The Senate Parliamentarian

Since 1935, the Senate has had a parliamentarian. Their job is to decide, in a truly nonpartisan way, how things operate in the chamber. Their power to decide what can and cannot be done when it comes to legislation, filibustering, motions, and points of order has grown ever since. 

Today, learn about this complicated and often-unseen role from Sarah Binder, professor at George Washington University, and a person who spent over thirty years in the office, former Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin.

senate parliamentarian final.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

senate parliamentarian final.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Archival:
Is it the contention of the Chair that under the rules of the Senate, I am not allowed to accurately describe public views of Senator Sessions.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah, I want to play this clip from February of 2017.

Hannah McCarthy:
Sure. Go ahead.

Nick Capodice:
Senator Elizabeth Warren is found in violation of Senate Rule 19 and is being cautioned by the chair.

Archival:
The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the senator's comments. The senator is following process and tradition by reminding the center of Massachusetts of the rule.

Nick Capodice:
Standard procedural stuff. Right. But I cut something out. This is what it really sounded like.

Archival:
The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the Senator's comments.

Archival:
Following process and tradition.

Archival:
The Senator is following process and tradition.

Archival:
Reminding the Senator from.

Archival:
By reminding this.

Hannah McCarthy:
Wait, someone is just feeding him lines. This is happening in the Senate?

Nick Capodice:
It happens every day in the Senate.

Nick Capodice:
So I've read a few articles about you, and people tend to refer to you in sports metaphors like you're a referee or an umpire. Is that accurate? Is it like that?

Alan Frumin:
Yes. Yes, it's like that.

Hannah McCarthy:
Who's that?

Nick Capodice:
That is Alan Frumin. I know we've had a lot of guests over the years who know an awful lot about how things work in Washington. But when it comes to the Senate, Allen beats them all. And he would never say that he is a humble man. But it's true because knowing the intricacies of the Senate was his job for 35 years.

Hannah McCarthy:
What was his job?

Archival:
JWell, we've got breaking news tonight. The Senate parliamentarian has denied Senate Democrats attempt to include a $15 an hour minimum wage..

Archival:
Senate needs to step up override the parliamentarian. The parliamentarian is not elected.

Archival:
Big news and it is big news, the Senate parliamentarian says. Only one new budget resolution and one reconciliation package. That's it.

Nick Capodice:
You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice:
And today we're talking about a position that has been referred to as, "the most powerful person in Washington," the Senate parliamentarian.

Hannah McCarthy:
Are you trying to tell me that the person whispering in the chair's ear is more powerful than the speaker of the House or the Senate majority leader or the president? Are you serious?

Nick Capodice:
Maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic. That line was from a Politico article about the current Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough. And I will get into why McDonough has claimed to hold so much power right now a little bit later.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right. First off, can you tell me what the Senate parliamentarian does.

Alan Frumin:
At the risk of sounding conceited? The Senate parliamentarian is the de facto presiding officer of the Senate.

Nick Capodice:
The presiding officer is the person who sits in the chair of the Senate and rules on everything, who can speak, who can interrupt somebody speaking, what someone speaking can and cannot say. They rule on every point of order. Points of order are basically objections to what someone else is saying or doing.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh wait. I thought that the Vice President was the presiding officer in the Senate.

Nick Capodice:
Yes, technically they are. But when the veep is not around, which is pretty much all the time, the most senior member of the majority sits in the chair. And Alan told me most of the time Senators don't want to be in the chair ruling on things. They want to be down there doing senator stuff. Now, to be clear, the parliamentarian doesn't sit in the chair, but they tell the person in the chair what they should do.

Sarah Binder:
They make decisions. They give advice based on past episodes of confusion.

Nick Capodice:
This is Sarah Binder. She's a professor of political science at George Washington University.

Sarah Binder:
I teach Congress. It's the only thing I know anything about. So if you look at the Constitution, it says Article one, Section five. The House and Senate will make their own rules if you have the power to make your rules. You also have the power to apply your rules. And that's the point at which the parliamentarians in the House and the Senate come to play a role. They are supposed to be the non partizan, neutral expert arbiter of how to apply the rules. And it sounds like, well, that's not hard. However, if you look at the rules of the House and you look at the rules of the Senate, they don't actually tell you what to do and how to apply them in every single circumstance the House has.

Hannah McCarthy:
A parliamentarian to.

Nick Capodice:
It does. And while I am focusing on the Senate parliamentarian for this episode, the parliamentarians in both chambers of Congress are the ones who know the rules and they advise the Presiding Officer on what to do in any given situation. Now, Hannah, do you know what dictates the rules of the Senate?

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm pretty sure it's something that people use in like student council and community meetings. It's Robert's Rules of Order, right?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, I thought so too. But I was wrong and don't feel bad. Even some senators thought the same thing.

Alan Frumin:
Laypeople assume and one or two senators elect had assumed that the Senate used Robert's Rules of Order. And I would suggest to people that, okay, if you are familiar with Roberts Rules of Order, you probably know that Colonel Robert first published him, I believe, in 1876, which would then beg the question, how did the Senate muddle through from 1789 until 1876, before Colonel Roberts saved them, which he didn't do?

Hannah McCarthy:
Of course, if they don't use Robert's Rules of Order, what do they use?

Nick Capodice:
They use their own rules. They make them and they update them every few years. The most recent rules and manual of the Senate is from 2013 and comprises 44 rules.

Alan Frumin:
Point being that the Senate is a self-governing body that operates by its own rules and precedents. Nobody is familiar with them coming into the Senate. And smart senators recognize right away that the rules of the road in the Senate are unique to the body, and some of them will set out in various ways to become knowledgeable.

Hannah McCarthy:
How complicated are those 44 rules?

Nick Capodice:
Fairly complicated. I tried to read it. You're looking at basically a dense 80 pages of procedure. Honestly, I would have a really tough time learning them if I was to spend a day in the Senate. But those 80 pages are the absolute tip of the iceberg.

Sarah Binder:
So here's the thing. There were what we call precedents. So the House might decide something or Senate might decide something, and some of them might have scratched it down on a piece of paper. And there might there was a clerk at the front on the dais, and they usually reported to the speaker or to the presiding officer. But basically there was no written, right? There are no really compilation of precedents. So neither the House or Senate really knew the members didn't know what to do in any new circumstance. So there were lots of appeals, lots of points of order. Hey, stop. I raise a point of order. That's not how this works.

Alan Frumin:
For what purpose does the gentleman from New York or Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order.

Nick Capodice:
A gentleman will state his point of order.

Alan Frumin:
Mr. Speaker, I object to consideration of this bill because it.

Sarah Binder:
Let's rule and they'd arbitrated. There'll be lots of votes on the floor.

Nick Capodice:
But those decades of precedence, often written on little slips of paper, have been collected and compiled into an official manual. Allen helped edit it. It's called Redux, Senate Procedure, Precedents and Practices, and that's 1608 pages.

Hannah McCarthy:
So the parliamentarian is the one who knows all of this stuff. They advise whomever is the presiding officer in the Senate.

Nick Capodice:
Right.

Hannah McCarthy:
How did they do that physically, though?

Nick Capodice:
Well, to explain this, Alan showed me a photo of where everyone on the Senate dais sits.

Alan Frumin:
There's the Senate floor. Unfortunately, my head is in the way. There are four chairs across the secretaries desk, journal clerk, parliamentarian, legislative clerk and bill clerk. There are other chairs behind. There is a chair for the Secretary of the Senate. There's a chair for the sergeant at arms. So. So this is the parliamentarian's battle station. It's a swivel chair. It's a swivel chair that rocks. I have seen it go over once on television. That was quite a scene. And in essence, what the parliamentarian does is she swivels and speaks to the presiding officer up here. The presiding officers, mike has a mute switch. It's a spring activated mute switch. The parliamentarian can press and hold if she wants to mute the microphone so that the conversation between the parliamentarian and presiding officer is not public.

Nick Capodice:
I asked Alan if the parliamentarian is just swiveling back and forth all day, and he said that was pretty accurate.

Hannah McCarthy:
Is this job anywhere in the Constitution?

Nick Capodice:
No, it is not. The job was created in 1935 during FDR's New Deal.

Alan Frumin:
Era, when Roosevelt and his administration became a little more proactive legislatively. And Roosevelt's vice president had other things to do than sit on the dais of the Senate and preside. And so the Senate decided that they needed somebody to be the repository of the various interpretations of the Senate's rules. And they selected a man named Charles Watkins who had first come to the Senate in 1904.

Nick Capodice:
Charles Watkins He started out as a stenographer in 1904 in the Senate. He moved up to a journal clerk. That's the person who takes the minutes of what happens all day, every day in the Senate. And the job of parliamentarian was created for him in 1935, and he was good at it. He had a remarkable memory. He was considered completely non partial to either party. And before the microphone mute button existed, Watkins would spin around in his chair and whisper to the presiding officer hundreds of times a day, and as a result, a newspaper called him, quote, the Senate's ventriloquist. And he held the job until he retired in 1964.

Hannah McCarthy:
So 60 years, 60 years.

Nick Capodice:
And the next parliamentarian, he had worked with Watkins.

Sarah Binder:
My daughter once asked me like, how do you get to become the Senate parliamentarian? And I somewhat flippantly said, Well, first you have to be the assistant parliamentarian, but it turns out to be generally true that they hire from within.

Nick Capodice:
Allen came in this way. He had been the assistant parliamentarian.

Sarah Binder:
Why is that important? It helps to limit the partizanship, right? Because they they get first of all, they get socialized into the practice of being the parliamentarian. And it's a source of expertize.

Alan Frumin:
It's always been the model and it's the only appropriate model.

Nick Capodice:
Alan told me in the office of the parliamentarian, you want to have assistants spaced out generationally. So when someone leaves office, the next person can be there a long time. And to this date there have been six and only six Senate parliamentarians.

Hannah McCarthy:
And Sarah says the job requires limited partizanship, which honestly is something that feels nearly impossible here in 2022. Can a parliamentarian be truly nonpartisan?

Nick Capodice:
From what I can gather, parliamentarians just might be among the most nonpartisan people in Washington, D.C. And I say that because their rulings help both sides and they take heat from both sides as a result. And let me give you an example. One parliamentarian, Robert Dove, was dismissed by Democratic Majority Leader Robert Byrd and was replaced by Alan FRUMIN. And then Robert Dove was reappointed again a few years later and then fired and replaced by Alan again, but this time by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Hannah McCarthy:
What did Dove do that caused so much controversy?

Nick Capodice:
Well, that is related to the powers of the Senate parliamentarian that we haven't gotten into. The reason why they have been named the most powerful people in America, so powerful that at one point Alan and his family received death threats and all. That's coming up after the break here on Civics 101.

Hannah McCarthy:
But first, when Nick was researching for this episode, he sent me this list. It was the 56 things that they don't teach you at parliamentary school that Alan had sent him. And he promises he will include selections of that list in next week's newsletter. And you can subscribe to get that free and fun newsletter that comes out every two weeks at the top of our website, civics101podcast.org. We're back. We're talking about the Senate parliamentarian. Zelnick Let's get into why this job is so powerful.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, this is maybe the reason why we've gotten so many requests from listeners to do an episode on this. Two specific facets of the position that result in some senators getting very, very frustrated. Number one committee assignments. Here's Sarah Binder again.

Sarah Binder:
This one's a little less noticed about the parliamentarian, but the bulk of the work is actually deciding when a bill is introduced which committee gets the bill. That's a power of the speaker and it's a power of the presiding officer and the rules. But a norm of practice is that the parliamentarian makes those decisions and those decisions can be pretty consequential.

Hannah McCarthy:
So even though deciding which committee gets a bill is technically the power of the presiding officer of the Senate, the parliamentarian is the one really making the call.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. Every time. And since most bills die in committee, senators care a great deal about which committee they go to. You can work on a bill for months in advance before you write it, meeting with members of a committee beforehand to make sure it goes through and at the last minute find out it's going to go somewhere else. Here is former parliamentarian Alan FRUMIN again.

Alan Frumin:
You can have a thousand page bill dealing with environmental remediation, all of this material in the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee. If, however, there is a provision in there that affects revenues, that bill is supposed to go to the Finance Committee. Suffice to say that the staff of the Environment Committee doesn't like that. The staff of all the other committees do not like that if they have a provision that might be scored is affecting revenues. They don't necessarily put a star, put stars around it. They'll let the parliamentarian find it if she's willing to spend the four or 5 hours going through every page in line.

Hannah McCarthy:
How so? How many bills does a parliamentarian have to go through line by line?

Alan Frumin:
A lot. All in all, the parliamentarian is responsible for referring probably 10 to 12000 items in any particular Congress. And virtually all of that plays out without any evidence on on the floor of the Senate. My point being silent killer, nobody sees that job being done. The committees are always jealous of their jurisdictions.

Nick Capodice:
And finally, the reason why Alan FRUMIN was in the media spotlight a lot and dubbed the most powerful person in Washington. The reason why law enforcement was sent to his house to protect him and his family in 2010. We've got a first talk about that uniquely senatorial action, the filibuster.

Hannah McCarthy:
I thought that was coming.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah. You want to break down the filibuster for everyone?

Hannah McCarthy:
I'll take a swing at it. Bills that come to the floor of the Senate for a vote require only a majority to pass. However, a bill can be debated endlessly until what is called cloture is invoked by 3/5 of the Senate, which means that, in essence, a bill does not pass unless it has the support of 60 people in the Senate. Yep.

Nick Capodice:
Well done. It's rule 22 in the Senate rules and nowadays you don't even see a bill get to the floor without that support, without those 60 votes. And senators rarely stand and talk for hours like Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington anymore. Somebody will listen to me. Sir. And as a result, very, very few bills get through the Senate. But. There is a special kind of bill, a bill that is not subject to the filibuster. It's called a reconciliation bill. It is a bill that deals with policies that change spending or revenues in the budget. So the budget bill can't be filibustered and neither can reconciliation bills that alter that budget.

Hannah McCarthy:
Okay. Well, if I were a senator who really wanted something passed, I would try to squeeze things into those reconciliation bills that maybe weren't related. So what stops a senator from doing that?

Nick Capodice:
Something called the Byrd Rule, named after Senator Robert Byrd in the 1980s. Things in those reconciliation bills and proposed amendments to them have to be what's called germane. They have to be about the budget. And if they're not about the budget, they have to be removed or that bill will be subject to the filibuster and probably won't pass. And guess who decides what is and is not allowed.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now I'm going to guess it's the Senate parliamentarian.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, you got it.

Alan Frumin:
Determined Senate majorities over the years of both parties have always pushed the limits of what could be done in reconciliation bills because they recognize that these bills can be filibustered and that a simple majority is all that's needed to pass a reconciliation bill. Last night's ruling was extremely disappointing. It saddened me. It frustrated me. It angered me because so many lives are at stake. Senate Democrats have prepared alternative proposals, will be holding additional meetings with the parliamentarian in the coming days.

Nick Capodice:
That was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2021. There was a massive spending bill, and a component of that bill would have provided a path to citizenship for Dreamers.

Hannah McCarthy:
Dreamers being young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children who currently have little to no pathway to citizenship.

Nick Capodice:
Absolutely. But Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough decided that part of the bill was not germane, meaning the Democrats had to take it out or the bill was going to be subject to a filibuster and not pass. And so the Democrats removed that Dreamers part.

Alan Frumin:
And in the middle of all of this is the dear parliamentarian who has always been a career civil servant, whose entire career is dedicated to serve the Senate in a non partizan capacity, who in essence is required to talk truth to power. Every decision the Senate parliamentarian makes, every consequential decision will anger some very powerful person every single time. And the parliamentarian is just doing our job.

Hannah McCarthy:
Can we go back to something you said earlier? What was the ruling that Alan made that resulted in those death threats?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, it was related to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The bill had gone through the House, it was in the Senate, and the GOP tried many procedural methods to kill that bill or make alterations to it because that would force it to go back to the House for another vote. Alan ruled against those. He was in newspapers and blogs everywhere, and the sergeant at arms informed him that as a result, members of the Tea Party had posted they were going to his house.

Hannah McCarthy:
It sounds like a really difficult and unique job.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, it is. Alan said. It's not for everybody. These people aren't looking to get advancement to a more powerful role. They're not going to run for higher office or recorded by lobbying firms to make seven figure salaries. When they leave Congress, they make $172,000 a year. Their job is taxing, quiet and mostly unseen until they make a decision that drags them into the spotlight. Last thing, I can't let this episode end without an anecdote. Indeed, Allen did share a list of dozens of strange and wonderful and terrifying things he saw in his long tenure in the Senate, but none more bizarre than the porta potty incident.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right, I'll bite. What's the porta potty incident?

Nick Capodice:
Senator Lowell Weicker from Connecticut was on the floor.

Alan Frumin:
A correct language and historic occasion.

Nick Capodice:
And Senator Jesse Helms wanted him off the floor. And it's hard to get someone off the floor. You can't do that unless Weicker yielded and Weicker didn't yield.

Alan Frumin:
Senator Helms kept coming to the desk wondering if Weicker had violated this rule or that rule. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And finally, Helms looked at me and said, Well, eventually he's going to need to he's going to need to go to the bathroom. And naturally, Weicker and his allies knew that as well.

Nick Capodice:
But there is a small provision in the rules that senators could have, quote, mechanical devices on the floor of the Senate. And Wicker's ally, New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, knew about this provision.

Alan Frumin:
Senator Bradley came up to me and said, well, mechanical devices, Alan, what do you think of a porta potty? You know, if we can provide Weicker with some relief, so to speak, does that qualify under this provision? And I thought he was kidding. Bradley was about six, five or six, six, and he stood over me and said, Alan, I mean, it would I decided to do was pass the buck. And I've decided that that's up to the Senate. Sergeant at arms.

Nick Capodice:
The sergeant at arms was duly summoned. He went up to Senator Bradley and just said no.

Hannah McCarthy:
This whole thing is ridiculous.

Nick Capodice:
It's not over yet.

Alan Frumin:
Bradley wasn't deterred. He came and asked me about a can of tennis balls. I just said no.

Hannah McCarthy:
I never thought that civics of one would be a show where we talk about peeing in a tennis ball can, but things can go anywhere when it comes to American government. There you go.

Nick Capodice:
Like I said, the parliamentarian has a pretty unique job. That'll do it for Senate Parliamentarian. Point of order, Hannah. We got to get out of here. You guys are pretty funny, isn't it? Motion to adjourn. Alan, if you're hearing this, thank you so much. And I hope it didn't get anything wrong. This episode was made by me. Nick Capodice with you, Hannah McCarthy.

Hannah McCarthy:
Thank you. Thank you. Our staff includes Jackie Fulton. Christina Phillips is our senior producer and Rebecca Lovejoy is our executive producer.

Nick Capodice:
Music in this episode by a lot of the old favorites we know and love. Kevin McCloud, Konrad Olde Money Lovin Loco, Scott Holmes Maiden Pulitzer, Rachel Collier and the Greatest of All Time Chris Zabriskie.

Hannah McCarthy:
Civics one on One is a production of HPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

Nick Capodice:
All right, let's get out. Can you do a Jimmy Stewart?

Hannah McCarthy:
I don't know. Yeah. No, I can't.

Sarah Binder:
I can't do.

Nick Capodice:
It. That was good. That was a good try. Least you tried. I'm going to try it. There's a movement to colorize films, and it's not the intent. That sounds a little weird. No. Sounds like Kennedy ish. Sounds like Buffalo Bill.

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Transcript

senate parliamentarian final.mp3

Archival: Is it the contention of the Chair that under the rules of the Senate, I am not allowed to accurately describe public views of Senator Sessions.

Nick Capodice: Hannah, I want to play this clip from February of 2017.

Hannah McCarthy: Sure. Go ahead.

Nick Capodice: Senator Elizabeth Warren is found in violation of Senate Rule 19 and is being cautioned by the chair.

Archival: The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the senator's comments. The senator is following process [00:00:30] and tradition by reminding the center of Massachusetts of the rule.

Nick Capodice: Standard procedural stuff. Right. But I cut something out. This is what it really sounded like.

Archival: The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the Senator's comments.

Archival: Following process and tradition.

Archival: The Senator is following process and tradition.

Archival: Reminding the Senator from.

Archival: By reminding this.

Hannah McCarthy: Wait, someone is just feeding him lines. This is happening in the Senate?

Nick Capodice: It happens every day [00:01:00] in the Senate.

Nick Capodice: So I've read a few articles about you, and people tend to refer to you in sports metaphors like you're a referee or an umpire. Is that accurate? Is it like that?

Alan Frumin: Yes. Yes, it's like that.

Hannah McCarthy: Who's that?

Nick Capodice: That is Alan Frumin. I know we've had a lot of guests over the years who know an awful lot about how things work in Washington. But when it comes to the Senate, Allen beats [00:01:30] them all. And he would never say that he is a humble man. But it's true because knowing the intricacies of the Senate was his job for 35 years.

Hannah McCarthy: What was his job?

Archival: JWell, we've got breaking news tonight. The Senate parliamentarian has denied Senate Democrats attempt to include a $15 an hour minimum wage..

Archival: Senate needs to step up override the parliamentarian. The parliamentarian is not elected.

Archival: Big [00:02:00] news and it is big news, the Senate parliamentarian says. Only one new budget resolution and one reconciliation package. That's it.

Nick Capodice: You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: And today we're talking about a position that has been referred to as, "the most powerful person in Washington," the Senate parliamentarian.

Hannah McCarthy: Are you trying to tell me that the person whispering in the chair's ear is more powerful than the speaker of the House [00:02:30] or the Senate majority leader or the president? Are you serious?

Nick Capodice: Maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic. That line was from a Politico article about the current Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough. And I will get into why McDonough has claimed to hold so much power right now a little bit later.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. First off, can you tell me what the Senate parliamentarian does.

Alan Frumin: At the risk of sounding conceited? The Senate parliamentarian is the de facto presiding officer of the Senate.

Nick Capodice: The [00:03:00] presiding officer is the person who sits in the chair of the Senate and rules on everything, who can speak, who can interrupt somebody speaking, what someone speaking can and cannot say. They rule on every point of order. Points of order are basically objections to what someone else is saying or doing.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh wait. I thought that the Vice President was the presiding officer in the Senate.

Nick Capodice: Yes, technically they are. But when the veep is not around, which is pretty much all the time, the most senior member of [00:03:30] the majority sits in the chair. And Alan told me most of the time Senators don't want to be in the chair ruling on things. They want to be down there doing senator stuff. Now, to be clear, the parliamentarian doesn't sit in the chair, but they tell the person in the chair what they should do.

Sarah Binder: They make decisions. They give advice based on past episodes of confusion.

Nick Capodice: This is Sarah Binder. She's a professor of political science at George Washington University.

Sarah Binder: I teach [00:04:00] Congress. It's the only thing I know anything about. So if you look at the Constitution, it says Article one, Section five. The House and Senate will make their own rules if you have the power to make your rules. You also have the power to apply your rules. And that's the point at which the parliamentarians in the House and the Senate come to play a role. They are supposed to be the non partisan, neutral [00:04:30] expert arbiter of how to apply the rules. And it sounds like, well, that's not hard. However, if you look at the rules of the House and you look at the rules of the Senate, they don't actually tell you what to do and how to apply them in every single circumstance.

Hannah McCarthy: The House has a parliamentarian too?

Nick Capodice: It does. And while I am focusing on the Senate parliamentarian for this episode, the parliamentarians in both chambers of Congress are the ones who know the rules and they advise [00:05:00] the Presiding Officer on what to do in any given situation. Now, Hannah, do you know what dictates the rules of the Senate?

Hannah McCarthy: I'm pretty sure it's something that people use in like student council and community meetings. It's Robert's Rules of Order, right?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, I thought so too. But I was wrong and don't feel bad. Even some senators thought the same thing.

