they can point to and say, "Hey, look, I got this for you," which is in many ways, the very prototypical duty of elected lawmaker in Washington. What we see from here from Senator Sanders is an effort to try to make that case directly to the people. It is amusing to some in the White House that I talked to that we've heard similar arguments from some Republicans talking about what's in these bills even from Republicans who didn't vote for them. The Biden administration has been quick to pull them out [unintelligible 00:12:40].

Jami Floyd: We do want to invite our listeners to join the conversation. How would you grade the President's performance this summer? Does he get an A for effort or does he get an F? As he's dealt with a number of catastrophes from the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Delta surge, and now climate-related extreme weather events, how do you think President Biden is confronting these challenges in the early days of his administration? Has it changed your perception of him? How could he do better? What has he done well? 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. We can take your question for my guest, White House reporter, Jonathan Lemire.

One more question on this bill, Jon, if you don't mind. Senator Joe Manchin wrote that op-ed I referenced earlier in The Wall Street Journal last week, saying, "I, for one, won't support a $3.5 trillion bill or anywhere near that level of additional spending without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects that inflation and debt have on existing government programs." Jonathan, the AP reported that White House officials think they're going to get Manchin on board, that he's persuadable. What's this all about? What's going on behind the scenes there at the White House when the legislative team speaks to Capitol Hill?

Jonathan Lemire: There's a lot going on. It should be noted that Senator Manchin's op-ed was published before Friday's rather lackluster jobs report, which showed perhaps a weakening of the economic recovery. Manchin and some of his colleagues, more moderates in the Senate like Senator Sinema of Arizona, have indeed expressed concern about the price tag, that $3.5 trillion. They think that will be a hard sell to their voters, places like West Virginia and Arizona which tend to elect Republicans, but in this case, sent Democrats to the Senate in both states.

The White House believes this, that at its heart, it will be difficult for any Democrat to cast the vote that submarines the president's agenda. Let's remember here, the Senate's 50/50, it couldn't be any tighter. The Democrats margin in the House, only a few seats. Every Democrat holds a lot of power right now so they're going to want things, they're going to ask for things. The White House understands that.

Every Democrat has the ability, or just about everyone has the ability to kill the bill if he or she really wanted, but that would be difficult. This is the President's signature piece of legislation, the infrastructure bill and then the reconciliation part that's paired with it. If it were to go down in defeat, self-inflicted wound by other Democrats, that would be devastating for Democrats not only in the midterms next year, but any potential Biden re-election in 2024, particularly if Republicans capture the House next time round, which some observers believe could happen.

The White House is confident that at the end of the day, it'll be weeks if not months of negotiations, that it will get done. The smart money, the people I've talked to suggest that reconciliation bill, the size of it will shrink. It won't be $3.5 trillion, it'll settle in under that. Therefore, decisions will have to be made about what gets cut, what gets thrown out, but some form of it will pass and the heart of the Biden agenda will survive.

Jami Floyd: You mentioned that lackluster jobs report. Here is the President in his speech about employment last Friday.

President Biden: There's no question that Delta variant is why today's job report isn't stronger. I know people are looking and I was hoping for a higher number.

Jami Floyd: President Biden helps me make the segue, Jon, to COVID-19 and the Biden response and the approval from the public. His response approval fell by 12 percentage points from July to August. That's down from 66% to 54%. That again, the AP numbers, according to the AP. Can you talk a little bit about Biden's approval numbers? I worked in the White House a lot of years ago, and some people cared about approval numbers and other people ignored them, but they can be revelatory. We've seen him take a big hit, haven't we? This past week.

Jonathan Lemire: The President had a challenging month of August, and certainly in the last week in particular on a number of fronts. First of all, the pandemic, which of course is still the defining mission of his presidency to get the pandemic under control. We have seen the Delta variant really send cases sharply upwards in a number of states, South and the Midwest. Though certainly, that's mostly the fault of the unvaccinated, and as we know from polling, most of those are people who do not vote for Joe Biden, he's still the President and he himself acknowledges the buck stops with him. There's the pandemic number one.

Number two, and these two things are obviously connected, that low jobs report, way off expectations, far smaller than what people hoped are signs of a real challenge in terms of the economy right now, where both you have people struggling to find work but yet other jobs can't be filled. We certainly know from employers across the country who are having a hard time getting people to take the jobs, real concerns about the virus. They're holding that back. Certainly, there's debate also about federal unemployment benefits, a number of which just ran out.

