Washington Wednesday: At home and abroad

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 24th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, President Trump takes the UN to task.

But first, Democrats threaten a government shutdown.

WORLD’s Leo Briceno reports from the Capitol.

LEO BRICENO: With the government’s funding set to run dry on October 1, Republicans in the House of Representatives have advanced a short-term spending plan.

The continuing resolution or “CR,” would extend the government’s current spending levels through November 21—giving Congress time to work on its spending legislation for 2026.

But Democrats are refusing to go along with the plan, leaving Republicans bewildered.

COLE: I was asked to give them a short bill and a clean CR and that’s what they got.

That’s Tom Cole, the Oklahoman Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, one of the legislators who helps write the country’s spending legislation.

COLE: And then you had the Democrat leadership decide to drop other things into it that have nothing to do with what we do.

At the heart of the issue is a policy called the Enhanced Premium Tax Credit. Under Obamacare, the government helps cover high health insurance costs for households with incomes up to 4 times the federal poverty level.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government removed that limit, allowing a wider range of Americans to get government help for healthcare costs.

That includes Claire Sachs, founder of TPAC Consulting. She came to the Capitol last week to argue in favor of the tax credits.

SACHS: Those credits are the only reason I can afford both my business and my health.

The tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025, and Republicans are looking forward to returning to pre-COVID spending levels. But Democrats want to use the stopgap bill to force a conversation on keeping the enhanced premium tax credits. That makes a shutdown look very likely.

I asked House Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York if he thinks Americans won’t somehow blame Democrats if it does come to that.

JEFFRIES: Donald Trump is the president; he’s a Republican president. Republicans have a majority in the House and Republicans have a majority in the Senate. And we as Democrats have been very clear; that we will support bipartisan spending legislation that meets the needs of the American people

For now, both chambers of Congress are out of town, with the Senate slated to return next week. Although the House passed its clean funding extension last Friday, that measure is expected to stall in the Senate where Republicans need at least seven Democrat votes to pass the plan.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington.

EICHER: Joining us now is political scientist Hunter Baker. He’s a World Opinions contributor and a regular on Washington Wednesday. Good morning, Hunter.

BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: Hunter, let’s play the Washington parlor game of who’s to blame for the government shutdown. Listening to Leo’s report there … I feel a replay of what I’ve seen over the years … the pretty typical blaming of Republicans. But do you think it’ll hold?

BAKER: I think that Donald Trump has the bully pulpit in a way that almost no president ever has had, and I think that he probably will argue pretty successfully that the other side is to blame. I think that the Democrats will be viewed as the ones who are causing the shutdown. But there's, there's another angle here that is critical, which is, is that the budget director is Russ Vought, and the last time I think that Chuck Schumer gave in because he did not want to submit to the tender mercies of Russ Vought, who will find ways to manage a shutdown by cutting things that Schumer and others may not want to be cut. So that's the other side of this sort of, this sort of match up.

MAST: Well, Hunter, the big Washington news was in New York: President Trump took the stage at the United Nations yesterday with a sweeping address that seemed equal parts boasting and warning. He claimed credit for ending what he called “seven unendable wars.”

TRUMP: And in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious, violent war that was Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.

He took credit for U.S. bombers having destroyed Iran’s nuclear facility.

TRUMP: No other country on earth could have done what we did. No other country has the equipment to do what we did. We have the greatest weapons on earth. We hate to use them, but we did something that for 22 years people wanted to do.

He pressed Europe to cut off Russian energy or face new tariffs. He accused the UN of bankrolling mass migration, declared major cartels and gangs terrorist organizations, and dismissed global climate policies as a “con job.”

EICHER: In other words … the president positioned himself as the man of action and the UN as all talk, no action.

TRUMP: The UN has such tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential for the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words, and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.

So Hunter, is President Trump right about the UN?

BAKER: Yeah, I think that he is basically right about that. I so I'm not necessarily accepting the critique of the UN, so much as I'm saying that it's an accurate description of the UN, I don't think that the UN actually exists to solve problems. I think that the UN exists to be a forum for conversation. It's designed to be a place where everybody can kind of get together and talk. That is sort of a feature and not a bug. You are not really going to get together at the UN and act like a sort of a world legislature or something like that. It's really designed to be more of a pressure release valve, an arena for discussion. And so no, it cannot. It cannot stand up to a real executive decision maker of a very powerful country like the United States, like Donald Trump, is.

MAST: Let’s talk about what President Trump said about terrorism closer to home … he has now signed an executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. The White House says the move responds to a pattern of violence — from Antifa markings on the bullets that killed Charlie Kirk, to attacks on ICE facilities, churches, and pro-life centers. Let’s listen to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

LEAVITT: Not only ... were the bullet casings inscribed with Antifa mottos in the heinous assassination of Charlie, but there have also been more examples than I could read off for you here in this briefing room today of violence from Antifa.

Hunter, Antifa lacks the organization of other terrorist groups–even the order calls it an “enterprise.” So what do you make of this order? Are there teeth behind it? And is the administration stretching the limits of how we define terrorism?