Alan Frumin: Laypeople assume and one or two senators elect had assumed that the Senate used Robert's Rules of Order. And I would suggest to people that, [00:05:30] okay, if you are familiar with Roberts Rules of Order, you probably know that Colonel Robert first published him, I believe, in 1876, which would then beg the question, how did the Senate muddle through from 1789 until 1876, before Colonel Roberts saved them, which he didn't do, of course?

Hannah McCarthy: If they don't use Robert's Rules of Order, what do they use?

Nick Capodice: They use their own rules. They make them and they update them every few years. [00:06:00] The most recent rules and manual of the Senate is from 2013 and comprises 44 rules.

Alan Frumin: Point being that the Senate is a self-governing body that operates by its own rules and precedents. Nobody is familiar with them coming into the Senate. And smart senators recognize right away that the rules of the road in the Senate are unique to the body, and some of them will set out in various ways to become knowledgeable. [00:06:30]

Hannah McCarthy: How complicated are those 44 rules?

Nick Capodice: Fairly complicated. I tried to read it. You're looking at basically a dense 80 pages of procedure. Honestly, I would have a really tough time learning them if I was to spend a day in the Senate. But those 80 pages are the absolute tip of the iceberg.

Sarah Binder: So here's the thing. There were what we call precedents. So the House might decide something or Senate might decide something, and some of them might have scratched it down on a piece of paper. And there might there was a clerk at [00:07:00] the front on the dais, and they usually reported to the speaker or to the presiding officer. But basically there was no written, right? There are no really compilations of precedents. So neither the House or Senate really knew the members didn't know what to do in any new circumstance. So there were lots of appeals, lots of points of order. Hey, stop. I raise a point of order. That's not how this works.

Archival: For what purpose does the gentleman from New York or Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. A gentleman [00:07:30] will state his point of order. Speaker, I object to consideration of this bill because it. violates rule.

Sarah Binder: And they'd arbitrate. There'll be lots of votes on the floor.

Nick Capodice: But those decades of precedents, often written on little slips of paper, have been collected and compiled into an official manual. Allen helped edit it. It's called Redux, Senate Procedure, Precedents and Practices, and that's 1608 pages.

Hannah McCarthy: So the parliamentarian is the one who knows all of this stuff. They [00:08:00] advise whomever is the presiding officer in the Senate.

Nick Capodice: Right.

Hannah McCarthy: How did they do that physically, though?

Nick Capodice: Well, to explain this, Alan showed me a photo of where everyone on the Senate dais sits.

Alan Frumin: There's the Senate floor. Unfortunately, my fat head is in the way. There are four chairs across the secretaries desk, journal clerk, parliamentarian, legislative clerk and bill clerk. There are other chairs behind. There is a chair for the Secretary of the Senate. There's a chair for the sergeant at arms. So. So [00:08:30] this is the parliamentarian's battle station. It's a swivel chair. It's a swivel chair that rocks. I have seen it go over once, before television. That was quite a scene. And in essence, what the parliamentarian does is she swivels and speaks to the presiding officer up here. The presiding officer's mic has a mute switch. It's a spring activated mute switch. The parliamentarian can press and hold if she wants to mute the microphone so [00:09:00] that the conversation between the parliamentarian and presiding officer is not public.

Nick Capodice: I asked Alan if the parliamentarian is just swiveling back and forth all day, and he said that was pretty accurate.

Hannah McCarthy: Is this job anywhere in the Constitution?

Nick Capodice: No, it is not. The job was created in 1935 during FDR's New Deal Era.

Alan Frumin: when Roosevelt and his administration became a little more proactive legislatively. And Roosevelt's vice president [00:09:30] had other things to do than sit on the dais of the Senate and preside. And so the Senate decided that they needed somebody to be the repository of the various interpretations of the Senate's rules. And they selected a man named Charles Watkins who had first come to the Senate in 1904.

Nick Capodice: Charles Watkins. He started out as a stenographer in 1904 in the Senate. He moved up to a journal clerk. That's the person who takes the minutes [00:10:00] of what happens all day, every day in the Senate. And the job of parliamentarian was created for him in 1935, and he was good at it. He had a remarkable memory. He was considered completely non partial to either party. And before the microphone mute button existed, Watkins would spin around in his chair and whisper to the presiding officer hundreds of times a day, and as a result, a newspaper called him, quote, the Senate's ventriloquist. And he held [00:10:30] the job until he retired in 1964.

Hannah McCarthy: So 60 years.

Nick Capodice: 60 years! And the next parliamentarian, he had worked with Watkins.

Sarah Binder: My daughter once asked me like, how do you get to become the Senate parliamentarian? And I somewhat flippantly said, Well, first you have to be the assistant parliamentarian, but it turns out to be generally true that they hire from within.

Nick Capodice: Allen came in this way. He had been the assistant parliamentarian.

Sarah Binder: Why is that [00:11:00] important? It helps to limit the partisanship, right? Because they they get first of all, they get socialized into the practice of being the parliamentarian. And it's a source of expertise.

Alan Frumin: It's always been the model and it's the only appropriate model.

Nick Capodice: Alan told me in the office of the parliamentarian, you want to have assistants spaced out generationally. So when someone leaves office, the next person can be there a long time. And to this date there have been six [00:11:30] and only six Senate parliamentarians.

Hannah McCarthy: And Sarah says the job requires limited partisanship, which honestly is something that feels nearly impossible here in 2022. Can a parliamentarian be truly nonpartisan?

Nick Capodice: From what I can gather, parliamentarians just might be among the most nonpartisan people in Washington, D.C. And I say that because their rulings help both sides and they [00:12:00] take heat from both sides as a result. And let me give you an example. One parliamentarian, Robert Dove, was dismissed by Democratic Majority Leader Robert Byrd and was replaced by Alan Frumin. And then Robert Dove was reappointed again a few years later and then fired and replaced by Alan again, but this time by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Hannah McCarthy: What did Dove do that caused so much controversy?

Nick Capodice: Well, that is related to the powers of the Senate parliamentarian that we haven't gotten [00:12:30] into. The reason why they have been named the most powerful people in America, so powerful that at one point Alan and his family received death threats. And all that's coming up after the break here on Civics 101.

Hannah McCarthy: But first, when Nick was researching for this episode, he sent me this list. It was the 56 things that they don't teach you at parliamentary school that Alan had sent him. And he promises he will include selections of that list in next week's [00:13:00] newsletter. And you can subscribe to get that free and fun newsletter that comes out every two weeks at the top of our website, civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: We're back. We're talking about the Senate parliamentarian. Let's get into why this job is so powerful.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, this is maybe the reason why we've gotten so many requests from listeners to do an episode on this. Two specific facets of the position [00:13:30] that result in some senators getting very, very frustrated. Number one committee assignments. Here's Sarah Binder again.

Sarah Binder: This one's a little less noticed about the parliamentarian, but the bulk of the work is actually deciding when a bill is introduced which committee gets the bill. That's a power of the speaker and it's a power of the presiding officer and the rules. But [00:14:00] a norm of practice is that the parliamentarian makes those decisions and those decisions can be pretty consequential.

Hannah McCarthy: So even though deciding which committee gets a bill is technically the power of the presiding officer of the Senate, the parliamentarian is the one really making the call.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. Every time. And since most bills die in committee, senators care a great deal about which committee they go to. You can work on a bill for months in advance before [00:14:30] you write it, meeting with members of a committee beforehand to make sure it goes through and at the last minute find out it's going to go somewhere else. Here is former parliamentarian Alan Frumin again.

Alan Frumin: You can have a thousand page bill dealing with environmental remediation, all of this material in the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee. If, however, there is a provision in there that affects revenues, that bill is supposed to go to the Finance Committee. Suffice to say that [00:15:00] the staff of the Environment Committee doesn't like that. The staff of all the other committees do not like that if they have a provision that might be scored is affecting revenues. They don't necessarily put a star, put stars around it. They'll let the parliamentarian find it if she's willing to spend the four or 5 hours going through every page in line.

Hannah McCarthy: Wow, so how many bills does a parliamentarian have to go through line by line?

Nick Capodice: A lot.

Alan Frumin: All [00:15:30] in all, the parliamentarian is responsible for referring probably 10 to 12000 items in any particular Congress. And virtually all of that plays out without any evidence on on the floor of the Senate. My point being silent killer, nobody sees that job being done. The committees are always jealous of their jurisdictions.

Nick Capodice: And finally, the reason why Alan Frumin was in the media spotlight a lot and dubbed the most powerful person [00:16:00] in Washington. The reason why law enforcement was sent to his house to protect him and his family in 2010. We've got a first talk about that uniquely senatorial action, the filibuster.

Hannah McCarthy: I thought that was coming.

Nick Capodice: Hannah. You want to break down the filibuster for everyone?

Hannah McCarthy: I'll take a swing at it. Bills that come to the floor of the Senate for a vote require only a majority to pass. However, a bill can be debated endlessly until what is called cloture [00:16:30] is invoked by 3/5 of the Senate, which means that, in essence, a bill does not pass unless it has the support of 60 people in the Senate.

Nick Capodice: Yep! Well done. It's rule 22 in the Senate rules and nowadays you don't even see a bill get to the floor without that support, without those 60 votes. And senators rarely stand and talk for hours like Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington anymore.

Archival: Somebody will listen to me. Somebody!

Nick Capodice: And [00:17:00] as a result, very, very few bills get through the Senate. But. There is a special kind of bill, a bill that is not subject to the filibuster. It's called a reconciliation bill. It is a bill that deals with [00:17:30] policies that change spending or revenues in the budget. So the budget bill can't be filibustered and neither can reconciliation bills that alter that budget.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Well, if I were a senator who really wanted something passed, I would try to squeeze things into those reconciliation bills that maybe weren't related. So what stops a senator from doing that?

Nick Capodice: Something called the Byrd Rule, named after Senator Robert Byrd in the 1980s. Things in those reconciliation [00:18:00] bills and proposed amendments to them can’t be what’s called “extraneous” . They have to be about the budget. And if they're not about the budget, they have to be removed or that bill will be subject to the filibuster and probably won't pass. And guess who decides what is and is not allowed.

Hannah McCarthy: Now I'm going to guess it's the Senate parliamentarian.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, you got it. Alan told me that extraneous material removed from reconciliation bills under the advice of the parliamentarian is lovingly referred to as "Byrd droppings." Seriously.

Alan Frumin: Determined Senate majorities over the years of both parties [00:18:30] have always pushed the limits of what could be done in reconciliation bills because they recognize that these bills can be filibustered and that a simple majority is all that's needed to pass a reconciliation bill.

Archival: Last night's ruling was extremely disappointing. It saddened me. It frustrated me. It angered me because so many lives are at stake. Senate Democrats have prepared alternative proposals, will be holding additional meetings with the parliamentarian [00:19:00] in the coming days.

Nick Capodice: That was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2021. There was a massive spending bill, and a component of that bill would have provided a path to citizenship for Dreamers.

Hannah McCarthy: Dreamers being young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children who currently have little to no pathway to citizenship.

Nick Capodice: Absolutely. But Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough decided that part of the bill was not germane, meaning the Democrats had to take it out or the bill was going to be [00:19:30] subject to a filibuster and not pass. And so the Democrats removed that Dreamers part.

Alan Frumin: And in the middle of all of this is the dear parliamentarian who has always been a career civil servant, whose entire career is dedicated to serve the Senate in a non partisan capacity, who in essence is required to talk truth to power. Every decision the Senate parliamentarian makes, every consequential decision will anger some very [00:20:00] powerful person every single time. And the parliamentarian is just doing her job.

Hannah McCarthy: Can we go back to something you said earlier? What was the ruling that Alan made that resulted in those death threats?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it was related to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The bill had gone through the House, it was in the Senate, and the GOP tried many procedural methods to kill that bill or make alterations to it because that would force it to go back to [00:20:30] the House for another vote. Alan ruled against those. He was in newspapers and blogs everywhere, and the sergeant at arms informed him that as a result, members of the Tea Party had posted they were going to his house.

Hannah McCarthy: It sounds like a really difficult and unique job.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it is. Alan said it's not for everybody. These people aren't looking to get advancement to a more powerful role. They're not going to run for higher office or recorded by lobbying firms to make seven figure [00:21:00] salaries. When they leave Congress, they make $172,000 a year. Their job is taxing, quiet and mostly unseen until they make a decision that drags them into the spotlight.

Nick Capodice: Last thing, I can't let this episode end without an anecdote. Indeed, Alan did share a list of dozens of strange and wonderful and terrifying things he saw in his long tenure in the Senate, but none more bizarre than the porta potty [00:21:30] incident.

Hannah McCarthy: All right, I'll bite. What's the porta potty incident?

Nick Capodice: Senator Lowell Weicker from Connecticut was on the floor.

Archival: a..I'll correct my language, an historic occasion.

Nick Capodice: And Senator Jesse Helms wanted him off the floor. And it's hard to get someone off the floor. You can't do that unless Weicker yielded and Weicker didn't yield.

Alan Frumin: Senator Helms kept coming to the desk wondering if Weicker had violated this rule or that rule. Blah, [00:22:00] blah, blah, blah, blah. And finally, Helms looked at me and said, Well, eventually he's going to need to he's going to need to go to the bathroom. And naturally, Weicker and his allies knew that as well.

Nick Capodice: But there is a small provision in the rules that senators could have, quote, mechanical devices on the floor of the Senate. And Wicker's ally, New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, knew about this provision.

Alan Frumin: Senator Bradley came up to me and said, well, mechanical devices, Alan, what do you think of a porta potty? [00:22:30] You know, if we can provide Weicker with some relief, so to speak, does that qualify under this provision? And I thought he was kidding. Bradley was about six, five or six, six, and he stood over me and said, Alan, I mean, it would I decided to do was pass the buck. And I've decided that that's up to the Senate Sergeant at arms.

Nick Capodice: The sergeant at arms was duly summoned. He went up to Senator Bradley and just said no.

Hannah McCarthy: This whole thing is ridiculous.

Nick Capodice: It's not [00:23:00] over yet.

Alan Frumin: Bradley wasn't deterred. He came and asked me about a can of tennis balls. I just said no.

Hannah McCarthy: I never thought that civics 101 would be a show where we talk about peeing in a tennis ball can, but things can go anywhere when it comes to American government. There you go.

Nick Capodice: Like I said, the parliamentarian has a pretty unique job.

Nick Capodice: That'll [00:23:30] do it for Senate Parliamentarian. Point of order, Hannah. We got to get out of here. pretty funny, isn't it? Motion to adjourn. Alan, if you're hearing this, thank you so much. And I hope it didn't get anything wrong. This episode was made by me. Nick Capodice with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

Hannah McCarthy: Thank you. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton. Christina Phillips is our senior producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.

Nick Capodice: Music in this episode by a lot of the old favorites we know and love. [00:24:00] Kevin McCloud, Konrad OldMoney, Lobo Loco, Scott Holmes, Myeden, ProletR, Rachel Collier and the Greatest of All Time Chris Zabriskie.

Hannah McCarthy: Civics 101 is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights

We're revisiting the origins of United States government and rights.

Long before we could decide and insist upon what they mean to us, a handful of powerful men had to put pen to paper. We're revisiting two episodes from our Foundational Documents series: The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. This is the story of how these now-indispensable documents came to be during a time when independence and unity was new and highly vulnerable.

Our understanding and interpretation of these documents has grown and changed in the hundreds of years since they were ratified and in the three years since these episodes were released. Take some time to get reacquainted. Understanding how and why we work is a lifelong practice here at Civics 101.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Election Security

Be it suspicion of voter fraud, fear of hackers or the general belief that something is amiss, legislators across the country have passed election laws designed to make our elections more secure. Those very same laws are widely criticized for making voting less accessible, especially to certain voting groups. So how insecure are our elections? What do election security laws really do? What is the best way to feel better about the state of elections in this country?

Our guests are Jessica Huseman, Editorial Director of Votebeat  and Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor and newly appointed White House Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:10.82] A couple of years ago, most people were a little iffy on what Jessica Hughes men did for a living.

Jessica Huseman: [00:01:16.43] You know what, I would go to parties and be like, I cover voting. People would be like, what does that even mean? Like campaigns? And I'm like, No.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:23.72] Jessica, by the way, is the editorial director of Vote Beat. It's a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and elections across the country. Anyway, fast forward to Jessica at a party today

Jessica Huseman: [00:01:34.67] And now I go, and they're like, Let's talk about Dominion Voting Systems, and I'm like, This is incredibly different than it was even a year ago, so it's fascinating.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:49.98] So what happened? Why are all these party people suddenly very interested in voting machine companies?

Archival: [00:01:55.47] Georgia unveiling new voting machines statewide Right in the midst of a pandemic.

Archival: [00:01:59.16] This nation has been victimized by rampant election fraud in the past...

Archival: [00:02:03.93] The Johnson County sheriff says that he is using county resources to investigate claims of election fraud.

Archival: [00:02:09.61] Will everyone's vote count. Are the ballots secure? Those are two big questions. As Americans head to the polls today. President Trump is raising fears of voter fraud overnight. As Mary said, despite no evidence of widespread violations, critics say he's trying to suppress the vote.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:34.54] These days, we are all paying a lot more attention to election security, and that is exactly what this episode is about. This Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:44.02] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:45.07] And today we're answering a listener question, something that I dearly love to do. This one comes from Ben Muell. What does Ben want to know, Nick?

Nick Capodice: [00:02:51.97] All right. Ben sent an email saying that voter fraud and election security have dominated the headlines in the last two elections. This is true, Ben. And he says quote, as a result, they are being used to justify changing laws which have real world consequences. I feel this would be an excellent addition to your podcasts, since there's a whole bunch of misinformation out there right now and reliable sourced content. Discussions on these topics are paramount.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:16.84] Couldn't agree more. Ben Jessica thinks so, too.

Jessica Huseman: [00:03:19.30] Really good coverage of voting systems is only going to increase over the next couple of years, especially now that there's such a public awareness of these issues and people are asking questions about them in a way that they just didn't even two years ago.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:33.22] Can I hazard a guess as to what changed two years ago?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:36.04] Yeah, go for it.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:36.79] Well, for starters, many people, including the president at the time, falsely claimed that the election was fraudulently won. If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. And Americans at that point were already primed for fraud after Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

Archival: [00:04:03.94] 13 Russian nationals and three entities have been indicted for meddling in the 2016 presidential election

Nick Capodice: [00:04:10.81] And swirling in the midst of all of this. Are all these false claims of rigged voting machines and ballots being tampered with and dead people voting.

Archival: [00:04:19.90] You've likely seen the claim online dead people in both Pennsylvania and Michigan voting in the presidential election. But did that really happen? Good question. According to election officials, there is no proof of that.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:31.24] And so now you've got states across the country passing laws to ostensibly make their elections quote more secure. Or as some people see it, to make voting harder.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:42.70] Great. Ok, so right off the bat, I am going to give you my big takeaway about election security. This is after talking to some real experts, OK? Like every level of election security in the United States, the bark is worse than the bite, but the bark hurts.

Jessica Huseman: [00:05:00.29] You know, there was just this huge amount of misinformation around the certification of Electoral College votes and audits and all of the security procedures that happen after elections to make sure that the results are recorded as intended. That confounds people and like they just don't understand the mechanics of how elections are audited or what the security procedures are around them. And so because they don't know about any of that, it is very easy to convince someone that voter fraud is a problem because they have a very limited understanding of it. They have voted probably without a problem. And like can imagine a situation in which somebody goes in lies about their identity and votes somebody else's ballot, right? If they don't understand how difficult that actually is to do procedurally, it's very easy to convince somebody that it's easy to do.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:51.13] Let's tackle voter fraud first. The supposedly widespread and organized menace that is believed to steal elections across the country.

Justin Levitt: [00:06:00.01] Voter fraud does occasionally happen.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:05.08] This is Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor and newly appointed White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights

Justin Levitt: [00:06:12.76] In plenty of elections in one off handful of occasions. That is, there is every once in a very long while an act of misconduct by an individual voter and that's validated and in municipal elections every once in a very long while. Occasionally, you get a more concerted effort to try and steal an election, usually in a small town or a county in different parts of the country. It happens in different ways, but those are pretty rare. The important thing to know in distinguishing real actual incidents of voter fraud from wild hand-waving in all caps exclamation point claims is that real voter fraud is based on breaking the law in some way. Often in a way that's not designed to steal an election, somebody will fill out their spouses ballot not because they want to steal an election, just because they want to control what their spouse does. Or somebody will fill out a ballot in the name of a deceased relative, not because they want to control what that person does, but because they want to effectuate their last wishes.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:20.32] All right. So to restate Justin's point, this idea of widespread, nefarious voter fraud, it's just not a thing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:26.83] Not a thing. Actual incidents are incredibly rare and most are not done. To attempt to steal or rig anything more often than not, the actual thing that's going on is misunderstanding

Justin Levitt: [00:07:40.10] The way to distinguish these real incidents from hot takes. That turn out to be fiction is to find real facts that show real wrongdoing against real law. And unfortunately, all too often what we hear are claims of voter fraud that are based in. I don't like people who don't think like I do voting or that seems fishy to me, but I don't really understand how the rules of the elections work. And it's real easy to jump really quickly in a conspiratorial mindset from this seems strange, but I don't understand. To that must be fraud, so people have to be pretty careful if they want to actually do their homework. And distinguishing the real occasional incidents doesn't happen very often from the wild claims in looking through. Ok, what's the actual allegation? Who actually did what? And most important is that thing illegal?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:36.92] Speaking of homework, I did some or rather I copied a friend's. The Brennan Center for Justice released a report on voter fraud that found that the actual rate of someone pretending to be someone else and casting a ballot is between 0.0003- and 0.0025-percent. Still, when allegations happen, researchers and journalists put a lot of work into attempting to verify the alleged widespread voter fraud and tend to come up with no more than a handful of cases out of billions of votes cast. In fact, a Columbia professor found that most claims of voter fraud can be traced back to quote the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:22.61] So voter fraud does happen, but it's usually like a one off kind of thing. And most importantly, you're saying it doesn't affect the outcome of an election.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:31.97] There just isn't enough of it. There are not nearly enough cases of fraud or mistakenly cast ballots to make a dent in election results. So is it important that we protect our elections against illegal fraud? Of course. Are we suffering from widespread fraud? No. So that takes care of the dead people voting and the purposeful fraud and the stealing of the elections. But that other little problem you mentioned Russian meddling. Here's Jessica again.

Jessica Huseman: [00:10:05.40] Russia intervened in the 2016 election and and, you know, did not necessarily get access to the election technology that we're talking about here, right? They fiddled around with the Illinois election registration system, but ultimately didn't do any damage. There were a couple of breached portals here or there, but no evidence and we would see it that they changed votes or materially impacted the registration systems that they got access to. And one of the reasons that they failed is because of that diffuse network of of security.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:40.78] We'll talk more about this in a minute. But what Jessica means here is that you've got 50 different states with many, many counties and many, many layers of election security. There is no one United States election security wall. Voila! Diffuse security.

Jessica Huseman: [00:11:00.16] But right, they didn't need to succeed in actually harming the system in order for the system to be harmed by perception. And so, you know, the misinformation, the manipulation of social media around specific facts very much related to election integrity issues and claims around voter fraud and claims around manipulation of the machines, right? Their motivation is not necessarily to actually infiltrate the machines, but just to cause chaos.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:30.55] What's interesting to me and is that it sounds like Justin and Jessica, they're kind of talking about the same thing here. Justin is saying that there is very little actual voter fraud. And Jessica is saying Russia failed to actually tamper with votes, but election interference did happen in a way. Those claims of fraud and tampered with voting machines mean that people don't believe their elections are secure,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:54.67] And when people don't believe their elections are secure, lawmakers step in.

Archival: [00:11:59.20] We're now in a major election year with the 2022 midterms this fall. But before voters head to the polls, state legislatures may be changing how you vote...