Then third, of course, the other blow to the President's standing has been the withdrawal in Afghanistan. Though polling suggests that most Americans do favor ending the US military mission there, it was hard to square that and very few were in favor of the scenes of tumult and violence and sadness that came out of Afghanistan in terms of how the Americans were treated. You can support the belief that it was time for US to come home, polling finds, but a number of people said they were unhappy with how it went down, particularly after more than a dozen US service members were killed.

You combine all that and, yes, the President's standing has taken a hit. The White House aides believe that he can certainly rebound from this. They're going to keep pointing to vaccinations as the key to ending this pandemic, getting out ahead of it. They think the economy therefore will continue to bounce back if that were to happen. They believe that as time passes, the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan will be more popular among voters as well.

Jami Floyd: Let's take a call from Stan in Forest Hills. Stan, thanks for calling in.

Stan: Thank you. Good morning.

Jami Floyd: Good morning.

Stan: B-plus for Joe Biden.

Jami Floyd: B-plus?

Stan: Absolutely. Look, I was a Vietnam vet, I expected exactly what was going to happen in Afghanistan. All of a sudden, the right, the Republicans, everybody's yelling, "It's a disaster." It's been a 20-year disaster and nobody opened their mouth then. This was coming. Joe did all he could do. The military needs to be under the microscope here. Otherwise, I think he's handled the pandemic pretty good. The economy is a little bit of a problem. I'd like to see those bills passed. They may be a problem but I think he's B-plus all the way.

Jami Floyd: All right. Stan gives Biden a B-plus. B-plus for Biden. Let me come back. Thank you, Stan, so much for calling in with your grade. Indeed, we welcome our callers to call us up and give Joe Biden a grade or ask any other question for Jonathan Lemire here on The Brian Lehrer Show with me, Jamie Floyd. The number should you need it is 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. Most of our callers, Jon, know the number by heart, but some don't so I give it out again.

Let me ask one question before we take a quick break about the Delta variant. The administration said they would be announcing this week a new plan to tackle it. The rise in new cases does seem to be slowing. I'm not a health expert but following it as we do in the newsroom, but deaths are up to about 1,500 a day on average. What could they possibly have coming that's new at this point in the pandemic?

Jonathan Lemire: We're going to hear from the President. The White House just announced on Thursday he's going to deliver a speech outlining his new vision, new strategy to combat the pandemic. I think it's going to be a lot of the same, which in terms of stressing these vaccinations but it's going to be pushing private businesses to require them more, giving the White House blessing. We're certainly seeing more and more companies or events require vaccination for admittance. We have certainly heard there have been several federal agencies that now require COVID vaccinations for those who work there. Expect to have more of that.

There's going to be even greater efforts to clarify what is needed in terms of boosters. There's been some mixed messaging, White House officials concede on that recently in terms of companies, Pfizer and Moderna battling with the FDA to times showing different contradictory statements with the White House in terms of whether boosters would be needed and when. Now seems like indeed we're all heading for boosters before too long.

The White House has privately pointed to some poll numbers that suggest they say signs of hope that some really young Republicans seem now more inclined to take the vaccine than they were a few months ago. The Delta variant in some way has spooked them. There are very faint glimmers of hope too in some of these states that have been hardest hit where cases are starting to decline a little. There's a long way to go because deaths indeed are still rising. There's always a lag here between infections, hospitalizations, and death, just the course of this virus and how it works.

Certainly, there's some concern that some of the states that have not been as hard hit, particularly those in the Northeast, may this fall have their own battles with the Delta variant as the weather starts to cool off. We all remember how things got worse last fall. The key here is vaccination. We're going to hear that from the President this week. They believe that if enough Americans can get vaccinated, they'll be able to finally reverse course on the pandemic.

Jami Floyd: I want to return, Jonathan, with your permission to where we left off with Stan, our last caller from Forest Hills. He left us in Afghanistan. At least 100 Americans still stranded in the country, I believe I read as of this morning, with the Taliban exerting more power, stuck on charter planes unable to evacuate. Can you set the scene from your vantage point as a White House reporter? Can you explain the delay?