BAKER: Yeah, there's always a question of whether you're engaging in sort of a political play as much as actually having a legal strategy. People need to feel like something is being done. I mean, we had this problem after 911 to some extent, because you don't know who did it. You really wish that it was obvious which country or which organization carried out this attack, because you want to hold them accountable. And with Antifa, you know, certainly I agree that these kind of slogans relate to the kind of things that we've seen from Antifa in the past. But Antifa is, you know, sort of a loose collection of people and ideas, sort of spontaneous uprisings aimed at derailing, you know, some of these kind of right wing efforts. And so I think it's very hard to actually designate it as a terrorist organization. I think that use of that language, domestic terror organization, is an attempt to kind of bring over the existing ideas and policy that exist with regard to these sort of international or foreign terrorist organizations. You know, I think that Trump is doing what he does. He's kind of stretching to get the authority that he wants, or to, like I said, make the impression that he wants. Even if Congress were going to make laws about this, I am not sure that it is clear exactly what kinds of laws they would make because of the sort of loose, amorphous existence of Antifa, and that's by design. They don't want to be held accountable. They want to strike quickly, cause a lot of chaos and then get out of the way.

EICHER: Let’s shift gears a bit: The long-awaited Trump administration report on autism—and it put a spotlight on acetaminophen use during pregnancy. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has focused on the increase in autism diagnoses since he got the job. Here he is speaking at the White House on Monday.

Hunter, the HHS admits that existing evidence does not definitively establish causality between acetaminophen use and autism…. So how should we understand this announcement — is it a responsible warning in light of the evidence, or do you see it as overreach?

BAKER: It's a really good question. And you know, unfortunately, as with everything else I have said today, you have the intersection of the political with whatever is the kind of on the ground reality of the thing. When Trump won the election, one of the things he said was, let Robert Kennedy do whatever he wants. And what Kennedy wanted was to run HHS, and we know that he has had these kind of ideas about autism, about vaccines, and Trump is letting him run that agency, and he is letting him do the things he wants to do. You know, one physician that I talked to, though, said, and I think a lot of us realize this is that correlation is not causality, and probably nearly 100% of pregnant women may use tylenol trying to control fever if they have it, and we certainly don't have anything like that level of autism. So this is something that I think has been studied, but we're just going to have to find out more. I am given pause in my skepticism by the by the presence of Jay Bhattacharya, because he was a really responsible voice when it came to COVID, and he was willing to stand up in front when they were kind of having this press conference. So maybe there's a there, there.

MAST: One more story I’d like to run by you Hunter.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Trump on what he’s referred to as the swamp or the deep state the court said he does have the power to fire the last Democrat still on the Federal Trade Commission. That decision strengthens the President’s control over these agencies set up to operate independently of politics. So what kind of independence do you think the Founding Fathers would have wanted for these kinds of agencies?

BAKER: Well, there are issues in both directions. First of all, the Constitution says that the President has the executive power, right? The executive authority is authority is vested in the President, that, having been said, it is also the case constitutionally, that Congress is really supposed to be the engine of policy. Now what you have with these old sort of independent agencies that are the product of what was then sort of expert thought about bureaucracy during the 20th century. You know, FTC, FCC, FDA was the idea that we can have experts who will run these agencies. We will insulate them from politics and a very idealistic kind of view of the thing. I think that what we have seen is probably not that that has been borne out, that they have not, in any sense, been free from ideology. And so then the question is, well, do you want to see the President have much greater authority? Because the President is the one who's accountable in the government the way it runs in the United States today, and what we've seen from the Supreme Court so far is that they seem to want to settle that question, and I would not be surprised if they don't go back to the Constitution vest the executive authority, authority in the President of the United States.

MAST: So a theme I’m picking up is there’s a lot of tension between different branches on the function of authority in the government and getting things done. Do you see this as evidence of the government working or NOT working?

BAKER: ​​Yeah, there are so many answers to this, okay. I mean, so, so in the first place, the United States government is constructed to be very difficult to operate. Okay? It is made that way. I've always told students, it's like an engine with sand poured in it, and that is by design, the founders did not want to see a sudden mania or a sudden passion sort of possess the government and then result in a lot of action. What they wanted was, was to make it where it was difficult to do things and you would need a lot of consensus in order to do it. For example, you might notice that the entire United States government is never up for election, right? There's only 1/3 of the Senate up for election at any point of time. And you also have this government that is constructed to resemble other forms of government. So a president like a monarch, the Senate like an aristocracy, the house like a democracy, right? And so they're they're mixing, they're matching. They're putting all this, all these obstacles in the way. You know, the veto, the house originating things, the Senate considering things. And so I. Think that what has happened is, is that we have a totally forgotten why they did that. B, we're very frustrated with how difficult it is to get things done in the federal government. And so we are moving more and more toward kind of trying to have a system like other nations. And if you do that right, then it's all about just getting enough power to act. And I think that the big problem is, is that, is that, generally speaking, the sides are constantly worried about gaining support and suppressing support on the other side. And they're so focused on that that there are very few people who are actually focused on governing. So to me, that's that's the issue, isn't. Nobody really wants to govern. Everybody wants to campaign all the time.

EICHER: They want to because they have to.

BAKER: That’s exactly right!

MAST: Hunter Baker, North Greenville University Provost and World Opinions Contributor, thanks so much!

BAKER: Thank you.

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