Archival: [00:12:06.52] Today

Archival: [00:12:08.32] in Texas, Election integrity is now law in the state of Texas.

Archival: [00:12:13.94] Governor Greg Abbott signing some of the most sweeping voting restrictions in the country.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:18.32] We must have trust and confidence in our elections. Republicans say verifying identity will make voting more secure when voting in person in the state of Georgia. You must have a photo ID.

Justin Levitt: [00:12:30.14] You want to make sure that everyone has the ability in the right to exercise the franchise.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:34.70] But we also want to make sure that everyone has confidence in

Justin Levitt: [00:12:38.15] The process and they respect the

Nick Capodice: [00:12:40.16] Results and that's what these laws are designed to

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:42.41] Do. Here's Justin again.

Justin Levitt: [00:12:44.33] Sometimes some of the policies are actually designed to address the types of fraud that are alleged. Sometimes they're just not OK.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:51.98] So in the past year alone, at least 27 states have filed bills that include restrictive voting measures. Now, on the other side of that coin are the state legislatures that have filed bills to expand access to the polls that's happened in at least thirty two states. But if we are talking about election security, we tend to be talking about restrictions, restrictions that are typically predicated on incorrect claims of in-person and mail and voter fraud and election interference.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:20.72] And just to be clear, those provisions do make voting more difficult. Do they not?

Justin Levitt: [00:13:24.89] Well generally find that where you can have increased security without that trade off of access or other things, we like that there's pretty uniform agreement in having that security. Nobody, I think, is against making voter registration databases more secure against hacking. I think you'll find widespread bipartisan agreement that that's a good thing because there's no real downside

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:48.47] To doing that. There are, however, plenty of new rules in the name of security that do have some major downsides.

Justin Levitt: [00:13:56.57] The fights only come up when there's a downside to increasing security, and that is the notion that you might be leaving other eligible Americans out of the process and the vast majority of time we have fights over election policy. It's not about whether to have a policy or not, but what type of policy to have. Just like the fight about taxes, the question isn't are we going to have taxes? It's what get taxed at what rate, not yes or no. So the fight over things like, for example, presenting ID at the polls, every state has some means to make sure that you are who you say you are when you go to vote. Every single one. The question isn't should we have a way to prove that you are who you say you are? The question is what kind of things should we permit in order to make sure that the election system is reasonably secure, while also making sure that we are not unreasonably locking out eligible voters? And it's in that context that you can find all caps hand-waving about voter fraud does some real damage in skewing the perceived costs and benefits

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:01.76] That damage looks like, for example, voters being negatively and often disproportionately affected. For example, black eligible voters are statistically less likely than white eligible voters to have a government-issued photo ID. So if they live in a state where that is a requirement in order to vote, there is a direct barrier to voting.

Justin Levitt: [00:15:27.12] So what's the right way to think about this in any enterprise and voting is only one of them? I think policy comes down to costs and benefits. You can always get more secure, but at a certain point you begin to trade off a lot of other things you value. I'm talking to you now from a room with a window and you're talking to me in rooms with windows and somebody could take a shot at you through that window. But you haven't bricked in your wall yet because that extra measure of security isn't worth the trade off. You like the window being there and you value what it presents, and so an extremely low risk that something might happen through that window isn't worth bricking it in. That's the sort of trade off that legislators make all the time in all kinds of arenas. It also works for election policy, or at least that's the way the notion should be.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:15.74] All right. So Hanna, when I think of bricking unnecessary walls, the first thing that comes to mind because it was all over the news is the recent election security law in Georgia. But opponents say it will discourage turnout by elderly, poor and minority voters who tend not to have government IDs. The law also bans the use of ballot drop boxes outdoors or after business hours cuts down on early voting and runoff elections allows the state legislature to take over local election boards and makes it a crime to provide food or water to people standing in line at the polls, like banning people from handing out food and water to people in line. Is that a necessary wall?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:54.51] Well, the lawmakers who wrote it would say yes. This stops people from interfering with voters while they're waiting in line. Basically, it's a provision to prevent electioneering. Food and water has to be at least one hundred and fifty feet from the polling place and 25 feet from the line kind of like campaign signs. But it's not just this right. People say that will make voting harder, and the law also has a bunch of other provisions that seem to many like they will get between the voter and the polls. And Jessica Hussman has been having a lot of conversations about this lately.

Jessica Huseman: [00:17:26.13] Like I have been in more arguments about the Georgia law, like the voting law that passed in Georgia this last legislative session than I ever have, because the first version of that bill was horrific. But what actually passed had like this horrible disenfranchizing thing. It was just sort of like a law and like won't really impact the vast majority of people who go cast a ballot in Georgia. And so I just think like, yes, like, was that a stupid law to pass? Yes, it was. But the law also requires that polling locations that have really long lines split from each other and tracks wait times like, I mean, nobody is going to be falling over from thirst in line in November in Atlanta. It's just not going to happen. It's not suppression and like the straight up sense of the word.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:18.33] So I think this is a really interesting point. Are the provisions in this bill explicit voter suppression? No. Are they going to result in fewer people voting? Possibly. This bill also includes a new voter ID provision. It prevents election officials from mailing absentee ballots to all voters. It closes mobile polling places to Jessica's point. Is it the end all be all of disenfranchisement law? No, but a combination of those trade offs that Justin mentioned and the perception of this law as an end all be all kind of thing can and likely will get in the way of people voting. And remember what is behind all this widespread misconceptions about how insecure our elections are? If enough people believe in something regardless of whether or not it's true, lawmakers will seize on that opportunity to politicize it.

Jessica Huseman: [00:19:16.98] I think that one reason that elections are so easy to politicize is because they're so complicated, right? And and they don't necessarily have to be right, but it is a system that people only rarely interact with, right? Like if you're talking about your average voter who votes like, we're talking about a person who spends 30 minutes doing this thing once every four years and like, if we're lucky, once every two right, but mostly once every four years. And so if you are a voter who only engages with that system for half an hour, right? We're talking about like less like on average, eight minutes a year, right? Like, this is not a thing that people think deeply about all the time. It's not like, you know, having a discussion over public schooling because you send your kids to school every day and you're deeply engaged with that and you know about it because it affects your life on a daily basis. Voting is not that thing, right? Like, voting only affects your life on the day that you do it. And so it's reasonable to me that most people don't know a lot about how the system works. But the media, I think, and the counties need to do a better job educating voters, not just about how. Cast their ballot, but what happens after it's cast?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:29.61] That's right, folks, you have inadvertently stumbled into yet another episode that will tell you that the best way to make this country work for you is to work for information. But we are making it easy by giving you as much of that information as we can in this very episode. We're here to banish all kinds of insecurity after the break.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:47.31] But first, your weekly reminder that Civics 101 depends on listener support to operate, contribute in whatever amount fits your budget at our website civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:13.46] Welcome back to Civics 101, we're talking election security

Nick Capodice: [00:21:16.94] And Hanna, we've been talking about the reasons that people think American elections are insecure, like false claims of widespread voter fraud. And we've also been talking about the fact that those reasons aren't really cause for concern because, for example, there's very little actual voter fraud, but a lot of states are passing laws to address those reasons anyway. And laws that make elections more secure also tend to make elections harder to access, especially for certain groups of people. But both Jessica Hussman and Justin Levitt have said, well, if people only knew the truth, they'd feel better. So what exactly is the truth?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:57.53] I mean, let's start with the big picture truth. American elections are truly difficult to mess with. Here's Jessica again.

Jessica Huseman: [00:22:06.29] This is sort of happened accidentally just by virtue of how diffuse it is under the Constitution, how diffuse it's always been. But because most states see the authority to counties for election administration, we're talking about every county in the United States having basically a different voting system. There are 10000 offices across the country that facilitate and secure elections, and they all use a different system. So whereas in some places you can get into the system and affect the whole thing, right? Like the most you can probably do is like screw with one tiny little county, right? And even then, there are enough redundancies in place that those would probably be caught. And so this sort of diffuse and disconnected election system actually helps ensure at least from a, you know, policy and cybersecurity angle, a little bit more security.

Nick Capodice: [00:23:02.57] All right. So this sort of gets up what Jessica was saying about Russia. They couldn't really hack the whole system, in part because the whole system is actually thousands of little independent systems.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:13.13] Even so, after that attempt, and by the way, Russia's very successful social media misinformation campaign, we can't forget that the Obama administration designated elections as critical infrastructure,

Nick Capodice: [00:23:24.14] Critical infrastructure like water and roads and

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:27.95] Agriculture. Yeah, and now the cybersecurity of elections. So, OK, prior to 2017,

Jessica Huseman: [00:23:35.30] There was no way for Colorado to call Nebraska and be like, Yo, we got this hacker. They say they're coming for Nebraska Max, right? Like, they might have an informal conversation, but there was no sort of way to share threat information or for the federal government to step in on behalf of a group of states all being impacted by the same thing. Secretaries of state who run election infrastructure in every state didn't even have security clearance to like access. A lot of these reports that the federal government was giving, and so there was just this real problem in terms of communication and over the last couple of years, that's really sort of leveled out. Dhs and the Department of Justice have a much more close functional working relationship with states than they used to, and that's all because of this critical infrastructure designation.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:24.05] I do want to be very clear about one thing there is not much the federal government can do when it comes to elections. They're not the ones in charge the states are. So if you're watching all of these states pass various election law and love it or hate it, you shouldn't necessarily look to the federal government to step in. Look to electing new state level legislators and governors and secretaries of state if they happen to be elected officials in your state. But what the federal government has been able to do in recent years is support states.

Jessica Huseman: [00:24:57.86] The federal government has been more aware of what it can do to support states, and then state governments have also been made aware by these security experts from DHS and, you know, state entities coming in and looking at the systems for the first time, really in a holistic way and making recommendations for security. So some of these laws are grounded in really great information security protocols. Some of these laws are not, and some of these laws are founded and real, legitimate concerns about technology, security and and well-funded infrastructure. And some of them are, you know, trying to prevent in-person voter fraud, which is not a thing. And so, you know, I mean, it's a bit of a mixed bag out there. But I think that the thing that gives me hope and allows me to sleep at night is that I think that right now elections in America are more secure than they've ever been. The system has on balance, gotten better, not worse.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:02.90] All right. I hear you that the federal government doesn't have all that much power here, but I do have a question about the 2020 election when all eyes were on the federal government because. There was this idea that the vice president, Mike Pence, could simply refuse to accept electoral votes that did not elect Donald Trump, and that's about as federal as it gets.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:23.91] Yep. Ok, I'm going to try to do this quickly. Folks, welcome to the Electoral Count Act.

Jessica Huseman: [00:26:33.86] Electoral Count Act was written in eighteen eighty seven. It is quite old and it is quite vague. It has loopholes you could drive trucks through.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:43.11] The Electoral Count Act was introduced after the super contested Hayes Tilden election of 1876 to basically create a guide for what to do when there are electoral vote disputes and a divided Congress.

Jessica Huseman: [00:26:55.50] You will remember if you were watching January 6th of last year seeing Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz and one person in the House of Representatives object to a vote, right? That was enough to carry the objection.

Nick Capodice: [00:27:10.95] Mr. Vice President I. Paul Gosar from Arizona. First, the gentleman from Arizona, right? I rise both for myself and 60 of my colleagues to object to the counting of the electoral ballots from Arizona.

Jessica Huseman: [00:27:23.82] We can raise those stakes right. There was a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding around Vice President Pence's authority to just sort of wholesale reject some of these ballots, right? And Trump, to this day continues to insist that Mike Pence had that authority, and that misunderstanding was a large part of what fomented the violence on Jan. six, right? I mean, it's not an accident that these people were running through the halls of Congress looking for Mike Pence yelling, Hang Mike Pence

Nick Capodice: [00:27:53.97] And bring out Pence, while rioters outside had set up a makeshift gallows on the field near the Capitol.

Justin Levitt: [00:28:00.06] So not only were the rioters literally calling for Mike Pence's murder.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:03.63] They had set up the structure to carry it out.

Jessica Huseman: [00:28:06.06] It's because of all of this misinformation around the powers that he had under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:14.22] To be clear here, the Electoral Count Act does not say the vice president has the power to throw out or ignore electoral votes. That power does not exist. But like Jessica says, the act is also notoriously vague. So Congress is trying to fix it.

Jessica Huseman: [00:28:30.84] The movement to fix it is essentially to make the language far less vague than it is right now. Specify all of these broad terms make it abundantly clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in counting votes and actually does not have the power to toss them out. And this seems to be pretty bipartisanly accepted now, and I think that we're sort of coalescing around some interpretation of the Electoral Count Act. But if you think about the ACA and sort of how vague the language is, that gives you a good basis to understand how little power the federal government actually has over elections.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:15.18] So what would a rewrite of this law look like?

Jessica Huseman: [00:29:17.64] We're going to go back and essentially make it even less powerful, right? Like we're going to raise the threshold for the number of people who can object to Electoral College votes. We're going to make it obvious that the vice president's role is ceremonial so that it cannot be misinterpreted. So if anything, this reform is reducing the potential involvement of the federal government and the vote counting process, not increasing it. And so you can kind of see how that might have some bipartisan pull.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:47.91] One last thing, Hanna, I hear you on the federal level. I hear you loud and clear. So just to shore things up. Let's look at the state level. How much power does a secretary of state have when it comes to those same votes? And I know the role varies from state to state, but generally the secretary of state is the chief election official as well. So even if a vice president can mess with those votes, can a secretary of

Jessica Huseman: [00:30:16.20] State, there is no truth to that fear. No secretary of state has the authority to unilaterally toss out a bunch of ballots, right? And this is by design, right? Like we have first of all, secretaries of state are not nearly as helpful in the term in terms of actually administering the election as people think that they are right. The elections are carried out by counties, and the state is not the one processing the results and counting the votes and establishing where know problems may have taken place. That's the county right, and the county reports its results to the Secretary of State's Office. And unless there is a very defined list of problems that are generally laid out very clearly in state code, the Secretary of State has no authority to contest those results at all. Then state legislatures really don't either.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:09.84] Just to clarify, what Jessica is talking about here recounts audits, contested elections. We know all of these things happen. There are automatic recounts triggered if the count meets certain criteria set out in state law, like a very close margin. And then there are requested recounts when an interested party also defined by state law, but usually this is a candidate or a. Order requests it on occasion, a court can order a recount, but this typically only happens if that candidate or voter asks the court. And when it comes to audits, most states have laws requiring that they be done automatically to double check that an election went smoothly, that equipment function properly and processes were followed. I will say politicians can and have called for audits and publicly contested vote counts and asserted that a vote should not have been certified by the state. Now, whether this is politicking or genuine concern or a little bit of both. The Secretary of State has to do their due diligence to ensure that the count and the election was indeed fair with as little human error as possible, and to the 2020 claims that a Legislature could simply ignore the votes and send electors who could vote how they wanted them to vote. It would be in violation of law and Supreme Court rulings, and the Supreme Court would ultimately have to decide if those legislators could overrule the will of the people.

Jessica Huseman: [00:32:42.90] There is a reason the certification process kind of exists outside of the politics of the thing, and so there's really no way for the state as a whole to reject ballots. And that's because of the sort of security through diffusion situation, right? The counties are way more powerful in terms of the impact of your individual vote than the state and certainly the federal government. It's like how most of my job goes, like somebody will be like Russia hacked to this machine. And the answer is no, they did it. But like, I still have to sit there and spend 30 minutes being like, Let's talk about the way computers work.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:24.66] Hey, Nick, let's talk about the way the computers work.

Nick Capodice: [00:33:26.82] It was a brilliant transition, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:28.44] But seriously, the computers are a problem, just not necessarily for the reasons that people say they are.

Jessica Huseman: [00:33:33.27] There are some real concerns about the quality of America's election infrastructure, right? You can't use a 20 year old computer. We have all tried right to like, use a computer that is awful and out of date, like voting machines are nothing but very simple. Computers and hardware like that has a shelf life. And so even if these machines are as secure as they can be, they're still going to break down. And so a lot of these issues that people conflate with security problems, you know, you always hear during every election, like somebody like took a video and their polling location and they're hitting the button for Donald Trump. But the selection for Hillary Clinton is lighting up, right? Like, this is not hacking. We have all gone to an old ATM and the screen has been mis calibrated and you hit the three and the one highlights, like the voting machines, are older than the first iPhone. And so I think that the lack of appropriate funding for this is is really a problem like both from a security perspective, but also just an accessibility perspective, like if we're forcing voters to use old, pointless technology and the companies that produce this technology are no longer making replacement parts, we're no longer pushing through security updates for these machines, right? Like injecting more cash into that system and allowing counties and states to actually invest in new technology is crucial and is not happening right now.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:11.13] So it sounds like there are big differences between the conspiracies and the messaging and the politicking and the actual truth of election security. And this is a good start for anyone who's iffy about it and wants to know what the actual deal is. But what's the bigger solution, Hannah? Because states are continuing to pass laws that address fictional problems like widespread voter fraud, and people continue to believe those fictional problems and continue to mistrust the system that you're telling me is fairly trustworthy.

Jessica Huseman: [00:35:43.74] The best tool in our toolkit against these people is to teach them actually how the system works, right? And so one helpful thing that I've seen counties do is essentially make like explainer videos of how logic and accuracy testing works for the machines or how audits work or how you know what the physical security is like and how machine, you know, really doing voter education and thinking about voter education more broadly than just here's what you need to do to cast your ballot, right? Getting them involved and understanding the system as a whole is really important for trust and for, you know, people just need the ability to call B.S. on. This information that they hear, and they can't do that unless they've got good information, and so I think that's really what we need to be moving towards is embracing a bit more fulsome education around the voting experience.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:47.88] The truth is that there are people out there who would like to share the truth with you. And maybe the unfortunate thing right now is that for the most part, you only really access those resources if you go looking for them. Like, isn't it interesting how in your face that Georgia voting law was and how not in your face? You're helpful local election officials are. We do need to know about restrictive voting measures. Don't get me wrong, but I don't believe those measures are going anywhere until we also know how elections are going right. In other words, everything election officials do to ensure a safe, fair and accessible election.

Jessica Huseman: [00:37:29.82] Go to your county clerk's office and ask questions. I think that this is the most sort of exciting thing that I encourage people to do and and county clerks, offices or county registrars, offices or county election administration offices, whatever your county calls them, are very open, right? They are and exist to be the conduit between county government and the public. And so they are very used to dealing with the public. They are very used to answering the public's questions. They generally have publicly accessible stuff for you to like, touch, right? Most county office election offices that I have been to have a voting machine that is set up that you can go and like, play with and they will give you a tour of the warehouse if you ask for one, and they will show you how logic and accuracy testing works. A lot of these things that they do, the audits, the accuracy testing, the security testing are open to the public. And if you're concerned, you can go and watch.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:33.45] And the last place to look for the truth about election security. Go behind the scenes at the polls.

Jessica Huseman: [00:38:39.18] If you're concerned about the security of elections on Election Day, then the best thing for you to do is go be a poll worker. My mother also had a significant number of misunderstandings about the election security system and was constantly arguing with me about the, you know, propensity for this problem or that problem or whatever. And then finally, last year, she calls me out of blue and she's like, I've signed up to be a poll worker. And I was like, Great, because after you do this, all of the things that you thought were wrong with the system you're no longer going to think are wrong with the system. And so she went to poll worker training, and at the end of the day, I was like, So are you concerned about fraud? And she was like, I really just don't even understand how anyone could cast a fraudulent ballot. And I was like, Really? Thanks, OK, thanks, mom. Ignore me for five years and like, be a poll worker once and you're you're all of your concerns or satisfied. But, but I mean, like, that's really what it takes, because when you go to poll worker training, you're not only getting sort of like, this is how you help people vote, right? Like, it's this is how the system works.

Jessica Huseman: [00:39:46.38] This is what you have to do with the machines. This is how you test the machines is how you set the machines up. Somebody is going to come at the beginning of the day to make sure that the machines are set up correctly. Somebody will come at the end of the day to make sure you tear torn them down correctly if somebody needs a provisional ballot. Here is what you give them, right? Like all of those fail safes that my mother had never been forced to interact with before she was having to interact with as a poll worker. Because if you're a poll worker, you have to engage with all of the potential problems and the solutions for them. And I think once you empower yourself to understand that there are first and second and third line solutions to every foreseeable problem in elections, then you have a lot more confidence about sort of their mechanics.

Nick Capodice: [00:40:31.59] I think, Hanna, that I was prepared to either be vindicated or disabused of my notions about bad actors in the world of election security. And it's more like, well, the physical state of elections is good. But if the public believes misinformation about the elections, we're still going to see laws that cater to that misinformation, and yes, those laws make voting anywhere from annoying to truly difficult, and those who want those laws passed for political reasons have a reason to amplify misinformation. So at the core of it? Elections are perhaps running better than they ever have, with some old technology exceptions. But it is cloaked in a fog of untruths, which can then lead to laws that make some people feel worse about access and others feel certain about something like, say, voter fraud.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:28.65] And then on top of that, are we really reading the language of those laws, or are we reading the headline and thinking, well, lawmakers have large scale disenfranchized as many of us as they can? And which of those is more dangerous? The law that is passed, or the public perception that elections have fallen into the hands of ne'er do well, power hungry politicians and the whole thing is just hopeless. Which is more likely to prevent people from going to the polls. I'm honestly asking that I do think that it's worth asking. So ultimately, I say if you're concerned about elections, just ask, ask how they work. Ask where your ballot goes. Ask who is in charge. And for the love of Mike, ask for help to make sure your vote is counted. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jackie Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Kizza Young Carts and Meloche, we pack a lot into an episode, especially like this one, but there is always something that ends up on the cutting room floor. Usually something that Nick and I find really interesting. So we put it in our newsletter extra credit, and I warmly recommend that you subscribe to it. You can do that at our website Civics101podcast.org, where you'll find all of our episodes, all of our resources and the way to get in touch with us. If you have questions about how this democracy works. Civic's one on one is a production of Nhpr.org New Hampshire Public Radio.

Nick Capodice: [00:43:10.16] Ok. Election security. Boring.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:19.76] Oh, my God.

Nick Capodice: [00:43:26.09] Ready? Yep. Here we go. Yeah.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Why You Should Care About the Federal Reserve

Look up a definition of the Federal Reserve, and you'll see things like "central bank," "monetary policy," and "regulation and stabilization of the financial system." But what does it mean to have a national bank, and how does this government agency impact your ability to have a job, earn and borrow money,  and afford things like groceries, rent, and pet food? 

In this episode, we'll explain how the Federal Reserve came to be, how it works, and how the actions the Fed takes influence our economy. Our guest is Louise Sheiner, policy director at the Brookings Institution's Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. She spoke with Civics 101 in 2017. 

Want to learn more about the financial crisis of 2008? Here's some of our favorite resources: 

PBS has a list of documentaries about the crisis. Christina loved "Inside the Meltdown" from Frontline. 

"The Giant Pool of Money," from This American Life explores the housing crisis. 

Marketplace has a series of reports on the Great Recession, including its continuing impacts on today's economy. 

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Federal Reserve

Christina Phillips: [00:00:00] You know how money works, but like, do you really know how money works? You know what I mean?

News Clip: [00:00:05] From the opening bell, investors were sounding the alarm. A massive stock

News Clip: [00:00:09] Sell that wild ride on Wall Street, the worst day in more than four years. Half of all

News Clip: [00:00:14] Grocery items rose six points to be

News Clip: [00:00:17] The most serious recession in decades. And that means life, as most Americans know it is about to change.

Christina Phillips: [00:00:23] You're listening to Civics 101, and today we're talking about the Federal Reserve.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:27] And listeners, this is Christina Phillips. She's our senior producer.