Jonathan Lemire: Yes. This is obviously a paramount concern to this White House. There's somewhere between 100 and 200 Americans still there. It's complicated, I should say, who some of these people are. Some of these folks are contractors, those who did want to stay in Afghanistan, who ignored calls to evacuate earlier this year. They wanted to be on those last planes out if you will because they were doing work there. Now there is the question of their future, how they will get safe passage out of Afghanistan. Some Americans have started to make their own way through Iran or Pakistan. That's obviously a difficult journey on a number of levels.

Those who are trying to leave until the Taliban are encountering red tape, a lot of bureaucracy. It's a complicated procedure right now for these Americans to get out of the country, the Taliban exerting influence that way. The White House and the US government has been leaning on them to hurry up. Secretary of State Blinken is in the Middle East. He's in Qatar today. He spoke a few hours ago about working with the Taliban to get this done. That he's not aware the Taliban are locking anyone but there are some delays in terms of people getting Americans to get out of the country. That they are in two ways the US is exerting pressure.

One, they and some other allies are exerting threats on Afghanistan's, the country's credits, its finances, and that of course would be hamstring the Taliban's ability to govern and, of course, international recognition. President Biden himself said over the weekend that he was in no hurry to give the Taliban government the official blessing of the United States government. The question is how much do the Taliban really care about that? We don't know but there are certainly behind-the-scenes pressure being applied here to get those Americans out.

Jami Floyd: Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said that he is "frustrated and furious", his words, about the administration's delays in getting Americans out of Afghanistan whomever they may be. Jonathan, what do Democrats like Blumenthal think could have been done differently? We heard Joe Biden say, "Look, this was going to be really rough going no matter when it happened, whether it was 100 days from now or a year from now." What are the Democrats, who are generally allied with Biden, suggesting Biden should have done differently here?

Jonathan Lemire: Some of them have suggested that there may have been a greater American military presence on the ground right before the evacuations began to ensure that more Americans get out quickly. Others have said that the red tape should have been cut, whether it's the State Department and, frankly, summits in Congress should have whittled down the procedure for Americans to get out, but also our Afghan allies, the visa process to get those out who helped us during our 20-year military efforts there.

You make a key point, one the White House uses frequently in that the chaos that resulted from the American exit is proof that it was time to go. That there was no good time to leave. That the quick collapse of the Afghan military after 20 years and trillions of dollars in spending shows that they never were going to be able to hold off the Taliban and that there was always going to be violence and chaos, a messy exit if you will. It wouldn't have changed the President has said if the US stayed in there six months, a year, five years, another decade.

Jami Floyd: Let's go to Dan in Jersey City. Dan, you're on with Jonathan Lemire.

Dan: I think I'm ready to give the president an A.

Jami Floyd: Oh. Why so?

Dan: It's definitely for the Afghanistan pull-out. I'm absolutely shocked at ostensibly liberal outlets like NPR and MSNBC at how just they fell in line lock-step. They just really shove these poll numbers, reporting on these poll numbers when they're supposed to be just reporting on the war and everything. It's just very interesting to see. I didn't even vote for him, but I've just been-

Jami Floyd: [laughs].

Dan: -very pleasantly surprised to see that and to see the release of the news about the 911 reports. Just crazy to see these reporters like Bo Erickson just going absolutely apoplectic.

Jami Floyd: May I ask this? It sounds as though you, Dan, agree with President Biden that there was no good way to do this, and doing it now as it's been done was better than waiting even another day?

Dan: Yes, absolutely.

Jami Floyd: The reporting of the facts about it is not what you challenge but some of the analysis perhaps.

Dan: There's a focus. It's like immediately they're saying, "Will this affect the full numbers?" I agree that we should have gotten out, but I just don't agree with how. It's just amazing to see that exact argument all across every outlet and it's just interesting. That's how I feel.

Jami Floyd: Dan, I really appreciate your call from Jersey City. Thank you. Call again, please. Jonathan Lemire, let me come back over to you. It's interesting Dan's call on the day of the official withdrawal first day, I was watching Fox News. A lot of analysts putting blame not on surprisingly on Fox, not on President Biden but on Bush for not getting out sooner. Then, of course, on the early days of the Obama administration. It's interesting to hear Dan's critique of the media in this and of the liberal media. You're not a media analyst, but you're one of us. Any thoughts, any response?