Christina Phillips: [00:00:31] Nick, have you ever listened to a speech by the chair of the Federal Reserve?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:34] No, absolutely. Absolutely not. Never in a thousand years would I do that on a night off.

Christina Phillips: [00:00:39] All right, so I did used to listen to the Federal Reserve's speeches, because in a former job when I was in news, I would cover the economy as part of my beat. And so I actually want to play you a quick clip of our current Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, back in 2019. So tell me what you think.

Jerome Powell: [00:00:55] Its 11th year, however, inflation has been running below the FOMC symmetric two percent objective, and crosscurrents such as trade tensions and concerns about global growth have been weighing on economic strength.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:08] Christina, I'm glad I have not spent any of my nights listening to Chair of the Fed Reserve talking.

Christina Phillips: [00:01:13] Yeah, I feel like, you know, I've listened to at least a dozen speeches by Jerome Powell over the years, and they're all like this. There's this language that is very difficult to understand.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:24] Yeah, and that ticks me off because at the end of the day, words like policies and growth indicators and inflation and market volatility, they're relevant to our lives. They flow down to you and me. So I'm very excited because a lot of this goes over my head most of the time to learn about the Fed. What is the Federal Reserve?

Christina Phillips: [00:01:42] Before we get into the big stuff, I want to spend a little time going over a few economic terms that we're going to hear over and over because they're super important to have. The Fed does its job. I'm calling this the Federal Reserve warm up, so I'm going to get a little warm up music going. The first word is interest. Interest is the cost of borrowing money, and it's how banks work as businesses. When you take out a loan, you're charged a percentage of the money that you owe. And that works in reverse. So if you have a savings account, for example, often if you put money into the savings account, if you're putting money into the bank, the bank will pay you interest.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:17] Ok, so if you open a savings account with a one percent annual interest rate and you put one hundred bucks in it at the end of 12 months, you have one hundred and one dollars.

Christina Phillips: [00:02:27] Yes, exactly. And the next word is inflation. Prices are going up. If you want to think of that another way, the value of money is going down. Things feel more expensive.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:40] It costs more money to get the same amount of groceries. Or you could sell the house you bought five years ago for $50000 more than you paid for it.

Christina Phillips: [00:02:48] Right. And I've got one more term before we get into the Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate. Now this is the percentage of the workforce or people who could be working, who aren't for any number of reasons.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:00] Ok, so it's not just all the people who don't have jobs compared against the whole population.

Christina Phillips: [00:03:05] Yeah, yeah. It's just how many people could be working who aren't. Another important thing is that unemployment rate and inflation are very closely linked, which we'll talk more about later. So that's the end of our warm up. It's time to get into the Federal Reserve.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:19] I know that the Federal Reserve is our central bank, but what is central bank mean?

Christina Phillips: [00:03:25] A central bank is set up by a government to oversee all other banking. It manages how much money is in circulation and regulates what banks can do with that money and how a central bank works in any given country is unique to that government.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:40] So we've done a lot of episodes on the founding documents, and one thing I know about our founders and the framers of the Constitution was a huge fear of giving the government too much power. No tyrants right. So how do we end up with the central bank that gives the government power over our economy?

Christina Phillips: [00:03:57] I've got some help breaking this down thanks to Louise Sheiner. She's the policy director at the Hutchins Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, and before that, she worked as an economist with Federal Reserve.

Louise Sheiner: [00:04:09] So for a long time, there was no central bank in the United States. And you come to the early 1900s and the banking system was just extremely dysfunctional and it was wholly unsuited to the needs of the U.S. economy, which by then had been industrialized and quite sophisticated.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:24] Oh, so you haven't always had a central bank?

Christina Phillips: [00:04:26] Yeah. What you said earlier about the founding of the United States. Alexander Hamilton was the first to try to give the U.S. a central banking system an effort which got him a lot of opposition and ultimately failed. But a century or so later, industrialization transformed the economy

Louise Sheiner: [00:04:41] And without a national banking system, without a central bank, you had problems like there would be cash shortages in one part of the country and leading to bank runs and spikes in interest rates and recessions. And these happen quite frequently. Some type of central bank was needed to manage the peaks and valleys of the economy and to smooth out. Developments in different areas of the economy, and so the result was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which established the Federal Reserve System.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:08] How did they do that without giving too much power to the federal government?

Louise Sheiner: [00:05:12] Yes. So in order to get the political support for the central bank, there were a lot of compromises that were made and those compromises actually are still reflected in the organization of the Fed today. So in particular, the Federal Reserve is not this strong federal central bank. It is actually called the Federal Reserve System, and it consists of different parts. One is the board of Governors and that's located in Washington, and the members of the Board of Governors are appointed by the president. Members of the Board of Governors are appointed for staggered 14 year terms and the board chair is appointed for a four year term. Unlike other executive agencies, a new president or a new Congress cannot come in and just change the membership of the Fed.

Christina Phillips: [00:05:53] This board of Governors is made up of seven people who ideally have a diversity of experience in finance, industry and commerce and aren't all appointed by the same president. As far as the board chair, you can think of that person as the face of the Federal Reserve. This is who you'll see giving speeches and interviews.

Jerome Powell: [00:06:12] The current economic situation and outlook before turning to monetary policy.

Christina Phillips: [00:06:16] Jerome Powell is our current board chair. He was appointed first in 2018 and then again in 2022. But the Federal Reserve isn't just these board of governors. There's more.

Louise Sheiner: [00:06:26] It also has 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, which are scattered across the country and who have presidents that are appointed not by Washington, but by bankers and private citizens.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:37] And what are those regional banks do?

Christina Phillips: [00:06:39] These regional reserve banks are doing the everyday business of banking on behalf of the Federal Reserve. They're the ones making the sausage. Basically, they're the direct link to the private sector. So private banks that you and I use are overseen by a regional Reserve Bank, and they borrow and lend from it. For us in New Hampshire, that's the Reserve Bank in Boston. These reserve banks are also the Fed's experts on the economics of that region, so the Fed always has a sense of what's going on in different parts of the country.

Louise Sheiner: [00:07:07] So the system was created to balance all the competing worries and interests. Some Partisan the federal government in Washington, some part is controlled by government, some part is controlled by private citizens and bankers. And there's also regional coverage so that the interests of different people in different areas of the country are represented.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:25] So we've been talking a lot about banking and bankers so far. I would like to know when does the public start to come in? How does the Federal Reserve work in our interest?

Louise Sheiner: [00:07:34] The Fed is an independent agency, but it is accountable. It is part of government, so it is accountable to Congress and to the American people. So it is overseen by Congress, but it is independent in a way that many other agencies are not.

Christina Phillips: [00:07:50] The Federal Reserve is not funded by the budgeting process in Congress.

Louise Sheiner: [00:07:54] It's funded actually by the lending that it does. It lends money to banks and banks pay its interest, and from that interest, it funds itself. And then what they don't use to fund itself goes back to the Treasury. So although there is congressional oversight, they can't control the Fed by determining its budget. So the Fed has a lot more independence than other agencies.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:12] So politicians who might hate the idea of a central bank, they can't use their ability to just slash funding to reduce its power. Right. But earlier, Louise said that Congress did have oversight. So what does that mean?

Christina Phillips: [00:08:25] Congress gives the Federal Reserve a mandate to keep our economy healthy.

Louise Sheiner: [00:08:29] So formally, the mandate calls for maximum employment and stable prices. But it's interpreted as basically saying we shouldn't have inflation too high and we shouldn't have unemployment too high either. But then it's left to the technical experts at the Fed to figure out how best to do that. So it has both the technical expertise to figure out how to do that. You know, the Fed employs many, many PhD economists and also tries to insulate it from political pressure that would make it try to do things in the short run that might not be in the long run interest of the economy.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:05] Ok, so we've come back to inflation and unemployment.

Christina Phillips: [00:09:08] It's almost like I planned it that way.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:10] How does the Fed affect inflation and unemployment?

Christina Phillips: [00:09:14] Two ways. The first is monetary policy. The second is regulation and stabilization. And if you're wondering what I mean, when I say monetary policy and regulation and stabilization, rest assured we are going to define what those things mean and what they actually look like in practice right after the break.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:33] Before we continue as we are talking an awful lot about money today. I want to say that Civics 101 is always going to be free, but it can't be that way without your support. Head over to our website civics101podcast.org and help us out in any way you can. It means the world to us.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:57] Christina, you've told me about how the Federal Reserve is created and what it is now, can you tell me what it does?

Christina Phillips: [00:10:04] Yeah, and we're going to break that down into two parts. The monetary policy part and what I'm calling the responsible adult part.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:12] What is the responsible adult part?

Christina Phillips: [00:10:15] That's the regulation and stabilization part. Basically, the Federal Reserve is trying to keep financial institutions and people from playing too closely with fire. And then if things go wrong, how the Fed comes charging in with the fire extinguisher. Let's start with monetary policy,

Louise Sheiner: [00:10:31] Meaning that it uses its capacity to affect interest rates and the money supply to try to fulfill its mandate, which is to keep both inflation and unemployment low.

Christina Phillips: [00:10:42] That's Louise Sheiner, policy director at the Brookings Institution's Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. She spoke with Civics 101 back in 2017. As I said earlier, inflation and unemployment are connected to each other and in a healthy economy, neither is changing too quickly. It's sort of like Goldilocks. The Fed wants to keep the economy not too hot, not too cold. Just right. Which, by the way, in the 1990s, there was a period of time called the Goldilocks economy.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:09] Wow. Really?

Christina Phillips: [00:11:11] Yeah, it was like everybody was like, OK, things are cool. Everything is good.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:16] Why don't we want the economy to change too quickly?

Christina Phillips: [00:11:20] So economists often use this metaphor of a playground swing, and it's the perfect metaphor. So I'm going to use it now. All right, I'm with you. You know how when you get on a swing, the further you swing forwards, the further you swing backwards?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:34] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's how they work. That's how swings work.

Christina Phillips: [00:11:43] So when a swing goes forwards, that momentum carries it backwards and an economy, if it's like a swing, if it swings really far in one direction, it's going to go really far in the other direction and it's really difficult to stop. The Federal Reserve doesn't want that. Small swings are easy to control. Those big swings are how we end up with economic crises, right?

Nick Capodice: [00:12:05] Like a recession?

Christina Phillips: [00:12:06] Yeah, exactly. If you've ever heard an economist say the economy is contracting, that's basically a slowdown of growth. That's the swing going backwards. A recession is a significant contraction that lasts over months, and now a depression is a more severe contraction that lasts years. Both of these mean that it gets harder and harder for people to afford things. Businesses can't make the money they need. People get laid off. Companies may fail and people are just struggling to afford their everyday expenses.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:37] So what is that just right perfect bowl of economy porridge?

Christina Phillips: [00:12:42] I'm sure that many people would argue that there's no like, perfect just right. But we do have some, some markers that we can go by. And if we start with inflation, which is the rate that the value of money is decreasing over time, some inflation is actually healthy.

Louise Sheiner: [00:12:55] The Fed has to be constantly monitoring the state of the economy to decide whether it's getting too strong, meaning that inflation is going to be right around the corner or too weak, meaning that employment is going to increase.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:06] So let's say the Fed starts to notice that inflation is going up pretty quickly. What can it do?

Christina Phillips: [00:13:12] Nick, we've arrived at interest rates. Remember how we talked about banks making money by charging interest when they lend money? Yes. Well, one thing the Federal Reserve does that other banks can't do is that it sets a federal interest rate. It has the power to say this is the interest rate that banks charge one another for lending interbank loans, so it serves as a baseline. If the federal interest rate goes up or down, it's likely that the interest rates that banks charge you or me will also follow suit.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:41] All right. So if I went out and got a loan for a car tomorrow, that interest rate a bank charges me is going to be affected by the interest rate the Federal Reserve has set.

Christina Phillips: [00:13:50] Exactly. The Federal Reserve meets eight times a year to decide if the rate should go up or down or if it's just right.

Louise Sheiner: [00:13:58] So when the Fed changes interest rates, it can change how fast the economy is growing

News Clip: [00:14:04] To hike? Or not to hike. That is the question.

Christina Phillips: [00:14:11] So you asked what the Fed can do if inflation starts going up too quickly? If inflation is going up, the economy is getting too hot. The Fed might increase that federal interest rate.

Louise Sheiner: [00:14:20] So when it raises interest rates, borrowing becomes more expensive, so people will cut back on new home purchases, credit card borrowing or other types of spending. And that can keep the economy from getting out of whack, growing too fast and causing inflation. On the other hand, when the economy is weak or is in a recession, the Fed can lower interest rates to try to help spur investment and increase spending and get the economy out of its bad situation and lower unemployment.

Christina Phillips: [00:14:48] And that, my friend, is the very basic rundown of monetary policy.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:52] This is something I never thought I would understand, but I think I get it. For the first time in my life, I do I do get it.

Christina Phillips: [00:15:00] Phew.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:00]  I want to go back to this responsible adult thing. You mentioned the regulation and stabilization side of the Federal Reserve. What's that about?

Louise Sheiner: [00:15:09] The Fed has a very important role in regulating banks and also just in promoting the stability of the financial system as a whole. So it kind of does this in two ways. One, it makes sure that the banks under its supervision, which are most large banks, are in good financial shape and aren't taking on too much risk. So that's kind of like trying to prevent a financial crisis from happening.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:31] These crises have happened or been very close to happening several times during my life.

Christina Phillips: [00:15:35] Yeah. And if they do, for whatever reason, the economy begins to slide into a recession. For example, the Federal Reserve does have tools to respond, and it just so happens that we have a recent example of this type of response that we can talk through. So you can see exactly what that looks like.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:54] Are you talking about the 2008 financial crisis?

Christina Phillips: [00:15:56] Oh, you know, I am.

News Clip: [00:15:57] Wall Street veterans call it the worst financial crisis of their lifetime. For traders here working, the phones say a lot of their customers are freaked out waiting.

News Clip: [00:16:06] The financial markets from Asia to Europe are doing their utmost to prevent Monday from turning from dark to black.

Christina Phillips: [00:16:15] Just a caveat here. This is a complicated crisis that I'm going to try to boil down in a way that helps us understand the role of the Federal Reserve. But there are lots of sources about this crisis and the Fed's response that you can look at if you want more information, and we'll link to those in our show notes and at civics101podcast.org. So in the years leading up to 2008, there was a lot of risky investing that was happening largely outside of these regulations set by the Fed, meaning investors were making lending decisions that were higher risk. They could make a lot of money or they could lose a lot of money, and that risk flowed down to borrowers like you and me. A lot of this played out in the housing market, where lenders made it really easy to get mortgages and people bet on the value of their homes going up right.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:59] Maybe your mortgage has a really high interest rate, but if your house is going to be worth a lot more than you paid for, you'll make that sum up when you sell it.

Christina Phillips: [00:17:06] And for a lot of reasons, that bubble eventually burst. The value of homes plummeted. People who borrowed money with that expectation that their home's value would go up couldn't afford payments on houses that were no longer even worth what they paid for them.

News Clip: [00:17:20] Who are watching us from the last home you'll ever own tonight. Consider yourself lucky. Same goes for anyone ready to buy a slice of the American dream. But if you're among the millions trying to sell, this was a very bad day.

Christina Phillips: [00:17:32]  For financial institutions that had been engaging in risky investing, couldn't support themselves. They were overleveraged and they started to collapse.

News Clip: [00:17:40] Major American investment bank in trouble, running out of money, perhaps on the verge of going out of business.

Louise Sheiner: [00:17:46] There's some still do some dispute in the economics literature about whether the Fed should have eased earlier. It's clear that the Fed did not see what was coming. And you know what I'll say I was at the Fed at the time is, you know, neither did the rest of the economics profession. So I don't know if this is a knock on the Fed or a knock on the economics profession or in some sense, maybe neither. It may be just these things are very difficult to know. I think most economists agree that if the Fed hadn't acted the way it did in the recession, the recession would have lasted much longer and would have been even worse than it was.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:21] And what did the Federal Reserve do?

Christina Phillips: [00:18:22] As Louise said, there was a lot of debate about what could have been done, maybe to prevent this crisis. And there's also criticism of how the Federal Reserve did respond, but to help us understand what the Federal Reserve can do to stabilize an economy that's in crisis. I want to go through the actions that it did take.

Louise Sheiner: [00:18:39] So one of the things it did was do what it normally does, which is to adjust monetary policy to try to stimulate the economy. And the Fed lowered interest rates from five and a quarter percent in September 2007 to near zero and kept them there for about nine years.

Christina Phillips: [00:18:54] But that couldn't mitigate the crisis on its own. It had to do something more. So the next thing it did was keep a couple of these giant banks from failing.

Louise Sheiner: [00:19:03] It made loans to help prevent the collapse of two very important firms Bear Stearns and AIG.

News Clip: [00:19:09] The New York Fed and JPMorgan Chase have agreed to provide an unspecified amount of secured funding to Bear Stearns for up to twenty eight days. The Fed will provide non-recourse back to back financing to JP Morgan

Louise Sheiner: [00:19:22] Chase because it believed that if these firms collapse, it could greatly increase the financial panic and really damage the economy.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:30] Right. This is the expression we've heard quite a bit when it comes to the recession too big to fail.

Louise Sheiner: [00:19:34] So as bad as a recession was, and it was bad without the Fed intervening, a lot of people think it would have been another Great Depression. The Fed also created a bunch of new lending programs that would make loans to banks and other bank like institutions. And that was really to fulfill its role of lender of last resort and to pretty much say, Look, there doesn't need to be a panic. We are here to lend money if you need it and to basically calm the markets and prevent the system from kind of going into sort of chaos.

Christina Phillips: [00:20:04] It's also important to mention that Congress passed emergency legislation called the Troubled Asset Relief Program that set up systems through government financial agencies like the Treasury to give banks, businesses and millions of Americans a way to get out of that financial hole.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:19] As we are doing this episode spring of 2022. I kind of have the feeling that we are on the brink of another financial crisis. Inflation has gone up massively in the last few months.

Christina Phillips: [00:20:29] Yeah, it's important to remember that at any time in the economy, what's going on is unique to that moment. So what's happening now may look like something we've seen before, but it's not the same. And also what happened in 2008 is still contributing to some of the things we're seeing now, like rising inflation. But on top of that, we've got events like the pandemic and global conflict. They're all contributing to it as well. And the Federal Reserve will continue to use its tools, monetary policy, regulation and stabilization to adapt to the economy of right now to strive to meet that mandate by Congress. Low inflation and low unemployment. Back in Twenty Seventeen, Louise spoke about the future of the Federal Reserve, and I think her feeling is still pretty relevant now.

Louise Sheiner: [00:21:21] The reason the Fed is an independent agency in the sense that I already described is that there is a view that independence is very important for central banks, that it is important that monetary policy decisions not be subject to political, short term political considerations. I think, you know, I'm hoping that the Fed has a very healthy long term outlook. It has weathered political storms in the past, right from the beginning. It's always been an institution that is not typically all that popular and it manages to survive, and I hope it still does.

When the Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Civil Rights and Dred Scott

The Supreme Court is considered by some to be the most powerful branch of US government. What makes it that way, and what happens when the Court gets it wrong?

In 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott were living in St. Louis, Missouri with their two daughters. They were enslaved and launched a not uncommon petition: a lawsuit for their freedom. Eleven years later Chief Justice Roger B. Taney would issue an opinion on their case that not only refused their freedom but attempted to cement the fate of all Black individuals in the United States.  

This episode is a broadcast special that aired across the nation on NPR, and is two parts: our episode on how the Supreme Court works, and part one of our series on landmark civil rights cases: Dred Scott v Sandford. 

Find each original individual episode here: the Judicial Branch and Civil Rights: Dred Scott v Sandford.

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Transcript

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:02] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:02] Jay. Today we have got a special two part episode for you about the Supreme Court and civil rights that aired as a broadcast special on NPR stations around the country. First, we are going to give a truly 101 explanation about how the judicial branch works, its powers, its checks, what it can do and what it cannot do.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:21] And then we will dive into a case that many historians have referred to as the worst Supreme Court decision in US history. Dred Scott. V Sanford. Now, Hannah, there is a lot of vocabulary headed our listeners way in the first part of this episode, but hopefully everyone's going to come out of the other side. Understanding the definition of Judicial review. Search three or four short circuit courts and circuit court splits. And also, listeners are going to learn about one of my favorites. Here comes favorite decisions of all time, the one that started it all. Marbury v Madison, 1803. This case has everything. Hannah. Judicial Commissions. Angry John Adams. Midnight Judges.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:11] You sound like Bill Hader's Stefon character on SNL. Does this case have Dan Curtis?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:16] Sadly, there's no Dan Curtis in Marbury v Madison.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:20] All right, let's do it. Civics one on one style with a breakdown of the judicial branch.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:24] You got it. This Lieutenant White came.

Archival Audio: [00:01:31] And showed a piece of paper. And Mrs. Map demanded to see the paper and to read it, see what it was.

Archival Audio: [00:01:40] The first plaintiff was Jane Rowe, an unmarried.

Archival Audio: [00:01:43] Pregnant girl who had sought an abortion in the.

Archival Audio: [00:01:46] State of Texas. You can order you to salute the flag. We can order you to do all these advances to the flag. Can we order you not to do something to show something about the flag?

Archival Audio: [00:01:57] I see that my white light is on, so if there are no further questions, I would save my further time for rebuttal. Thank you, Mr. Fielding. You have no further time. We'll hear now from you, Mr. Robbins.

Archival Audio: [00:02:09] Do you remember this moment?

Archival Audio: [00:02:11] Yeah. Mr. Chief Justice. And may it. Please the Court. I'd like to. Begin my remarks by addressing the questions regarding deception.

Larry Robbins: [00:02:22] Yes. So is that. That's actually from. Must be from Colorado against spring. Yeah. You know, I. I didn't realize that that one was recorded. I don't know that I've ever heard it.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:32] This is Larry Robbins. He runs a private law practice now, but for years, he worked in the office of the solicitor general. That's the office responsible for arguing on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court. I called him up because I wanted to know what it's like to stand there alone under the eyes of Rehnquist, O'Connor, Ginsburg, Marshall.

Larry Robbins: [00:02:54] What's remarkable, or it was to me anyway, the first time I stood up at the lectern is how close to you the justices are. I always I guess I always analogize it to sitting in a living room with nine very smart people who have thought about the same problem that you have and want to ask you some questions about it and your job is to answer them. That's how it felt to me. And I've done it 18 times and it always feels like that.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:29] While I studied acting in college on a whim, I took this one class on the First Amendment where the only texts we were assigned were Supreme Court opinions. And thereafter I took every single course that professor taught. And I've just carried a torch for the third branch ever since. Hannah, what would you say if I told you that the judicial branch is, quote, beyond comparison, the weakest of the three departments of power? That it's next to nothing?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:57] I'd say you were terribly misinformed.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:59] I know, but that was a direct quote from Federalist 78 by Alexander Hamilton, because initially the Supreme Court did not have that much power. But there was a night. Then everything changed.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:14] Lay it on me.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:16] You're going to love it.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:18] I'm standing up. The presidential election of 1800. The two major political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. Thomas Jefferson. The Democratic Republican beats the incumbent Federalist. John Adams. 76 electoral votes to 65. And Adams becomes what they call a lame duck president. He's just sitting around until Jefferson is sworn in on March 4th. It's like spring of your senior year, right? But Adams and his Federalist Congress, they don't just sit there. They go to work in the lame duck session. They pass this law called the Judiciary Act of 1801. And it's a new version of the Judiciary Act of 1789. I promise this is important, which creates a ton of new courts in the United States. And Adams uses his executive power of appointment and just packs those courts full of federalist judges. The very night before Jefferson comes to the White House, they have appointed 16 circuit judges and 42 justices of the peace. These were called the midnight judges. Got all their albums. So you get a judge commission and you get a judge commission. Adams Secretary of State John Marshall, he's just running around frantically trying to give out these judgeships. And some of them didn't get delivered at time. Jefferson is sworn in, and one story goes that he sees all of these judge commissions on the table and says, oh, no, you don't. And he maybe throws them all in a fire. One of those potential judges, William Marbury, sitting by the phone with a ham sandwich waiting for his commission to arrive. He goes to the Supreme Court to sue Jefferson's new secretary of state, James Madison, and he says, Hey, I was promised this judgeship. I didn't get it. He's furious. And the chief justice of the Supreme Court is John Marshall.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:09] Hold on. Hold on a second. John Marshall was Adams secretary of state, the guy delivering all those commissions?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:16] Yes. And the chief justice, John Adams, was like, all right, my terms ending. Can you just do both jobs until Jefferson comes to office? So William Marbury, he thinks he's got this one in the bag. He's asking the court to issue what's called a writ of mandamus, which is where the court orders the executive branch to do something to give him that judgeship. And Justice Marshall, stunning. Everyone says, I'm sorry, Bill, I can't do that because that 1789 Judiciary Act was unconstitutional and we the Supreme Court, we have a job to do. And it is not to make people do things. Our job is to say whether or not something is constitutional. That case, Marbury versus Madison establishes judicial review.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:08] All right. I was wondering where you were going with that story, but this is pretty significant. A branch giving itself a major power. Maybe the most major power.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:18] Yeah. And apparently it kind of flew under the radar at the time.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:07:21] Now, a lot of people make a big deal about Marbury versus Madison today.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:25] This is Kathryn DePalo. She's a political science professor at Florida International University.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:07:30] But at the time, it kind of came and went with a whimper, right? Because nobody really said, oh, gosh, now this gives the US Supreme Court all this power of judicial review to declare something unconstitutional. You know, the courts were kind of an afterthought. They weren't really thought as, as, you know, as equal as Congress and the presidency, at least in people's minds, You know, and the Capitol building. They met in the basement.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:54] The Supreme Court used to meet in a basement.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:56] Yes. Kathryn told me that after Marbury versus Madison, the court didn't rule something unconstitutional again until 1857, the infamous Dred Scott decision, where the court ruled that an enslaved person was not a citizen and had no rights. The Supreme Court didn't really kick into its modern, more powerful iteration until the 20th century.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:16] So if they weren't declaring laws constitutional or not, what were they doing? What are their constitutional powers?

Nick Capodice: [00:08:24] The Constitution establishes the Supreme Court and it lays out that justices are appointed by the president with the Senate's approval. But it doesn't say how many justices there should be, though it does specify a chief justice. Originally, there weren't nine justices. There were five in the 1800s, and the number increased over the years via acts of Congress, cementing it at nine justices in 1869. It's left to the Congress to decide how the lower courts would be set up.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:08:51] There are some specific things that the US Supreme Court is tasked with doing.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:55] One of those is settling disputes between the states.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:08:58] So if New York wants to sue New Jersey over a particular matter, the Supreme Court is there to settle some of those disputes. Other things involve cases involving ambassadors and these particular things. But but but it's so vague. And really, the Supreme Court is not used as a trial court much anymore.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:18] The Supreme Court is what's called an appellate court, which means that it hears appeals. It's not like a trial court. There's no jury. So if someone loses a case in another court, they think it's not fair. They can appeal it up the chain.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:31] Appellate appeal. Yeah. How do cases get to that level where they're ruled upon by the highest court in the land?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:39] Here's Larry Robbins again.

Larry Robbins: [00:09:40] The Supreme Court, to my knowledge, is the only federal court and one of the few kinds of appellate courts that you have no inherent right to be heard in front of. All, you have to ask their permission and they grant it only very rarely.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:58] It's a long process and as Larry says, it's super rare, but it helps illustrate the entire federal court system instead of just those nine justices at the top. First off, Hannah, most trials in the U.S. are going to be in your state court. You stole a car. You got a divorce. You jump to subway turnstile. State court. Federal courts are for when your case deals with the constitutionality of a law or if the United States is a party in the case or if you broke a federal law. Currently, there are 94 federal trial courts, and those are divvied up into 13 circuits, kind of like the NCAA.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:35] So it's like the West Coast is one circuit.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:37] Right there, the Ninth Circuit.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:38] What circuit are we in?

Nick Capodice: [00:10:39] We in New Hampshire are part of the First Circuit, which also includes Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, interestingly enough. Yeah. So if you lose a case in one of those 94 federal courts, you can appeal it to your circuit court. And a court of appeals trial has no jury. It's lawyers arguing in front of a panel of three judges.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:59] And if you lose that appeal, what happens then?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:01] We are on the road to getting your case into the Supreme Court.

Larry Robbins: [00:11:04] A case begins with an application to the Supreme Court to hear the case. This has a very fancy name with some with a Latin component because lawyers like to sound as obscure as possible. So it's called a petition for a writ of certiorari.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:23] Petition for a writ of certiorari.

Larry Robbins: [00:11:26] What's called a cert petition for short. And what what a cert petition does is it says to the Supreme Court, you should hear my case.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:35] And like Larry said, the Supreme Court does not have to do it.

Larry Robbins: [00:11:38] The vast, vast majority bordering on 98 or 99% are denied.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:45] If four of the nine Supreme Court justices agree to hear a case, then it will get a hearing in the Supreme Court. And only about 100 of the nearly 7000 cert petitions are granted.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:57] Are there any types of cases that tend to be granted more than others?

Nick Capodice: [00:12:01] Yes, and Larry had some tips on that.

Larry Robbins: [00:12:03] The most important thing you can say to get the Supreme Court interested in granting your case is that there is a question of federal law because the Supreme Court is there to decide federal questions, not state law questions, but federal questions, either questions about federal statutes or the United States Constitution. And what you want to tell the court is, look, there is an important federal question that the courts of appeals, the lower federal courts, disagree about.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:37] There's hundreds of publications and websites out there that track these circuit splits where two circuit courts are divided on an issue.

Larry Robbins: [00:12:44] Even better, if you can say there are three circuits on one side of the question and four on the other side of the question so that, you know, the issue has been widely considered. The question has percolated in the courts of appeals, if you will. That's a. A Supreme Court lawyer's term of art.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:09] I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. So the Supreme Court, a seemingly passive political body, does have some political power because they can decide what cases they want to hear or not. And presidents campaign on what kind of Supreme Court justice they'll appoint. But if a justice wanted to pass, say, a controversial ruling, they can't bring it up themselves, can they?

Nick Capodice: [00:13:30] Know they cannot.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:13:31] We talk a lot about how much power the court has, and I think some of the power of the court, particularly the US Supreme Court, has significant power in shaping a policy agenda. You know, if there's a ruling that they make, all of a sudden everybody's talking about it. And you point to Roe v Wade in 1973 and we're still talking about that. It separates our political parties and our system. That's that's power. That's setting an agenda. However, the power of the courts is really limited because the Supreme Court, you know, can't be watching, you know, TV and say, what the heck's going on? Let's make a ruling. They have to wait for the process to begin.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:05] Okay. So that's how a case gets into the Supreme Court. What happens once you're in there?

Nick Capodice: [00:14:10] Have you actually have you been to the Supreme Court chamber?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:12] I have not.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:12] Have you? Not since seventh grade. Anyone can visit it and witness the oral arguments. It's sort of this hallowed date, the first Monday in October until about mid-April. The court hears arguments and they make decisions. And when they're in recess, they choose their next session's cases and they prepare for those people will wait in line, sometimes from 5 a.m., like a rock concert to get a seat.

Larry Robbins: [00:14:34] In the years that I was in the Sg's office, they the Supreme Court, heard many more cases than they do these days. In those years, which were 1986 to 1990. There were typically four arguments every day that almost I think never happens anymore. The court doesn't grant as many cases as it used to.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:55] After the argument, usually the same week they meet privately and they vote. The senior justice and the majority decides which justice, with a lot of help from their clerks, is going to write the opinion. Drafts circulate, edits are made. These opinions take time mostly.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:15:11] Most of the time there is a majority opinion, whether it's 5 to 4 or 9 to 0. They they often on the court want to not have closely divided opinions because that doesn't look good for the court. Certainly going forward, that might not stand if you have a change in composition of the court. And then justices certainly that disagree, can write dissenting opinions. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I think, has written some of the more interesting ones expressing her legal rationale for why she thinks the majority got it wrong and what she thinks would be the proper course. Some write concurring opinions, meaning they're part of the majority. They agree with the majority, but they may disagree on some other point or they may expand on some issues that the court did not agree to, did not address. So they'll talk about those particular things as well.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:02] And while the opinion and dissent lay out the legal reasoning for a decision, the ruling is usually one of these three things affirm, reverse or remand. Affirm is that the finding from the lower court is upheld. So the petitioner was unsuccessful in their appeal. Reverse is the opposite, where the lower court's ruling was an error and it's overturned and the petitioner wins the day. And finally, remand is where the case is sent back to the lower court for a retrial with any irregularities corrected.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:35] One thing I'm curious about goes back to something that Kathryn said earlier about a court furthering a political agenda. Does the party of the president, who appointed them, have influence on their decisions?

Larry Robbins: [00:16:50] Uh, look, I think I think it's possible to overstate the significance of who appointed a particular judge or justice. I'm close to agreement with my old friend, who is now the Chief justice, John Roberts, who I think famously responded to one of the President Trump's tirades about Obama judges by saying there are no Obama judges, there are no Bush judges, there are just judges trying to do their level best. But I don't think, you know, anybody should be so naive as to imagine that political ideology has no impact. It certainly does.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:37] Larry told me one thing about how political ideology affects the law and it's something I'd never considered before. It's that right now it's such a high percentage of judges in the lower courts are conservative. And that means there's less disagreement between the circuits on rulings, which in turn means there are fewer cases presented to the Supreme Court for writ of certiorari. And this goes back to what Larry said, that the Supreme Court every year is hearing fewer and fewer cases.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:02] Last thing, these justices are appointed for life. They often outlive the presidents who appoint them. And they're not Constitution interpreting blank vessels. They have strong opinions. Right. So how do they interact with each other when they're off the bench?

Nick Capodice: [00:18:17] Larry refused smartly, I believe, to go on the record about that. But Katherine had a specific example that I thought was just lovely.

Kathryn DePalo: [00:18:26] The late Justice Scalia, probably one of the most conservative jurists we've had on the U.S. Supreme Court, was best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the more liberal justices we've seen in the history of the court. And they have this love of opera together. And they would would go see operas and they would have dinner with the spouses. And we're really the best of friends. And, you know, you can't find two really more opposite people. A lot of the justices have said, you know, it's not like in Congress where, you know, I'm going to yell at you for having your position. I respect your position. I may not agree with your position, but you have the right to say that and we move on. So I think the fact that they all trained lawyers and have gone through the advocacy processes in their careers and understand you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, I think is particularly important. And I think that's how the court continues to operate.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:21] Before we move on, Hannah, I snuck a little joke in this episode.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:25] You did?

Nick Capodice: [00:19:26] I did. People who listen to her podcast might know that I sometimes sneak jokes in after the credits, and I sure did. Here. Can I. Can I play it for you?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:34] Yeah. All right.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:37] May I help you, sir? Oh, yes. Is this the store that sells judicial accouterment? Oh, God. Save Mr. Marbury. What can I get for you? Yes. I have a need of so many things. A hat and a wig and a robe. Whatever it is the judges get these days. Well, I can help you there, Mr. Marbury, but it make much more sense for me to tell you that once you have the actual job. No, no. Yes, sir. I am to be a judge. And you best marshal your words with better care, or I can make life very difficult for you. Well, no offense, Mr. Marbury, but talk like that makes me think you'll be a very shabby justice indeed. No. The way I see it. I'm going to be a prudent judge. I'll hand down wise decisions where it's just the justices I've met. They actually have commissions. I'll be legislating from the bench. My rulings will be famous brushing up on torts and Contract Law and writs of mandamus. But first, I think John Marshall will Have to budge. I just can't wait to be judge. Oh, crap.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:55] That was, without a doubt, one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:01] We've got more Supreme Court stuff headed your way after the break here on Civics 101.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:06] But before the break, this is your weekly reminder that we have a newsletter. It's called Extra Credit, and it's essentially where we put everything that ends up on the cutting room floor in each of our episodes. If you want to get all of that good stuff that we are so obsessed with. You can subscribe at the top of our website, civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:24] I'm an Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:26] I'm Hannah McCarthy. And you're listening to Civics 101 from NHPR. You're about to hear our episode on one of the most infamous Supreme Court cases from American history. This is the story of Dred Scott versus Sanford, the case in which seven out of nine justices agreed that anyone descended from an enslaved person could not be an American citizen. In effect, black Americans were not Americans at all. This case is anti canon, a term that we get into in the episode itself. But I want to highlight that there are only four cases that are considered grievous enough to fall into this category. It's Dred Scott, Plessy versus Ferguson, Lochner versus New York and Korematsu versus the United States. We cover three of these cases in our Supreme Court series. You're about to hear Dred Scott, but you should also check out Plessy and Korematsu at our website, civics101podcast.org. These cases reveal a lot about both the justices on the court and prevailing prejudices, racism and notions about human rights at the time that the decisions were issued today. The rulings in these cases are known to be wrong, but that doesn't mean that the opinions are poorly written, that their reasoning doesn't have some isolated soundness. To understand our anticanonis to understand the fact that our civil rights are not divine. They are established or withheld by fallible people in black robes. So without further ado, here's Dred Scott V Sanford.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:14] There are some decisions made by the Supreme Court that are considered to be canon, meaning they are considered so obviously right and true and in keeping with correct constitutional meaning that they set unimpeachable precedent. Brown v Board of Education, for example. Racial segregation of children in public schools is unconstitutional. This is almost universally agreed upon as right and true. In keeping with the word of law in the United States. It's both about constitutional interpretation and ethical and moral principle. And then there are cases that represent the exact opposite. The rulings in these cases have been described by scholars and judges as bad, grievously mistaken, odious. These are the Supreme Court's mistakes. We call them the anti canon.

Nick Capodice: [00:24:23] Anti canon as in the opposite of canon.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:27] Sort of, but still a form of canon, still something that should be used if canon should be used as precedent. Anti canon should be used as anti precedent decisions so wrong that their incorrectness stands as a glaring warning. This is what not to do. This is what the Constitution does not mean. And today we're going to tell you about the first anticanoncase. And many would say the worst a decision, incendiary enough to help to push our nation to the brink of war and inhumane enough to require constitutional amendments to fix its results. The 1857 case, Dred Scott v Sandford.

Lynne Jackson: [00:25:21] Dred Scott, aside from being my great great grandfather, is also a hero.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:25] This is Lynne Jackson.

Lynne Jackson: [00:25:27] Great, great granddaughter. Dred Scott, founder and president of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:33] In 1846, Dred Scott was living in St Louis, Missouri, with his wife Harriet, and daughters Eliza and Lizzie. The family was enslaved and suing for their freedom. That is how this case starts, and we're going to come back to that. Now, Lynn formed the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation back in 2007 with the goal of getting a statue of Dred and his wife Harriet, erected in front of the St Louis, Missouri, courthouse where the case started. Lynn got the statue and since then she's been telling the Scott story and connecting other descendants of impactful Americans to share their stories and reconcile their pasts.

Lynne Jackson: [00:26:10] What we've done to help Dred Scott's legacy go forward into the future. Because when you think about it, there was a period of time when Scott's name was known but not taught. The case was not taught. I even have his beautiful, very thick black book on Afro-American history. And it's just like this thick. But Dred Scott is not in that book. It was written by black people. It was written by black people, and it was written in the forties. And I couldn't believe it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:42] And I think, like to Lynn's point, I had just sort of a glancing blow of a lesson about Dred Scott when I was in school. I know teachers teach it now, right? But I really barely knew the story of Dred Scott. What about you?

Nick Capodice: [00:26:58] Back then, I also knew nothing about it. I knew it was about a formerly enslaved person and whether or not the court could decide if they were citizens or not.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:06] I think there was a period during which this case kind of lay dormant or not deeply explored.

Lynne Jackson: [00:27:13] Things like that can drop off sometimes. Well, he's back.

Nick Capodice: [00:27:20] Okay. 1846 St Louis, Missouri. Dred and Harriet are enslaved and suing for their freedom. So first, what are the laws about slavery in the United States at this time?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:33] Yeah, enslavement was legal in some states and prohibited in others. There was something called the Northwest Ordinance. It was passed just before the Constitution was ratified, and it prohibited slavery in this area. Specifically, it had to be west of Pennsylvania, northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. Something called the Missouri compromise admitted Missouri to the nation as a state where you could enslave people main to the nation as a free state and said, okay, here on out, new states north of a certain latitude will be free states. New states south of that latitude will be states where you can enslave people.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:11] But if Dred and Harriet were in Missouri, which was a slave state, how could they sue for their freedom?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:17] Freedom suits actually stretch back to the colonial era in North America. They're a holdover from English Common Law. They were often based on enslaved persons having been held in a free state or territory. There was a once free, always free principle that was respected even in many slave states. So the Scots suing for their freedom. It's not that big of a thing, even in Missouri.

Lynne Jackson: [00:28:43] Well, you know, when in the beginning and really even to 1854, it probably wasn't that much of a situation because locally in Missouri, there were slaves who sued for their freedom.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:55] Hundreds of enslaved people petitioned for and won their freedom in Saint Louis.

Lynne Jackson: [00:28:59] In order to do that, you have to have some serious proof of grounds and proof evidences and certain criteria had to be met. So if they were met, the courts would allow them to petition and sue.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:11] What kind of proof are you talking about?

Judge John Tunheim: [00:29:13] The rule of law at the time, even in many of the Southern states, was that if an enslaved person lived and worked for a period of time in a free jurisdiction, they became free.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:25] This is Chief Judge John Tunheim of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:30] So what point had the Scots lived in a free territory?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:33] All right. Here is the quick rundown. Dred Scott had been enslaved by a man named Peter Blow, and Scott had lived in Virginia, Alabama and Missouri in his early years.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:46] All slave states.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:47] That's right. Now, the blows eventually sold Scott to an Army surgeon, Dr. John Emerson. And we're not 100% certain of when that happened.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:29:56] Dred Scott himself, when he was sold to Dr. John Emerson, followed him to a number of different jurisdictions, the state of Illinois and a military reservation. The Wisconsin territory for Snelling in what is now Minnesota, various times in Saint Louis, in the state of Missouri, and even a short stint in Louisiana. All four of those jurisdictions at the time recognized that enslaved people would become free because they had lived in a free jurisdiction.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:30] So Dred is taken by Emerson to Fort Snelling, where he meets a woman, Harriet Richardson. She is also enslaved and her enslaver transfers her ownership to Emerson when she marries Scott. This was typically done through dealing specifically quitclaim deed thing used to transfer physical property, and the Scott's are taken by Emerson to his various army posts, staying at times in free territories. Harriet eventually gives birth to their first born daughter, Eliza, while traveling by Steamboat on the Mississippi River. Eliza is born in free territory.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:31:06] Now, I think the precipitating factor of the Scott's suing for freedom came after Dr. Emerson died in 1842. I believe they were in Saint Louis at the time. The Scotts were they were inherited by his wife, Irene, and they tried to buy their freedom from her, which many, many people had done in Missouri, in Saint Louis. And there was a growing community of of free blacks living in Saint Louis. And that probably decided this was time. No longer with Dr. Emerson. He's passed away. Maybe not any particular attachment to his wife. So they sued in state court a freedom lawsuit, which is what they were called at the time. Missouri had recognized the right of enslaved people to sue for freedom since at least 1824, and it was settled law. They probably thought this was a slam dunk case. And so they sued and essentially they lost on a technicality. The technicality was that they didn't have a witness who could testify that Irene Emerson actually owned them.

Nick Capodice: [00:32:30] So they had to prove that the person who was enslaving them was, in fact enslaving them.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:32:37] Seems strange to us today that that would be the case. But that was the law back in that time. And so therefore, the case was dismissed for lack of a witness who could testify as to the person they were suing actually own them. And so that was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. At the time, the Missouri Supreme Court said this is nonsense and ordered a new trial.

Nick Capodice: [00:33:05] I have to ask, at this point, the Scotts had been in and out of free territories a number of times, and their daughter was born in a free territory. So why are they just petitioning for their freedom now?

Judge John Tunheim: [00:33:16] No one really knows exactly why they may or may not have known their rights. Certainly, unfortunately, during the time there were slaves held by many of the officers who were stationed there, including Zachary Taylor, who later became president. But it was a common practice.

Nick Capodice: [00:33:36] So it wasn't unusual for enslaved people to be held in free territories. And I would imagine that enslavers were not in the business of broadcasting that once free, always free doctrine.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:48] That seems like a safe bet. And even if you did know your rights, you're facing the legal fees required to launch a lawsuit. In the Scotts case, their initial fees were actually paid by the very same family who initially enslaved Dred Scott. The blows.

Nick Capodice: [00:34:05] The blows, really.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:07] It turns out that within a generation the family had become abolitionists. There's a lot in this story that you really couldn't make up. Now, getting back to the case, the Missouri court orders this new trial. At this point, Dred and Harriet's lawsuits had been combined into one. And the trial happens. This is in 1850.

Nick Capodice: [00:34:31] We're going to learn all about the trial after a quick break. But first, we at Civics 101 have put together many explorations of landmark Supreme Court cases. If you're a fan of learning about the judicial branch and how it applies to you, check them all out at our website, civics101podcast.org. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:49] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:34:50] And you're listening to Civics 101 from NPR. We are back with the conclusion to one of the most infamous cases in Supreme Court history. Dred Scott v Sanford.

Lynne Jackson: [00:34:59] And so the second trial, they did win their freedom by a jury of 12 white men.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:04] They won. They were.

Lynne Jackson: [00:35:06] Free. And that was a happy day, except that Mrs. Emerson appealed it and then it just continued to go from there.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:14] This whole case is gutting and it's only going to get worse. But it is this moment when the Scott who at this point have two young daughters actually win their freedom and their enslaver moves to take it away again. That I just can't stop thinking about. And that appeal is successful. Irene Emerson wins.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:39] And at this stage, the Scott's freedom has been through three hearings. They just were going through it over and over again.

Lynne Jackson: [00:35:47] They had many opportunities after the Supreme Court of Missouri said no. They could have stopped their case any time they wanted, especially up until the point of the Missouri Supreme Court decision, which was March 22nd of 1852. After that, they did not have to continue, and there were times when they could have broken it off, but they won. They went forward, and I think that was quite great.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:11] At this stage, it is not just their freedom that is at risk. It is the ability to sue for freedom that becomes at risk as well.

Lynne Jackson: [00:36:21] There were other slaves who were talking saying, oh, they ought to drop this case. What if it goes bad? We're all going to be in trouble. So if you think about it from that perspective, it's like they were going to take the flack from even their maybe own community.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:36] Now, the Scotts had the support of lawyers, but to me, the most compelling reason to keep pushing this case and taking the risk was much closer at hand.

Lynne Jackson: [00:36:46] The hard part was when it became a national or federal case and a national issue, in which case that's when the hiding of the girls became something they felt they should do. You know, young girls were sold all the time because they were young and fertile. And if you bought them, then you were investing in your future slaves so that they didn't want that. They wanted to keep the family together until they knew the verdict, at least. All right. Why wind your freedom when your girls had been sold away from you and it was about.

Nick Capodice: [00:37:19] So how does this case finally get to the Supreme Court?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:23] One important factor is that over the course of these cases and appeals, Emerson's widow, Irene, moves to Massachusetts and marries a congressman and staunch abolitionist named Calvin Chaffee. And Irene's brother, John Sanford, claims ownership of the Scott Sanford, by the way, lives in New York. And the Scotts are still in Saint Louis being hired out.