Jonathan Lemire: I think there has been some smart stuff written in the last few weeks about the national security community and how there is a sense that the rally behind the presence of Americans being there overseas. Certainly, there are people who make strong convincing cases for American intervention across the globe including Afghanistan just as there are others who don't. I agree with you that the take on how this has broken down has been interesting and watching Republicans, in particular, I think twist themselves into contortions to support the withdrawal when it was under the name of President Trump, and now to oppose it when it became under the auspice of President Biden.

Unfortunately, I think my answer is somewhat on the cynical one, where people are going to have the reaction that best suits their political party's interests at that moment. I think that we have largely seen that, although you are right in that some Democrats have criticized how this is being conducted. I think the caller did make a point, one that the White House's aids have made quite a bit is they say that Americans are tired of playing the world's policemen. They're tired of the so-called forever war. They're tired of these foreign interventions.

President Trump back when he was campaigning in 2015, 2016, struck that chord. He vowed to end the presence in Afghanistan. We know this is one that President Biden held long before he had his current title. This is something for more than a decade, he believed it was time to come home and had said he didn't want to ask any American parents to have to say goodbye to their son or daughter who lost their lives in a relatively hopeless cost.

Jami Floyd: Let's take a call from Debbie who is in Lacey, New Jersey. Second call from Jersey today. Debbie, thank you so-

Debbie: Hello.

Jami Floyd: -much for your patience. Hi, you're on with Jonathan Lemire.

Debbie: Hi, thank you for taking my call. Two questions. First off, I rate Biden A-plus, A-minus, whatever, something in an A category because of having a presidential man in the White House who behaves presidential like a president should. Number two, I have two questions regarding the reconciliation bill. One is regarding the target for CO2. Hello?

Jami Floyd: You're there Debbie. Oh, I think we lost Debbie. She was asking about the target for CO2. Any thoughts about where she was going with that? I think she wants to know whether we're going to get there in line with the targets we've set for ourselves.

Jonathan Lemire: That remains to be seen. That will be certainly something that is negotiated. The President and his team have made it clear that this is something they really believe in, and that it was part of this legislation. It's part of the virtual climate conference the President convened a few weeks ago and they get these global commitments to bring down CO2 levels around the world will be front and center of a major international event later this year.

There's a massive climate summit being convened in Glasgow, Scotland right around the end of October, and President Biden is expected to attend. This will be a major piece of it. As noted earlier, some of the climate change, particularly things on carbon emissions will be for real debate when it comes to the sometimes competing interests of more progressive Democrats and those that represent states like West Virginia.

Jami Floyd: I can't let you go, Jonathan, without asking at least one question about the Texas abortion law that was so much in the news that last week. President Biden promising a whole of government response is what the administration said to this bill. I'm asking this as a lawyer, but maybe you've got an answer as a White House reporter. What can this administration actually do to prevent a state law in Texas from being carried out? I know he's asked the Justice Department to look into it, but the court has spoken. [laughs] What else is there to be done from a federal perspective?

Jonathan Lemire: Certainly, we've heard strong words from the White House already as you note. We have from the Department of Justice vows that they will protect women who seek an abortion in Texas, that they will provide support for federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack when women are being discriminated against. There'll be those efforts from the DOJ, but reality their hands are somewhat tied. Now some have pointed to Justice Roberts and what he wrote about this decision, about potentially leaving the door open for further litigation.

That this was not the be-all and end-all and I'll defer to you about the law of this, that there could be other attempts to litigate this matter down the road. This might not be the final say. Yes, you're right. This is something that is going to be unexpectedly consumed a lot of in the political oxygen in Washington right now. As Texas has passed this law, other states are eyeing similar ones.

It's going to be one that again sharpens the focus on the judiciary and particularly the Supreme Court, and talk about Justice Breyer and his potential retirement. A lot of the bulls are hoping he'll do that sooner than later so Biden can appoint a successor while Democrats have control of the Senate. This is going to be, along with voting rights I might add, I think one of the more animating issues of this fall.

Jami Floyd: Yes. You rightly note Justice Roberts joining the three liberal judges in dissent. I think you are so spot on to mention voting rights in the same breath with abortion because those two areas of law have a real history that is linked in our jurisprudence that a lot of people don't recognize and now are both fundamental rights under attack. Jonathan Lemire, I think we should leave it right there. It is such a pleasure to have you on. Jonathan Lemire, White House reporter for the Associated Press, political analyst for MSNBC NBC news. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jonathan Lemire: Thank you. It was great to talk to you. Let's do it again soon.

 

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