Nick Capodice: [00:37:47] Okay. There's that name Sanford. Except this case is Dred Scott vs Sandford, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:54] It is. It's a misspelling that the court couldn't undo. The Supreme Court has actually made a tremendous amount of spelling mistakes over history. And they just stick around.

Nick Capodice: [00:38:04] And Dred Scott ends up suing Sanford for his freedom.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:07] He does. And Sanford, being a New Yorker, is actually the reason Dred and Harriet get their case to the Supreme Court. To go before a federal court. A case has to either be a matter of federal law or it has to be between citizens of different states who are also claiming damages of a certain amount. The Scott's lawyer argued that federal courts could hear this case because Sanford was a New Yorker and the Scotts were from Missouri. But when the case does get to the Supreme Court, here is the question Are the Scotts citizens of Missouri, are they citizens of the United States?

Judge John Tunheim: [00:38:44] You know, ultimately, the Supreme Court, again struggled with the jurisdiction question Do we have jurisdiction to hear this case? If Dred and Harriet Scott were not United States citizens, then there was no federal jurisdiction and perhaps no jurisdiction for this case to even move forward. And ultimately, that's what the opinion said in opinion that indicated, first and foremost, there is no jurisdiction here because blacks who are slaves, any black, actually is what the Supreme Court said. Chief Justice Thomas opinion could not be a citizen of the United States.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:32] Andy canon. Point number one, Black people, regardless of freedom status, cannot be American citizens and cannot sue in federal courts. Here's Andy canon, Point number two.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:39:46] Tommy's opinion, I think, was well over 50 pages in and of itself. So this is what he did or he declared unconstitutional. That portion of the Missouri compromise, which had prohibited slavery in all the federal territories north and west of Missouri, a critical part of the Missouri compromise in existence for understood by everyone for some 35 years. It declare, he declared also that Congress had no power to regulate slavery in the territories, even though Congress had been doing so even since the Articles of Confederation Congress in 1787, when the Northwest Ordinance was passed, which which guaranteed no slavery in that portion of the United States territories. And then it also went on to say that free blacks could never be considered citizens or protected by the Constitution. That may have been the view of some of the framers, but it certainly was not how the Constitution had been interpreted throughout those many years.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:05] Tönnies thinking here were pretty sure that he conferred with President James Buchanan before issuing this opinion was OC. The slave debate is roiling in this country and comes up every time we add a new state and I'm just going to put an end to it. And he is explicit about this in the opinion itself. He quotes the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal with unalienable rights. And then he writes, The enslaved African race were not intended to be included. He writes that black people, quote, had no rights, which the white man was bound to respect and that they, quote, might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit. Taney is thinking, I'm going to end this debate now. Black people cannot be citizens, and the framers never intended for them to be. Enslavement is justified and legal conversation over. But of course, in a country intensely divided on the issue of slavery, this opinion was like gasoline on a fire.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:42:15] It was a catalyst for creating the crisis that led to Lincoln's election and then secession, civil war, and the end of slavery. It helped create the timing, I think, more than anything else. I do think it helped create Lincoln as a national politician and figure he based his soon thereafter Senate campaign in 1858 on opposition to this decision and to what what he had done. And it undercut Stephen Douglas, who was a Democrat, of course, and is striving to work with Southern Democrats in that period of time. And then, of course, the 13th and 14th Amendments were later passed, in part to overturn the holdings in Scott versus Sanford.

Nick Capodice: [00:43:05] What year was this opinion issued?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:07] This is 1857.

Nick Capodice: [00:43:09] So civil war starts 1861, and then the reconstruction amendments are passed in 1865 and basically overturn the provisions of the Dred Scott decision. So it must have been immediately apparent that this case was wrongly decided.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:25] And it has been seen that way ever since.

Judge John Tunheim: [00:43:28] It is quoted. Whenever a justice in modern times thinks something is dreadful, it's dreadful like the Dred Scott decision. It's usually referred to in a dissent. Justices compare it to what they disapprove of and think is awful in the court's current jurisprudence. William Brennan used to use the decision in his opposition to the death penalty and his view that the death penalty was racist. Justice Scalia has used it in dissents, and I think his was in an abortion related case. So it is used and it is universally recognized as completely wrong and bad.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:44:15] We have this appallingly bad decision issued by the Supreme Court, something truly wrong and loathsome, and it has massive reverberations to this day. But I think what can get lost in the Dred Scott decision is the family. Who had the courage to make it happen, to risk everything and to lose. Dred Harriet and their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, are still enslaved people at the end of this protracted saga. But there is one last element to this story.

Lynne Jackson: [00:44:52] Finally, of course, within three months, the family got their freedom and that was a good thing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:44:57] It's ultimately determined that Sanford does not even legally own the Scotts. So it's up to Irene and Calvin Chaffee to do something about this. Especially because, remember, Chafee is an abolitionist and his supporters in Massachusetts won't stand for his being an enslaver. But the Chafee's cannot monument or release the Scots. Only if an enslaver lives in the same state as their enslaved. Could they do so. Instead the Chafee's sell the Scots.

Lynne Jackson: [00:45:30] They actually used A quickclaim deed To transfer them. And it quickclaim deed is a property instrument. And so I usually indicate that in order to make it legal, since they were legally their property, then that was the instrument that they had to use. But yes, again, the family was there. They bought them with the express purpose to free them that they did on May 26 of 1857.

Nick Capodice: [00:45:59] So the Scots last owners are the same family who first enslaved Dred Scott.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:46:05] Yeah. And Dred, Harriet, Eliza and Lizzie are free. Dredd got a job as a porter at the Barnum Hotel in Saint Louis. And he passed away 18 months later.

Lynne Jackson: [00:46:18] He died on September 17th, 1858, which ironically is Constitution Day.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:46:26] This is the story of one of the worst rulings in Supreme Court history. It's the story of a man and woman who fought for and did not win their freedom. And that man, when he finally got that freedom, could only enjoy it for a year and a half. But this story is not isolated in time. The inheritors of this case, including Dred Scott's great, great granddaughter and those of Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney, keep it alive and for good reason.

Lynne Jackson: [00:46:59] And what I love about the Taneys is that, you know, they own that story and they don't defend it. You know, they're out and aboveboard about how how it was. And so we're all here to try to make it better. I absolutely do know that we are a reconciled group. So whenever I call Charlie, he says, If you think it's a good idea, I'm there. And we get to share the stories of our ancestors and how these cases, how this case came about. We also share about what we're doing today, and we have a few ideas of how people can work reconciliation within their own communities, in their own families, their own small groups of friends.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:47:38] When Lynne says she is part of a reconciled group, it's actually got a name the Sons and Daughters of Reconciliation. This cohort of descendants who work together on education programs within the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation specifically designed to keep their histories alive and educational.

Lynne Jackson: [00:47:56] That program was always designed to bring our histories together, and that way we could share what we know as individuals, which nobody else knew because they barely were in the history books.

Nick Capodice: [00:48:10] I feel like what Lynne and all these descendants are doing with their stories, keeping history at top of mind, educating the public, encouraging action that flies in the face of this egregious past. It reminds me of what we were talking about at the beginning, this principle of anticanonitself. Dred Scott is enshrined as anticanonbecause we should never forget it. We should always consider it as grave legal decisions are made to ensure that we never again make a decision like it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:48:42] And the Dred Scott case is almost universally considered the very worst of what can happen when the Supreme Court makes the wrong choice. When we ask why these cases are important to us today in the United States, the anticanonserves as this reminder that we are not infallible, that throughout our history, immoral constitutional interpretations have happened that reflect what some voices of power believe. And then that interpretation gets applied to our most foundational word of law. You cannot merely condemn these cases and leave them in the past. You have to keep talking about them.

Nick Capodice: [00:49:28] If you love this episode and want more. Boy. Howdy. John Henry Boudreaux. Have we got it? You can find all of our many episodes as well as a plethora of resources at our website, civics101podcast.org. You can also follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts so you'll never miss the Civic's beat.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:49:48] Music In this episode by the Young Philosophers Club Xylo Zico. Chris Zabriskie. Tom starts Bandit Doug Maxwell, The Grand Affair. Emily Sprague Young Carts and the MIT Symphony Orchestra. Archival Supreme Court audio comes from Oh yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:50:03] Oh yeah, it does.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:50:05] That's why Izzy dot org. This episode of Civics one one was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy and you Nick Capodice.

Nick Capodice: [00:50:13] Our team includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Our executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:50:18] Civics one on one is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio. Archival Supreme Court audio comes from. Oyez that's.

Nick Capodice: [00:50:26] Oh, sorry. I was excited.

Civics at the Movies: National Treasure

Just how, ahem, realistic is National Treasure?

In the latest edition of our special series Civics at the Movies, we talk about the National Archives and how they're portrayed in the iconic film National Treasure.

Is there really a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence? Is the security at the Archives really so high-tech? (Spoiler alert: no, and no.)

Our guest is  Jessie Kratz, Historian at the National Archives and friend of the show.

---

What are Committees?

90% of proposed bills die in committee. What happens in there?? 

Today's episode consists of two parts. First, the Schoolhouse Rock definition of congressional committees (what they do and why we have them) and second, an exploration of money, power, lobbying, and a secret point system for deciding who gets to be on one.  This episode features the voices of Dan Cassino, Professor of Political Science at Farleigh Dickinson University and Leah Rosenstiel, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. 

Click here for a graphic organizer for students to fill out while they listen to the episode.

For anyone who is interested in the DCCC point system for advancement in the party, here is the article from The Intercept discussing the “dues” requested by members of Congress, and here is the point calculation metric:

committees final.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

committees final.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Nick Capodice:
To all of our listeners out there, I just want to let you know, Hannah and I read every single review of our show.

Hannah McCarthy:
It's true.

Nick Capodice:
And there's one review left by a user called GeekMe, and I look at it probably once a week.

Hannah McCarthy:
Which one is that?

Nick Capodice:
It says, Here, I'll read it. It says, quote, I love the work that you guys do and have learned a lot, but it's become increasingly obvious that the way it's supposed to work is just window dressing or talking a good game compared to how things really get done. Hmm. You've seen that one, right?

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah,

Nick Capodice:
That review haunts me. It sits like the raven and stares at me when you and I talk about executive orders or declaring war, almost any topic because we've got the rules for how our government works. It's in the tagline for our show. And then there's the way those rules are bent, and I fear that today's episode has the potential to make geek me really frustrated. You're listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Capodice,

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice:
And today we're talking about committees, congressional committees. What they do, why we have them and who gets to be on them. If you glean one thing from this episode, it should be; Committees are super important. Woodrow Wilson, before he was president, once said "Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition whilst Congress and its committee rooms is Congress at work." And then he went on to say, "I do not know how better to describe our form of government in a single phrase than calling it a government by the chairman of the Standing Committees of Congress." And Hannah, let's just ditch the world of cynicism for a hot second and embrace pure, unbridled optimism.

Dan Cassino:
I'm not. I'm not a cynical person. We're not cynical people talking about government. What do members of Congress want?

Nick Capodice:
You know him. You love him. At least I do. Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Before we talk about what committees are, I want to start with a much broader question. Why do people even enter politics?

Dan Cassino:
We assume everyone in government has something they're trying to do. They've got policy they're trying to push. There's something that they believe is good for our country they're trying to get done. Cool. So that's your that's your biggest need. But how do you get that? Well, first you need to get power. When you get power, then you can do that. So you have to get power and the power will get you to your policy goals. Well, how do you get power? Well you have to get reelected, right. If you don't get reelected, you're never going to be able to do anything. If you're not able to do anything, you don't get any power you're talking about actually get your policy goals done. So members of Congress, we can argue, are single minded, rational seekers of reelection because reelection will get them towards all their other goals. Being on a good committee helps you get reelected.

Hannah McCarthy:
Wait, how does that help you get reelected?

Nick Capodice:
That is something I hope to convey by the end of the show, Hannah. So what I want to do is, you know, we talk about stuff and then we do a break and we ask people to sign up for our newsletter and then we say, OK, we're back.

Hannah McCarthy:
I do.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. What I'd like to do for the first half of the show is to hold on to this good faith Civics 101 breakdown of committees. And then in the second half, I'm going to talk about money, lobbyists, and a secret point system.

Hannah McCarthy:
A secret point system!

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. So let's start at the very beginning, almost every bill that is written in Congress is referred to a relevant committee. There are 20 permanent standing committees in the House, 16 in the Senate and four joint committees, which have members from both the House and the Senate. Each committee has a chair. Very important role. The chair of a committee always belongs to the party that controls that Chamber of Congress, for example, as of this recording February 2022, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate, meaning all committee chairs are Democrats. And each committee has subcommittees. Those are smaller committees that work in one specific subset of the larger committee, and each of those has a chair. And as to what these committees do, here is Leah Rosenstiel, Professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.

Leah Rosenstiel:
Broadly speaking, right, of course, Congress writes and enacts legislation. But it's a huge body, and it's really hard to have, in the case of the Senate, one hundred people all agreeing on what should go in a bill and even when you're writing the initial bill, what to do. It also really doesn't make sense to have one hundred people all try to become experts on education policy or agriculture policy. Right. So the idea of congressional committees is just a simple division of labor, where you have committees that typically have a jurisdiction specific policy areas they're responsible for. They often do a lot of the drafting of initial legislation bills then pass through committee before getting enacted by the chamber.

Hannah McCarthy:
So the people on these committees do know a little more than the average bear about specific topics.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, and you often get people serving on committees from states that really care about those topics.

Leah Rosenstiel:
There's some evidence in political science that the committees that you choose to serve on reflect the needs of your constituents. So if you look for example at the Senate Agriculture Committee, that's a committee that typically is made up of members who represent states that have more farming industry, right, that are more rural. And that sort of makes sense. Why would you want to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee? Because your constituents care about those types of issues.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah, name a state that comes to mind if I say something like cattle farming,

Hannah McCarthy:
I don't know. Maybe Nebraska.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. Congressman Don Bacon from Nebraska's 2nd District. He serves on the Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture. He's also on three other subcommittees.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh you can be on more than one subcommittee.

Nick Capodice:
Oh yeah, the House has over one hundred subcommittees, so most members are on at least two

Hannah McCarthy:
All right bills are proposed in both chambers. But who decides which committee those bills go to?

Nick Capodice:
All right, let's do a quick how a bill becomes a law recap. Listen to that full episode, by the way, folks. First up, a bill is proposed.

Dan Cassino:
You have proposed a bill. You put that bill in the hopper. Right now often it's a physical hopper, in the state of Arizona, it's actually, they have a little plastic frog on top of it because it's a hopper right? It hops. So you put that bill in there, the bill that goes the speaker. The speaker then assigns that bill to go to a particular committee. Now, if they want you, they can assign it to more than one committee. But that's seen as a slight against the two committees because it means you don't trust either of these committees.

Nick Capodice:
Technically, the speaker of the House determines which committee or committees get the bill, and in the Senate, it's the presiding officer. But most of the time that decision is made by the House or Senate parliamentarian. That is a job that will get its own episode soon. But in brief, it's a nonpartisan member of Congress who advises everyone else on rules and procedures,

Dan Cassino:
So it gets referred to committee. The committee chair then gets that bill and about 90 percent of the time they just ignore it. They just pay no attention to it. They throw it out. They, you know, they turn to kindling whatever. They pay no attention to whatsoever.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now this is the main thing that I knew about committees, that it is the place that bills go to die.

Nick Capodice:
It's a statistic I never tire of repeating and a very slightly congress to Congress, but usually about two to four percent of proposed bills become laws. 90 percent of proposed bills die in committee.

Dan Cassino:
This means that chairs of committees and subcommittees have enormous amounts of power. That is, if I'm chairing a committee and I don't like a bill, I just ignore it and it's dead. There's nothing anyone can do about it. I just don't report the the bill out.

Hannah McCarthy:
If a bill is in committee and the chair refuses to report it out as and bring it to the floor for a vote, is there no way that Congress can force it out?

Nick Capodice:
There is, and we've mentioned it in other episodes. It's called a discharge petition, but it is exceptionally rare, Dan said. More often, if there's a desire for a bill to make it out of committee, the Speaker of the House just says to the committee chair, Come on, pal. And it comes out.

Hannah McCarthy:
Let's assume, then, that we've got a rare bill that is not ignored by the chair. What happens in the committee chambers with one of those bills?

Nick Capodice:
Well, it sounds like this.

Archival:
I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just reiterate the fact that this bill does not address the issue of wild horses. It deals only with domestic horses slaughtered for human consumption like we call the rule. Mr. Aderholt, Mr. Aderholt. No, Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Aguilar. I, Mr. Amodei. Mr. Amodei. No, Mr. Bishop. Mr. Bishop. Yes, Mr. Coburn.

Nick Capodice:
That is a snip from a five hour video of the House Appropriations Committee marking up a bill from July of twenty seventeen.

Leah Rosenstiel:
If they want to move the bill forward, they might consider holding some hearings where they bring in different people, right, experts, stakeholders, to talk about the issue. Then the committee can do what's called a markup. The committee actually meets and they go through and they offer amendments to the bill and mark it up and make changes.

Dan Cassino:
Sometimes if it's a good bill, they look at it and go, OK, there's an idea here we could take, and they either rewrite the entire bill or they take elements of it and add it to another bill they're going to do anyway. And this is what's the markup process is in the committees and subcommittees in the House. They actually totally rewrite the bill based on their expertise, what they're hearing from lobbyists, what they're hearing from the executive branch.

Leah Rosenstiel:
They then vote on that markup bill. And if it passes right, if it gets a majority of committee members, then they refer it to the floor and then it gets considered and can get passed right. And then if it passes both chambers and get signed by the president, it becomes law.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now this is pretty clear cut to me committees or groups of people in the House and Senate with specific areas of interest and expertise who debate, study, alter and most often ignore proposed legislation.

Nick Capodice:
Bingo a dingo. I'm not going to actually say bingo at Dingo. I thought it was funny at the time.

Hannah McCarthy:
It seems like serving on a committee is a lot of work. Dan said It gives you power, but how?

Nick Capodice:
Oh, OK, OK. I think we've got the Schoolhouse Rock portion all settled here Hannah. So let's take a quick break and jump into the dark waters of who really gets to be on committees and why serving on one can be the most important thing you do in your political career.

Hannah McCarthy:
You're listening to Civics 101. We are talking about committees. But before we get back to it, I want to let listeners know that they might like our newsletter extra credit. It comes out twice a month and Nick assures me that he will provide a list of least desirable to most desirable committees in our next issue. You can subscribe at the top of our website civics101podcast.org. Ok, so as promised, Nick, we're back to it, we're talking committees. Lay it on me, who gets to be on these committees and why does that matter?

Nick Capodice:
I'll start with a brief, brief history. There were small select committees in the late 1800s in America, but in short, our current committee structure is pretty modern. There was a big legislative reorganization in 1946 in response to what opponents of Franklin Roosevelt felt was his overreach of presidential power. And to comprehend committees. Dan Cassino told me there is a term we should learn called information asymmetry.

Dan Cassino:
So this is a concept from economics I think is really important for people to understand why it comes to Congress. So information asymmetry is the problem that arises when the person I'm hiring to do something knows more than I do. So I take my car to the auto shop, if I am dealing with a dishonest auto mechanic, they can say, you know, your frambulator is completely shot. And as a white guy in his 40s, I'm going to Oh yeah, no, I thought it might be the frambulator. You're right, that's how much they're going to cost to fix my frambulator? Because they know more than I do. There's an information asymmetry so they can take advantage of me. So how do I stop that? Well I get a second opinion right? I can learn about these things. The problem Congress faced was the government had gotten so complex with doing so many things that they didn't know... Congress leaders in Congress didn't know everything the government was doing. They didn't know what the president was up to.

Nick Capodice:
President Roosevelt signed over three thousand seven hundred executive orders. Congress just didn't know what he was up to. There were so many orders and bills and agencies that Republican members in Congress in 1946 said enough, and they created the committee system that resembles what we have today, a system that divides the labor of understanding what Congress is doing.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right. So how do we pick who gets to be on these committees?

Nick Capodice:
Here's Leah Rosenstiel again.

Leah Rosenstiel:
It used to be the case that committee chairs were determined solely based on seniority. So if you've been in Congress for a long time, you get to be the committee chair, provided they're in the majority party.

Nick Capodice:
But here's the problem with that seniority system, Hannah. Democrats controlled the House for a solid 40 year stretch, starting in nineteen fifty five. Did you know that? 40 years?

Hannah McCarthy:
I didn't.

Nick Capodice:
And the members of Congress who kept getting reelected and therefore always had seniority were from this group known as Southern Democrats or Dixiecrats. This is a group that was conservative, pro-segregation, anti civil rights legislation and did not share policy positions with the rest of the Democratic Party. So the seniority system was abandoned. A new system has been implemented to choose who goes on what committee, and this is important because some committees are more desirable than others to be on.

Dan Cassino:
So at the high end, you know the House you're going to have four we call AAA committees. These are committees that everyone wants to be on. And so that's Ways and Means. So taxes. Appropriations, spending said taxes, energy and commerce, because, you know, oil companies and all that, and financial services. So those are your AAA committees everyone wants to be on. And they're a scarce resource. Not everyone gets to be on those committees.

Nick Capodice:
The next level down is committees that are pretty good, right? Like like agriculture, especially if you represent a state with a lot of farms. The House Armed Services Committee is pretty great. They say. You can work on bills that use defense spending and you can build a military base in your state and then...

Dan Cassino:
Imagine you've really upset some people. Boy, they don't want you anywhere near anything important. You're going to be on, and yes, the year of our Lord two thousand twenty two we still call it this, Indian Affairs. People don't really want to be on that committee. Not a lot of money and not really a lot you can do in many districts.

Nick Capodice:
By the way, both Dan and Leah said that the problematically named Committee on Indian Affairs is less desirable because it is underfunded, limited in terms of action and sees very little interest from lobbying groups. And below that, at the very bottom of the desirability list are the joint committees.

Dan Cassino:
These are committees that are split between the House and the Senate, so the joint committees mostly exist as a way to hold on to staff members. And so this is going to be things like the Economic Committee, the Joint Committee, Economic Committee and the Joint Taxation Committee.

Nick Capodice:
And Hannah. There are joint committees that I don't think you've even heard of.

Dan Cassino:
I know it sounds like it'd be fun to be on the library committee. It is not fun to be on the library committee. But there is a library committee and there is a printing committee to deal with the actual printing of laws.

Hannah McCarthy:
Come on, there's a printing committee

Nick Capodice:
There is! Chaired by none other than former presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar,

Archival:
The vice chair. I know that Zo can't be there, but maybe we could submit, is this OK? Well, submit her remarks. For the record.

Nick Capodice:
That honestly is the only video I could find of a meeting of the Joint Committee on Printing, a meeting that lasted four minutes.

Archival:
The opinion of the chair. The ayes have it. The rules of the committee are adopted and Senator Wicker You just voted to abolish the filibuster. I'm kidding. That's right. That is not true. That was please strike that from the record.

Nick Capodice:
And finally, there are special committees tied to investigations and ethics. And those aren't terribly desirable because unless you think it's going to get you good media attention, you don't want to be in charge of getting your fellow members of Congress in trouble.

Hannah McCarthy:
Okay, back to those super desirable committees, though. What is it that makes them so special?

Dan Cassino:
The reason they're called AAA is because so many people care about them. There's big money behind them. People are going to want to lobby you, they're going to want to talk to you, and you can charge them a lot of money for access to you. Now, there's very little evidence that members of Congress actually change their votes based on what they hear from lobbyists. But what lobbies can do is put things on your agenda. And so this is what lobbyists are mostly paying for lobby when lobbyists are paying a lot of money. It's not bribes. It is paying for access, right? I'm going to be able to pigeonhole you and talk to you, and that's going to take a $5000 plate dinner. If I'm going to seated next to you and now I can talk to you and tell you about this one little thing I'm worried about. And that puts it on your radar.

Hannah McCarthy:
I know Dan said it's not bribery. It's paying for access, but it just sounds like a lot of bribery.

Leah Rosenstiel:
I should first say that, of course, bribery is illegal in the United States, right? So that's not something that we hope lobbyists are engaging in, right? There are some bribery cases, but right that is illegal. But there is absolutely evidence that members of key committees do get lobbied more right. If you're trying to lobby on an issue and you know that the committee has power over the issue. You should, of course, be lobbying the committee chair and the other committee members.

Dan Cassino:
So if you are one of these committees, you wind up having a lot more access to lobbyists who will pay a lot of money to get in good with you. So that means you can raise a lot of money, which means you can get reelected, which means you get power, which means you get policy.

Nick Capodice:
It makes you look good when you're a chair of a committee that passes a popular piece of legislation, you can then give campaign speeches and say, "I am the one who got this bill through that gave jobs to thousands of folks in Wisconsin." You're just seen as an effective politician if you do that. And one more thing I'll add about these coveted committees. If you had been on one, if you had been a chair, when your career in Congress is over. You can then say, You know what? I know a lot of people who still serve on that committee, and I know a lot about how that committee works. Maybe I could become one of those lobbyists, and they often do. It's referred to as Washington's revolving door of lobbying. And as an example, Billy Tauzin, a former chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with promotional standards for drug companies interestingly enough, he became a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies and made nineteen point three million dollars in four years.

Hannah McCarthy:
Nick, if it's not seniority anymore, who does get to be on these committees?

Nick Capodice:
Both parties have what's called a steering committee, which chooses where people go.

Dan Cassino:
The steering committee answers directly to the speaker and they're going to put people on these committees. People actually apply, say which committee they want to get on to. And the steering committee will entertain those. But it really is up to the speaker who gets on which committees and the way you do. It is in the Democrats. You have a point system.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh, you weren't joking about the point system?

Nick Capodice:
I wasn't. It's a literal point system. Doing certain actions for your party gets your points. Hosting a fundraiser that gets over fifteen thousand to the DCCC gets you five points. Traveling to a district to campaign to flip it from red to blue gets you three points and so on. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has the most points at two hundred and seventy nine, and lots of folks had zero points.

Dan Cassino:
They've gamified getting on committees and getting favors from leadership. So the big thing that gets you points is giving lots of money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So the more money you give to the D Triple C or in the case of Republicans, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the more points you get now Republicans, as far as we know these are all these things are, oh, by the way, secret. They don't tell you this. We just get leaks occasionally. So we actually have leaks from the Democrats in 2019 detailing their entire point system. Republicans, we think, is similar, but we don't actually have the full leaks from them.

Hannah McCarthy:
And how much money are we talking here?

Nick Capodice:
Well, I encourage listeners to read the full member dues report that was leaked in August of twenty nineteen. I'm going to put a link to it on the episode page of our website, civics101podcast.org. But members of those elite committees were expected to pay $600000 a year.

Hannah McCarthy:
What?

Hannah McCarthy:
While we don't have a dues sheet for the National Republican Congressional Committee, a report from the Brookings Institute in 2017 laid out that it was very similar, one former Republican House rep was quoted as saying, "Every time you walk into an NRCC meeting, a giant gosh darn tally sheet is on prominent display that lists your name and how much you've given or haven't. It's a huge wall of shame."

Hannah McCarthy:
Do they pay these dues from, like their personal bank accounts? I don't get it. Where does this money come from?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. No way, Dan said Washington is a lot like Broadway. You never put your own money on the show. What you do is you transfer money from your campaign funds to the NRCC or D Triple C, or you just hold a fundraiser and say, don't put my name on the check, put the campaign committee on the checks instead.

Hannah McCarthy:
So what happens if a member of Congress does not pay their committee dues?

Dan Cassino:
That means that when it comes to decide who's going to move up into these scare spots that everyone wants? Well, if you haven't paying your dues, it's not going to happen to you. You're not going to move up in the leadership ranks.

Nick Capodice:
Notably, one member of the House has in recent years openly refused to pay her dues to the DCCC.

Archival:
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is infuriating the Democrat establishment by refusing to pay party dues while bankrolling left wing challengers to the party.

Nick Capodice:
Member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to even register with the D Triple C, and she tweeted quote, I give quite a bit to fellow Dems. We fundraised over 300000 for others more than my dues. But as to how this action will affect her political career, we have absolutely no idea.

Hannah McCarthy:
Alright, geekme, how you feelin?

Nick Capodice:
Civics101@nhpr.org geekme. Drop us a line. .

Nick Capodice:
That's committees, folks, the place where, as Wilson said, Congress is at work. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with You Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

Hannah McCarthy:
Thank you. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and only eats her salad with a fork.

Nick Capodice:
Music in this episode by Jessie Gallagher Junior85 ProleteR, Dyalla, Divkid, Scott Gratton, Corey Gray, Kevin McCloud and the GOAT Chris Zabriskie

Hannah McCarthy:
Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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---

Transcript

committees final.mp3

Nick Capodice: To all of our listeners out there, I just want to let you know, Hannah and I read every single review of our show.

Hannah McCarthy: It's true.

Nick Capodice: And there's one review left by a user called GeekMe, and I look at it probably once a week.

Hannah McCarthy: Which one is that?

Nick Capodice: It says, Here, I'll read it. It says, quote, I love the work that you guys do and have learned a lot, but it's become increasingly obvious that the way it's supposed to work is just [00:00:30] window dressing or talking a good game compared to how things really get done. Hmm. You've seen that one, right?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah,

Nick Capodice: That review haunts me. It sits like the raven and stares at me when you and I talk about executive orders or declaring war, almost any topic because we've got the rules for how our government works. It's in the tagline for our show. And then there's the way those rules are bent, and I fear that today's episode has the potential [00:01:00] to make geek me really frustrated. You're listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Capodice,

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice: And today we're talking about committees, congressional committees. What they do, why we have them and who gets to be on them. If you glean one thing from this episode, it should be; Committees are super important. Woodrow Wilson, before he was president, once said "Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition whilst [00:01:30] Congress and its committee rooms is Congress at work." And then he went on to say, "I do not know how better to describe our form of government in a single phrase than calling it a government by the chairman of the Standing Committees of Congress." And Hannah, let's just ditch the world of cynicism for a hot second and embrace pure, unbridled optimism.

Dan Cassino: I'm not. I'm not a cynical person. We're not cynical people talking about government. What do members of Congress want?

Nick Capodice: You know him. You love him. At least I do. [00:02:00] Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Before we talk about what committees are, I want to start with a much broader question. Why do people even enter politics?

Dan Cassino: We assume everyone in government has something they're trying to do. They've got policy they're trying to push. There's something that they believe is good for our country they're trying to get done. Cool. So that's your that's your biggest need. But how do you get that? Well, first you need to get power. When you get power, then you can do that. So you have to get power and the power will get you to your policy [00:02:30] goals. Well, how do you get power? Well you have to get reelected, right. If you don't get reelected, you're never going to be able to do anything. If you're not able to do anything, you don't get any power you're talking about actually get your policy goals done. So members of Congress, we can argue, are single minded, rational seekers of reelection because reelection will get them towards all their other goals. Being on a good committee helps you get reelected.

Hannah McCarthy: Wait, how does that help you get reelected?

Nick Capodice: That is something I hope to convey by the end of the show, Hannah. So what I want to do is, you know, we talk about stuff and then we do a break and we ask people [00:03:00] to sign up for our newsletter and then we say, OK, we're back.

Hannah McCarthy: I do.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. What I'd like to do for the first half of the show is to hold on to this good faith Civics 101 breakdown of committees. And then in the second half, I'm going to talk about money, lobbyists, and a secret point system.

Hannah McCarthy: A secret point system!

Nick Capodice: Yeah. So let's start at the very beginning, almost every bill that is written in Congress is referred to a relevant committee. [00:03:30] There are 20 permanent standing committees in the House, 16 in the Senate and four joint committees, which have members from both the House and the Senate. Each committee has a chair. Very important role. The chair of a committee always belongs to the party that controls that Chamber of Congress, for example, as of this recording February 2022, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate, meaning all committee chairs are Democrats. And each committee has subcommittees. Those are smaller committees that work in one [00:04:00] specific subset of the larger committee, and each of those has a chair. And as to what these committees do, here is Leah Rosenstiel, Professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.

Leah Rosenstiel: Broadly speaking, right, of course, Congress writes and enacts legislation. But it's a huge body, and it's really hard to have, in the case of the Senate, one hundred people all agreeing on what should go in a bill and even when you're writing the initial bill, what to do. It also really doesn't make sense to [00:04:30] have one hundred people all try to become experts on education policy or agriculture policy. Right. So the idea of congressional committees is just a simple division of labor, where you have committees that typically have a jurisdiction specific policy areas they're responsible for. They often do a lot of the drafting of initial legislation bills then pass through committee before getting enacted by the chamber.

Hannah McCarthy: So the people [00:05:00] on these committees do know a little more than the average bear about specific topics.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, and you often get people serving on committees from states that really care about those topics.

Leah Rosenstiel: There's some evidence in political science that the committees that you choose to serve on reflect the needs of your constituents. So if you look for example at the Senate Agriculture Committee, that's a committee that typically is made up of members who represent states that have more [00:05:30] farming industry, right, that are more rural. And that sort of makes sense. Why would you want to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee? Because your constituents care about those types of issues.

Nick Capodice: Hannah, name a state that comes to mind if I say something like cattle farming,

Hannah McCarthy: I don't know. Maybe Nebraska.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. Congressman Don Bacon from Nebraska's 2nd District. He serves on the Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture. He's also on three other subcommittees.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh you can be on more [00:06:00] than one subcommittee.

Nick Capodice: Oh yeah, the House has over one hundred subcommittees, so most members are on at least two

Hannah McCarthy: All right bills are proposed in both chambers. But who decides which committee those bills go to?

Nick Capodice: All right, let's do a quick how a bill becomes a law recap. Listen to that full episode, by the way, folks. First up, a bill is proposed.

Dan Cassino: You have proposed a bill. You put that bill in the hopper. Right now often it's a physical hopper, in the state of Arizona, it's actually, they have a little plastic frog on top of it because [00:06:30] it's a hopper right? It hops. So you put that bill in there, the bill that goes the speaker. The speaker then assigns that bill to go to a particular committee. Now, if they want you, they can assign it to more than one committee. But that's seen as a slight against the two committees because it means you don't trust either of these committees.

Nick Capodice: Technically, the speaker of the House determines which committee or committees get the bill, and in the Senate, it's the presiding officer. But most of the time that decision is made by the House or Senate parliamentarian. That is a job [00:07:00] that will get its own episode soon. But in brief, it's a nonpartisan member of Congress who advises everyone else on rules and procedures,

Dan Cassino: So it gets referred to committee. The committee chair then gets that bill and about 90 percent of the time they just ignore it. They just pay no attention to it. They throw it out. They, you know, they turn to kindling whatever. They pay no attention to whatsoever.

Hannah McCarthy: Now this is the main thing that I knew about committees, that it is the place that bills go to die.

Nick Capodice: It's a statistic I never tire of repeating and a very slightly congress to Congress, but usually about [00:07:30] two to four percent of proposed bills become laws. 90 percent of proposed bills die in committee.

Dan Cassino: This means that chairs of committees and subcommittees have enormous amounts of power. That is, if I'm chairing a committee and I don't like a bill, I just ignore it and it's dead. There's nothing anyone can do about it. I just don't report the the bill out.

Hannah McCarthy: If a bill is in committee and the chair refuses to report it out as and bring it to the floor for a vote, is there no way that Congress can force it out?

Nick Capodice: There is, and we've mentioned it in other episodes. [00:08:00] It's called a discharge petition, but it is exceptionally rare, Dan said. More often, if there's a desire for a bill to make it out of committee, the Speaker of the House just says to the committee chair, Come on, pal. And it comes out.

Hannah McCarthy: Let's assume, then, that we've got a rare bill that is not ignored by the chair. What happens in the committee chambers with one of those bills?

Nick Capodice: Well, it sounds like this.

Archival: I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just reiterate the fact that this bill does not address [00:08:30] the issue of wild horses. It deals only with domestic horses slaughtered for human consumption like we call the rule. Mr. Aderholt, Mr. Aderholt. No, Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Aguilar. I, Mr. Amodei. Mr. Amodei. No, Mr. Bishop. Mr. Bishop. Yes, Mr. Coburn.

Nick Capodice: That is a snip from a five hour video of the House Appropriations Committee marking up a bill from July of twenty seventeen. [00:09:00]

Leah Rosenstiel: If they want to move the bill forward, they might consider holding some hearings where they bring in different people, right, experts, stakeholders, to talk about the issue. Then the committee can do what's called a markup. The committee actually meets and they go through and they offer amendments to the bill and mark it up and make changes.

Dan Cassino: Sometimes if it's a good bill, they look at it and go, OK, there's an idea here we could take, and they either rewrite the entire bill or they take elements of it and add it to another bill they're going to do anyway. And [00:09:30] this is what's the markup process is in the committees and subcommittees in the House. They actually totally rewrite the bill based on their expertise, what they're hearing from lobbyists, what they're hearing from the executive branch.

Leah Rosenstiel: They then vote on that markup bill. And if it passes right, if it gets a majority of committee members, then they refer it to the floor and then it gets considered and can get passed right. And then if it passes both chambers and get signed by the president, it becomes law.

Hannah McCarthy: Now this is pretty clear cut to me committees [00:10:00] or groups of people in the House and Senate with specific areas of interest and expertise who debate, study, alter and most often ignore proposed legislation.

Nick Capodice: Bingo a dingo. I'm not going to actually say bingo at Dingo. I thought it was funny at the time.

Hannah McCarthy: It seems like serving on a committee is a lot of work. Dan said It gives you power, but how?

Nick Capodice: Oh, OK, OK. I think [00:10:30] we've got the Schoolhouse Rock portion all settled here Hannah. So let's take a quick break and jump into the dark waters of who really gets to be on committees and why serving on one can be the most important thing you do in your political career.

Hannah McCarthy: You're listening to Civics 101. We are talking about committees. But before we get back to it, I want to let listeners know that they might like our newsletter extra credit. It [00:11:00] comes out twice a month and Nick assures me that he will provide a list of least desirable to most desirable committees in our next issue. You can subscribe at the top of our website civics101podcast.org. Ok, so as promised, Nick, we're back to it, we're talking committees. Lay it on me, who gets to be on these committees and why does that matter?

Nick Capodice: I'll start with a brief, brief history. There were small select committees in the late 1800s in America, but in short, [00:11:30] our current committee structure is pretty modern. There was a big legislative reorganization in 1946 in response to what opponents of Franklin Roosevelt felt was his overreach of presidential power. And to comprehend committees. Dan Cassino told me there is a term we should learn called information asymmetry.

Dan Cassino: So this is a concept from economics I think is really important for people to understand why it comes to Congress. So information asymmetry is the problem that arises when the person I'm hiring to do something knows [00:12:00] more than I do. So I take my car to the auto shop, if I am dealing with a dishonest auto mechanic, they can say, you know, your frambulator is completely shot. And as a white guy in his 40s, I'm going to Oh yeah, no, I thought it might be the frambulator. You're right, that's how much they're going to cost to fix my frambulator? Because they know more than I do. There's an information asymmetry so they can take advantage of me. So how do I stop that? Well I get a second opinion right? I can learn about these things. The problem Congress faced was the government had [00:12:30] gotten so complex with doing so many things that they didn't know... Congress leaders in Congress didn't know everything the government was doing. They didn't know what the president was up to.

Nick Capodice: President Roosevelt signed over three thousand seven hundred executive orders. Congress just didn't know what he was up to. There were so many orders and bills and agencies that Republican members in Congress in 1946 said enough, and they created the committee system that resembles what we have today, a system that divides the labor of understanding what Congress [00:13:00] is doing.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. So how do we pick who gets to be on these committees?

Nick Capodice: Here's Leah Rosenstiel again.

Leah Rosenstiel: It used to be the case that committee chairs were determined solely based on seniority. So if you've been in Congress for a long time, you get to be the committee chair, provided they're in the majority party.

Nick Capodice: But here's the problem with that seniority system, Hannah. Democrats controlled the House for a solid 40 year stretch, starting in nineteen fifty five. Did you know that? 40 years?

Hannah McCarthy: I didn't.

Nick Capodice: And the members of Congress [00:13:30] who kept getting reelected and therefore always had seniority were from this group known as Southern Democrats or Dixiecrats. This is a group that was conservative, pro-segregation, anti civil rights legislation and did not share policy positions with the rest of the Democratic Party. So the seniority system was abandoned. A new system has been implemented to choose who goes on what committee, and this is important because some committees are more desirable than others to be on.

Dan Cassino: So [00:14:00] at the high end, you know the House you're going to have four we call AAA committees. These are committees that everyone wants to be on. And so that's Ways and Means. So taxes. Appropriations, spending said taxes, energy and commerce, because, you know, oil companies and all that, and financial services. So those are your AAA committees everyone wants to be on. And they're a scarce resource. Not everyone gets to be on those committees.

Nick Capodice: The next level down is committees that are pretty good, right? Like [00:14:30] like agriculture, especially if you represent a state with a lot of farms. The House Armed Services Committee is pretty great. They say. You can work on bills that use defense spending and you can build a military base in your state and then...

Dan Cassino: Imagine you've really upset some people. Boy, they don't want you anywhere near anything important. You're going to be on, and yes, the year of our Lord two thousand twenty two we still call it this, Indian Affairs. People don't really want to be on that committee. Not a lot of money and not really a lot you can do in many districts. [00:15:00]

Nick Capodice: By the way, both Dan and Leah said that the problematically named Committee on Indian Affairs is less desirable because it is underfunded, limited in terms of action and sees very little interest from lobbying groups. And below that, at the very bottom of the desirability list are the joint committees.

Dan Cassino: These are committees that are split between the House and the Senate, so the joint committees mostly exist as a way to hold on to staff members. And so this is going to be things like the [00:15:30] Economic Committee, the Joint Committee, Economic Committee and the Joint Taxation Committee.

Nick Capodice: And Hannah. There are joint committees that I don't think you've even heard of.

Dan Cassino: I know it sounds like it'd be fun to be on the library committee. It is not fun to be on the library committee. But there is a library committee and there is a printing committee to deal with the actual printing of laws.

Hannah McCarthy: Come on, there's a printing committee

Nick Capodice: There is! Chaired by none other than former presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar,

Archival: The [00:16:00] vice chair. I know that Zo can't be there, but maybe we could submit, is this OK? Well, submit her remarks. For the record.

Nick Capodice: That honestly is the only video I could find of a meeting of the Joint Committee on Printing, a meeting that lasted four minutes.

Archival: The opinion of the chair. The ayes have it. The rules of the committee are adopted and Senator Wicker You just voted to abolish the filibuster. I'm kidding. That's right. That is not true. That was please strike that from the record.

Nick Capodice: And finally, there are special committees [00:16:30] tied to investigations and ethics. And those aren't terribly desirable because unless you think it's going to get you good media attention, you don't want to be in charge of getting your fellow members of Congress in trouble.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, back to those super desirable committees, though. What is it that makes them so special?

Dan Cassino: The reason they're called AAA is because so many people care about them. There's big money behind them. People are going to want to lobby you, they're going to want to talk to you, and you can charge them a lot of money for access to you. Now, there's very little evidence that members of Congress actually change [00:17:00] their votes based on what they hear from lobbyists. But what lobbies can do is put things on your agenda. And so this is what lobbyists are mostly paying for lobby when lobbyists are paying a lot of money. It's not bribes. It is paying for access, right? I'm going to be able to pigeonhole you and talk to you, and that's going to take a $5000 plate dinner. If I'm going to seated next to you and now I can talk to you and tell you about this one little thing I'm worried about. And that puts it on your radar.

Hannah McCarthy: I know Dan said it's not bribery. It's paying for access, but it just sounds [00:17:30] like a lot of bribery.

Leah Rosenstiel: I should first say that, of course, bribery is illegal in the United States, right? So that's not something that we hope lobbyists are engaging in, right? There are some bribery cases, but right that is illegal. But there is absolutely evidence that members of key committees do get lobbied more right. If you're trying to lobby on an issue and you know that the committee has power over the issue. You should, of course, be lobbying the committee chair and the other committee members.

Dan Cassino: So if you are one of these [00:18:00] committees, you wind up having a lot more access to lobbyists who will pay a lot of money to get in good with you. So that means you can raise a lot of money, which means you can get reelected, which means you get power, which means you get policy.

Nick Capodice: It makes you look good when you're a chair of a committee that passes a popular piece of legislation, you can then give campaign speeches and say, "I am the one who got this bill through that gave jobs to thousands of folks in Wisconsin." You're just seen as an effective politician if you do that. And one more thing I'll add [00:18:30] about these coveted committees. If you had been on one, if you had been a chair, when your career in Congress is over. You can then say, You know what? I know a lot of people who still serve on that committee, and I know a lot about how that committee works. Maybe I could become one of those lobbyists, and they often do. It's referred to as Washington's revolving door of lobbying. And as an example, Billy Tauzin, a former chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals [00:19:00] with promotional standards for drug companies interestingly enough, he became a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies and made nineteen point three million dollars in four years.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, if it's not seniority anymore, who does get to be on these committees?

Nick Capodice: Both parties have what's called a steering committee, which chooses where people go.

Dan Cassino: The steering committee answers directly to the speaker and they're going to put people on these committees. People actually apply, say which committee they want to get on to. And the steering [00:19:30] committee will entertain those. But it really is up to the speaker who gets on which committees and the way you do. It is in the Democrats. You have a point system.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, you weren't joking about the point system?

Nick Capodice: I wasn't. It's a literal point system. Doing certain actions for your party gets your points. Hosting a fundraiser that gets over fifteen thousand to the DCCC gets you five points. Traveling to a district to campaign to flip it from red to blue gets you three points and so [00:20:00] on. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has the most points at two hundred and seventy nine, and lots of folks had zero points.

Dan Cassino: They've gamified getting on committees and getting favors from leadership. So the big thing that gets you points is giving lots of money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So the more money you give to the D Triple C or in the case of Republicans, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the more points you get now Republicans, as far as we know these are all these things are, oh, by the way, secret. They [00:20:30] don't tell you this. We just get leaks occasionally. So we actually have leaks from the Democrats in 2019 detailing their entire point system. Republicans, we think, is similar, but we don't actually have the full leaks from them.

Hannah McCarthy: And how much money are we talking here?

Nick Capodice: Well, I encourage listeners to read the full member dues report that was leaked in August of twenty nineteen. I'm going to put a link to it on the episode page of our website, civics101podcast.org. But members of those elite committees were expected to pay $600000 a year.

Hannah McCarthy: What?

Hannah McCarthy: While we [00:21:00] don't have a dues sheet for the National Republican Congressional Committee, a report from the Brookings Institute in 2017 laid out that it was very similar, one former Republican House rep was quoted as saying, "Every time you walk into an NRCC meeting, a giant gosh darn tally sheet is on prominent display that lists your name and how much you've given or haven't. It's a huge wall of shame."

Hannah McCarthy: Do they pay these dues from, like their personal bank accounts? I don't get it. Where does [00:21:30] this money come from?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. No way, Dan said Washington is a lot like Broadway. You never put your own money on the show. What you do is you transfer money from your campaign funds to the NRCC or D Triple C, or you just hold a fundraiser and say, don't put my name on the check, put the campaign committee on the checks instead.

Hannah McCarthy: So what happens if a member of Congress does not pay their committee dues?

Dan Cassino: That means that when it comes to decide who's going to move up into these scare spots that everyone wants? Well, [00:22:00] if you haven't paying your dues, it's not going to happen to you. You're not going to move up in the leadership ranks.

Nick Capodice: Notably, one member of the House has in recent years openly refused to pay her dues to the DCCC.

Archival: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is infuriating the Democrat establishment by refusing to pay party dues while bankrolling left wing challengers to the party.

Nick Capodice: Member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to even register with the D Triple C, and she tweeted quote, I give quite a bit [00:22:30] to fellow Dems. We fundraised over 300000 for others more than my dues. But as to how this action will affect her political career, we have absolutely no idea.

Hannah McCarthy: Alright, geekme, how you feelin?

Nick Capodice: Civics101@nhpr.org geekme. Drop us a line. . [00:23:00]

Nick Capodice: That's committees, folks, the place where, as Wilson said, Congress is at work. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with You Hannah McCarthy. Thank you.

Hannah McCarthy: Thank you. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and only eats her salad with a fork.

Nick Capodice: Music in this episode by Jessie Gallagher Junior85 ProleteR, Dyalla, Divkid, Scott Gratton, Corey Gray, Kevin McCloud and the GOAT Chris Zabriskie

Hannah McCarthy: Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. [00:23:30]

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Who Writes the President's Speeches?

The modern presidency includes giving upwards of 400 speeches a year. How does the president find time to do it? They don't. That's where the speechwriters come in. This is how the (ideally) inspiring, comforting, clarifying sausage gets made and former Barack Obama senior speechwriter Sarada Peri is giving us a peek behind the curtain.

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Transcript

: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the This transcript may contain errors.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
The faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.

Hannah McCarthy:
Nick, are you familiar with John F. Kennedy's inaugural address?

Nick Capodice:
I think so. You don't want me to take a crack at it, do you?

Hannah McCarthy:
Sure.

Nick Capodice:
Ask not what your country can do for you.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
You can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. That's terrible.

Nick Capodice:
That's right. Sorry, everyone. I do love that speech.

Hannah McCarthy:
My fellow citizens of the world. So I have to admit here, I'm not sure I ever actually listened to the whole thing. I just knew that line. Ask what you can do for your country, right? But to hear this youngish guy who just narrowly won the presidency speak with so much urgency and energy and certainty in his voice. I could feel the echoes in the air, you know, I could feel the change. It riled me up.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
Grief can sacrifice when we ask of you with a good conscience. Our only your reward. With history, the final judge of our deed. Let us go forth to lead the land we love. And I'm just watching this speech and thinking, who wrote that gold?

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice:
I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy:
And today we're talking about the political professionals behind the words of the politicians. We're talking about speechwriters, in other words, Nick. We're talking about ghosts.

Sarada Peri:
We're ghosts for a reason.

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Sarada Peri. She was special assistant and senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, and she spoke with former host Virginia Prescott back in 2017.

Nick Capodice:
All right, when you and Sarah to say ghosts, you really just mean a ghost writer, right?

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, weirdly, I get the sense that it goes deeper than that. A presidential speechwriter is like this spirit of the White House crafting the words that will come out of someone else's mouth.

Sarada Peri:
I would joke that I kind of started to kind of inhabit the mind and soul of Barack Obama in some way, right? So, you know, whenever something happened in the world, my first question wasn't, what do I think it was? What does Barack Obama think about this?

Nick Capodice:
All right. Hannah, I'm going to pull back the curtain for good or for ill here. But you and I do this all the time. We write a script for a show and we write one another's voices. And when I write your voice, I have to think, What would Hannah actually think about this? Would she say it this way? Would she even know this? So I get that. But writing a script for a show like ours is very different from writing a speech that's supposed to sound like it's coming from the heart and soul of a political leader. So I have to ask, was everything Barack Obama said to the public written by Sarada and other speechwriters?

Barack Obama:
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

Sarada Peri:
Well, first of all, I don't think I think it would be disingenuous for us to say that we wrote and write everything as speechwriters. The best speeches are collaborations. And so what we're really trying to do and certainly in the case of the president, but with anyone that you work with is to help them figure out what they want to say and then more often than not use their words to do that. So it's really a collaboration.

Hannah McCarthy:
Let's go back to John F. Kennedy. His speechwriter was Theodore Sorensen. Now, for one thing, Sorensen never would have admitted to being the originator of the famous ask not line. In actual fact, when asked if he wrote those words, his responses varied from Kennedy wrote it all himself to I simply don't remember to ask not. That said, here's Sorensen in an interview with WNYC back in 2008.

Theodore Sorensen:
JFK never read a speech verbatim in his life that he had not previously reviewed and revised.

Nick Capodice:
Which makes perfect sense. If you're a good politician. No matter how much you trust someone on your staff, you're still going to proofread your work and you're going to say, You know what? I wouldn't say it that way.

Hannah McCarthy:
But to answer your question, who is writing most of the words a president speaks to the public?

Theodore Sorensen:
Starting in the fall of 1956, we spent three or four years traveling the country together, just the two of us to every one of the 50 states, and you get to know somebody and his way of thinking and his way of speaking pretty well. When you do it day after day in all 50 states for three years or more. And so the ideas were his, the policies were his, the judgments and decisions were his. And when he expressed those decisions in the White House, it was not difficult to for me. Having participated in the meeting to go a few steps down the hall to my office and try to reflect, in words on paper, the first draft of the decision he wanted to convey to the public.

Nick Capodice:
So in other words, the answer is yes. The speechwriter is writing most of what a president says, but they have to get to know everything the president thinks and feels about the subject they're writing on

Hannah McCarthy:
And how that person would choose to speak about that subject. I got the sense that spending time with the president is crucial for a successful speechwriter to be able to write something for someone that they would reasonably say. You have to know them pretty well. Here's Sarada again.

Sarada Peri:
So I actually think it's less about getting how someone speaks and more about how someone thinks. And so you really want to spend time sort of immersing yourself in in their thinking, which is often in the form of, you know, talking to them and spending as much time as you can in the case of working for the president. You might get limited time with the person, but I had the good fortune of working for somebody who had been in office for a few years and so I could read every single thing President Obama had said, you know, read all of the transcripts of the interviews he had given his books, you know, even when he was on Jimmy Fallon or something.

Jimmy Fallon:
A democracy requires compromise even when you're 100 percent right.

Barack Obama:
Yeah.

Jimmy Fallon:
Did you get that from Michelle? Because I think because I've been married, I've been married.

Barack Obama:
It is. Yeah, that was a marital tip, as well as a tip about democracy...

Sarada Peri:
Really immersing yourself in all of their public comments and as well as conversations with them to kind of figure out how they see the world and use that to kind of develop your sense of their voice.

Nick Capodice:
Well, it's not just a person's voice or their personality that's on the line. If we're talking about political speechwriters, presidential speechwriters, we're talking about politics, we're talking diplomacy and foreign policy. That part that's got to originate with the politician themselves, right?

Sarada Peri:
With President Obama, we weren't making up policy. We weren't making up what he wanted to say. We got that direction from him. And you know, if you want credit for what you say that or what you write, then write it under your own byline and go and give the speech. But ultimately, you know, when President Obama gave a speech that I had worked with him on, it was he who was held accountable for it, right? Not me. And so my job is is to help him do that the best he can. But we're not there to take the credit for having helped them craft that. At least that's what I think, right?

Nick Capodice:
In terms of being held accountable, taking credit for the things you say. There are times when a president has to confront something that's difficult. It's not just the good stuff. I'm thinking about Ronald Reagan having to give a speech after the challenger disaster.

Ronald Reagan:
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process. Sense of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted, belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow.

Nick Capodice:
Or something that is much more nuanced, like George W. Bush's get on board speech after September 11th. I mean, how do you both condemn terrorism and encourage Americans to get back on airplanes?

George W. Bush:
And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry is to tell the traveling public, get on board, do your business around the country, fly and enjoy America's great destination spots.

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, why don't we take one of the least enviable speeches any presidential speechwriter would ever have to contend with?

The afternoon --

Ray Price:
On Tuesday afternoon, Al called me over to his office Tuesday, the 6th, and I came in and he was sitting there reading and just after a minute he looked up. We need a thousand words. He was going to resign. On Tuesday.

Hannah McCarthy:
August 1974, Richard Nixon and his staff decided the writing is on the wall. He is facing near certain impeachment and removal from office following the Watergate scandal. So as people call up his speechwriter, Ray Price, they tell him We need a thousand words on resigning.

Nick Capodice:
That pressure must have been unbelievable. This was the speech about something claiming personal responsibility and resigning because of their actions. How do you do that with someone else? Did did Ray Price work with Nixon to get it done right?

Hannah McCarthy:
Here's Price describing what it was like. This is from a C-SPAN interview that was done on the 15th anniversary of the August 9th, 1974 resignation.

Ray Price:
We went back and forth. He would call me, I would call him. We would revise and reedit, as we frequently did Wednesday night. We'd been through a couple of more drafts, meanwhile, and I was working in my office and I just checked back before we came in here. Some of the times I got a call from him at 8:30 with some more thoughts on the thing, and he had a quote from from from Teddy Roosevelt that he particularly wanted to use a man in the arena, which he did. And a couple of other things.

Richard Nixon:
And when my heart's dearest died, died, the light went from my life forever. That was T.R. in his 20s.

Hannah McCarthy:
That, by the way, is Nixon reading the tribute Teddy Roosevelt wrote following the death of his young wife.

Nick Capodice:
Wow, that is a very intense way of putting the end of your presidency. Was that Nixon's idea?

Hannah McCarthy:
Apparently.

Ray Price:
4:15 a.m., 4:30 a.m. he called again some more thoughts on that, working it out, 4:45, they called again. Still more thoughts on that, working it out and that section, which you'll see in a moment the whole toward the end of it, the whole section about what the important legacy is and the important thing is the world and the country must do near as it was essentially worked out in those early morning calls Thursday morning, the last call from was it seven minutes after 5:00 Thursday morning

Nick Capodice:
While we're on the subject? Hannah, what exactly is the process for the average speechwriter? I'm going to guess that writing a resignation speech involves significantly more back and forth and anxious phone calls than, say, a president's address at the Ford plant.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, to be clear, it all depends on the structure of the administration. Like Kennedy's speechwriter, who we heard from earlier, Ted Sorensen, he didn't work with a team. He was in addition to being Kennedy's speechwriter, a close presidential adviser, as well. So his process was pretty much right. It run it past Kennedy, make some edits and get it back to the president. Things tend not to work that way anymore. So let's talk about how it worked in the Obama White House.

Sarada Peri:
Every White House is different, although I, you know, think that the processes are probably kind of passed along. So in our case, our director of speechwriting, my boss Cody Keenan, would sit down with with us, with our team and kind of go through the schedule and help tell us what was coming up generally and then kind of divide up the speeches based on people's time, people's interest, you know, who had availability.

Nick Capodice:
So in the Obama White House, we're talking about a whole team of people devoted to speechwriting.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, over the years, presidential administrations have learned that that is what it takes to ensure that you've got a constant flow of speeches ready to go.

Sarada Peri:
So you get assigned a speech and it could be anything from this is happening in two days. Sorry, you better get going on it or it could be. This is happening. You know, this is a commencement address that's happening in a month and a half and you have some time. Typically, it was maybe a week ahead of time that we had. And then if it was a policy speech or something along those lines, you would meet with the relevant policy people. You learn about the policy, they tell you kind of generally what the message ought to be. And then you go back and you work on a draft. And from there I would, you know, we would write a draft. Let's say I was writing an education policy speech. I would do a draft, send it to my boss, who would then edit it, and then we would circulate it around the building.

Nick Capodice:
They circulate the speech around the building, how many people see this thing before the president presents it?

Sarada Peri:
The lawyers are seeing it. The fact checkers are seeing it, the policy, people are seeing it and everybody has an opportunity to weigh in with their thoughts. Make sure things are accurate. Make making sure that we're also appropriately reflecting the policy. And then it goes to the president who would make his edits usually by hand because he was a, you know, a writer in that way. And then we would take the draft from there and go final. There are some speeches, many actually, where we would get his input on the front end so we might meet with him as in advance as possible to get his thinking up front and then use that to incorporate into your draft and then you go back and forth with him from there. But it really depended on the nature of the speech.

Hannah McCarthy:
So Nick, I have to confess at first I was thinking to myself that would be really hard for me. You know, in the highly plausible universe in which I become president, I'm supposed to get up there and act as though the words that I'm communicating to the press and the American people and foreign nations are words that are my own. And then I realized, Oh yeah, speeches take days or weeks to work on what president has time for that?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. Aren't they giving a speech basically every day?

Hannah McCarthy:
Pretty much. And then, you know, there's the fact that a speech isn't just given to convey information to the public. It's meant to stir emotion.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, you mentioned being riled up by Kennedy. That's that's part of the point. You're supposed to feel something to come away with some kind of inspiration or comfort. And that speech, Kennedy's inaugural, is famous in part because of how it made people feel. And that's the thing about speechwriters, Hannah, that leaves me a little bit in awe their ability to create something that makes the hair stand up on your arm, something that makes you lean forward in your seat. So what's the secret? How do you write something that makes someone's stomach flip?

Sarada Peri:
So when people think about what makes a great speech, they'll often think that it's sort of really beautiful, soaring language and a kind of rhetoric. But I actually think that if you were to strip all of that away, what you would really find in the best speeches is a clear and persuasive argument. And the way you get to that is by having a central purpose sort of knowing why you're giving this speech and what exactly you want to convey so that at the end of the speech, the audience knows what it ought to think and feel and do. And what often happens when we give a speech is that if the speaker has not identified what that is, why am I delivering this and what do I want the audience to think at the end? It can kind of become what we call a Christmas tree. You sort of put a lot of ornaments on the tree. It gets filled up with ideas, but there's no sort of driving animating idea behind it. And so it gets cluttered, but a great speech kind of strips all of that away and makes an argument for one central idea.

Nick Capodice:
All right. So while we're on the subject of good presidential speeches, I have to ask a question that I might not want to know the answer to. To me, there is one speech in particular that is the antithesis of the Christmas tree. It is content and style and meaning at its finest, and being written by the president is actually pretty essential to its power. So here I go. Are you going to break my heart, Hannah, and tell me that Abraham Lincoln did not dash off the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope?

Hannah McCarthy:
I've got the answer to that, but I'm going to withhold it just a little till after the break, which is right now.

Nick Capodice:
But before we go to the break, dear listener, it is my quick weekly reminder that while this show is and always will be free to You, it's not free to make. We want to ensure that we can continue bringing you the ins and outs of American democracy for years to come. And if you can lend us a helping hand in that mission, we would be much obliged. If you can spare a little pocket change or a lot of pocket change, consider making a gift at our website. You can get there by clicking the Donate button at civics101podcast.org. Many, many, many, many thanks.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right, we're back.

Nick Capodice:
All right. Hannah, you were just about to tell me whether one of the more romantic stories about Abraham Lincoln and his towering genius is in fact true.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right, give me the story that you have heard.

Nick Capodice:
Ok, the story I know. And it's the only story that maybe I want to know is that Abraham Lincoln en route to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to dedicate a new national cemetery, wrote one of the greatest orators ever to be delivered on the back of a big envelope while sitting on a train.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, that story is not true.

Nick Capodice:
Why are you doing this?

Hannah McCarthy:
I why I read one of the most thorough historical deep dives into this question that I could find. The closest thing to truth that we have got is that Lincoln had a full two weeks to work on his remarks prior to arriving at Gettysburg, and he used them. The speech was mostly, if not entirely, completed by the time he arrived in Pennsylvania in 1863. There are some eyewitness accounts of his drafting a copy of the speech on the back of a yellow government envelope once at the hotel in Gettysburg. But this speech was not a stroke of sudden, impromptu genius.

Nick Capodice:
But he did, in fact, write it.

Hannah McCarthy:
Honest Abe? Yeah, he wrote it.

Nick Capodice:
All right, I can live with that. I just was worried I was going to hear that the Gettysburg Address was the work of a team of presidential ghostwriters

Colin Powell:
Four score, and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent

Colin Powell:
A new nation...

Hannah McCarthy:
Because that would have hurt, right?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy:
Because there's this image of Abraham Lincoln laboring over that speech. This sense that it was a part of him that he was conveying to the American public.

Colin Powell:
Or any nation so conceived. And so dedicated can long endure...

Hannah McCarthy:
If that isn't the case, then that speech somehow loses potency. It feels more like political messaging than it does a heartfelt message to the American people.

Nick Capodice:
Exactly. And which is so different from today. We just heard the ins and outs of political speechwriting from a recent administration, and I'm in no way wounded by the idea that Obama had people crafting his words didn't bother me at all. So what happened? At what point did presidents stop writing all their own speeches?

Hannah McCarthy:
At no point, George Washington's inaugural address was written in large part by James Madison. Alexander Hamilton contributed a lot to Washington's famous farewell address.

Nick Capodice:
I had no idea.

Hannah McCarthy:
You weren't supposed to have any idea because for a long time, it was totally taboo for a president to admit to having help with speechwriting. When William Henry Harrison ran for president in 1840, people were not happy that he had a correspondence committee to help him answer letters. Citizens wanted a leader who appeared genuine and human, not someone whose message was carefully cultivated by a team. Still, Mark Twain secretly helped President Grant to write his memoir. Warren Harding had a full time ghostwriter on the DL in the 1920s.

Nick Capodice:
All right, so my question is, was Lincoln just the exception to the rule? Did presidents leave speechwriting to the professionals from the very beginning?

Hannah McCarthy:
Not entirely. But then they really didn't have to consider the fact that Lincoln gave maybe sixteen speeches in a year, whereas Obama, in his first year of the presidency, gave over 400.

Nick Capodice:
That's outlandish. That's more than a speech a day, just constant speeches.

Hannah McCarthy:
That is the modern presidency. In the earlier days of governing the country, though, there was time to craft your own speeches or take a lot of time to work closely with people you trusted to get your message across. I mean, Woodrow Wilson, for example, is pretty widely accepted as having written all of his own speeches. It wasn't really until Franklin Delano Roosevelt that all of that changed the presidency had just gotten too big.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Harry Truman:
If we fail in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
It is what the book of history and not with isolated pages that the United States will ever wish to be identified.

Hannah McCarthy:
By the time Kennedy was in office, he was calling his speechwriter his intellectual blood bank.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
I am talking about genuine peace, a kind of peace that makes life on Earth worth living if the kind that enables men and nations to grow.

Nick Capodice:
In other words, Kennedy's speechwriter was the life support for a major component of the presidency.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, we should emphasize here that speeches are very high stakes thing. They are the most public and widely publicized thing that a president regularly does. Having a really good speechwriter can be a true boon to the presidency.

Nick Capodice:
It's interesting. And even though the public is aware and accepting of speechwriters nowadays, there does seem to be a lingering desire for the unpolished, un practiced, seemingly unwritten presidential speech. And we've got a really recent example of that in former President Donald Trump. He prided himself on riffing and was not one to admit to reading words other people had written for him. And a lot of people were totally enamored of that.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, I actually recently watched a montage that The Washington Post put together, illustrating some of Trump's most off the cuff speeches.

Donald Trump:
You have you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that. But I'll say it right now. I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. It says, I love all of the people of our country. I didn't say, I love you because you're black or I love you because you're white or I love you because you're from Japan or you're from China, or you're from Kenya, or you're from Scotland or Sweden. I love all the people of our country,

Hannah McCarthy:
And I think, Nick, the reason you have voters who watch this kind of performance and really like it is that the one thing that did not die out with the modern presidency is this very American desire for seeming authenticity in a president. If a politician seems obviously staged, it gets our hackles up or the very least, it gets a heavy eye roll. And actually, this brings me back to this question I have about modern, definitely ghostwritten presidential speeches. What is going on in these operations that has an effect that is moving or calming or inspiring regardless of where it originated? Why is it OK that Kennedy did not write his Moon speech that his intellectual blood bank Ted Sorensen did?

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things? Not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal...

Nick Capodice:
You want my honest take?

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, please.

Nick Capodice:
Because that's a promise the president can make. The president has power. If Ted Sorensen promised us the Moon, it wouldn't mean a thing because he couldn't do it. And that power also means that the president can read someone else's words without penalty. Really, the question is, can the president perform well? Are they a good orator? Can they stir something in the hearts of the American people?

Hannah McCarthy:
Which Kennedy pretty much knocked out of the park, right? He was considered a consummate performer. And to your point about power, I want to play you one last thing, Nick.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
In short, both the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace. And in holding the arms race agreements to this end, are in the interests of the Soviet Union, as well as ours and even the most hostile nations.

Theodore Sorensen:
I know many people think the inaugural was his best, but this was better and more important because it said more in addition to the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere than what you mentioned. That speech called for a reexamination of the Cold War. No president had ever done that. It called for a reexamination of our relations with the Soviet Union. No president had ever done that. It called for a reexamination, part of which you heard of what we mean by peace itself. So it was an important speech and I had a lot to do with it. Yes. Uh, the president...

Nick Capodice:
So Sorensen is saying, Yeah, I wrote that. What does that matter? These are the president's ideas. This is the president breaking new ground because it's the president's ground to break. I am simply the arm of the administration that makes these ideas great on paper. The president is the one who makes the great speech,

Theodore Sorensen:
And on the way back, he made the decision and cleared it on the Air Force One telephone with Bob McNamara in Defense and Mac Bundy back in the White House to add to that speech, the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere, which he hoped would help bring the Soviets to the bargaining table. And it did. And later that same summer, a treaty was signed in Moscow, the first step toward arms control in the nuclear age the limited nuclear test ban treaty. So speeches can have consequences. They aren't just empty words.

Nick Capodice:
You know, you talked about speechwriters as these ghosts of the White House, Hannah. But when you think about it like this, the way they capture policy desires pinned them to a page, make them beautiful or funny and then hand them back to the leader of the free world to present to the American people. They're more like mediums than they are ghosts. The president needs to say something, and they have the time and the writing chops to make those words happen.

Hannah McCarthy:
This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Ketsa, Xylo Zico and Evan Schaefer. If you like this episode and want more, you can check out our whole catalog of adventures in American democracy and history at civics101podcast.org. And there is a really easy way to never miss a Civics episode. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Civic 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy: The faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, are you familiar with John F. Kennedy's inaugural address?

Nick Capodice: I think so. You don't want me to take a crack at it, do you?

Hannah McCarthy: Sure.

Nick Capodice: Ask not what your country can do for you.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: You can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. That's terrible.

Nick Capodice: That's right. Sorry, everyone. [00:00:30] I do love that speech.

Hannah McCarthy: My fellow citizens of the world. So I have to admit here, I'm not sure I ever actually listened to the whole thing. I just knew that line. Ask what you can do for your country, right? But to hear this youngish guy who just narrowly won the presidency speak with so much urgency and energy and certainty in his voice. I could feel the echoes in the air, you know, I could feel [00:01:00] the change. It riled me up.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Grief can sacrifice when we ask of you with a good conscience. Our only your reward. With history, the final judge of our deed. Let us go forth to lead the land we love. And I'm just watching this speech and thinking, who wrote that gold?

Hannah McCarthy: Th [00:01:30]is is Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And today we're talking about the political professionals behind the words of the politicians. We're talking about speechwriters, in other words, Nick. We're talking about ghosts.

Sarada Peri: We're ghosts for a reason.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Sarada Peri. She was special assistant and senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, and she spoke with former host Virginia Prescott back in 2017.

Nick Capodice: All right, when you and Sarah to say ghosts, you really just mean a ghost writer, [00:02:00] right?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, weirdly, I get the sense that it goes deeper than that. A presidential speechwriter is like this spirit of the White House crafting the words that will come out of someone else's mouth.

Sarada Peri: I would joke that I kind of started to kind of inhabit the mind and soul of Barack Obama in some way, right? So, you know, whenever something happened in the world, my first question wasn't, what do I think it was? What does Barack Obama think about this?

Nick Capodice: All right. Hannah, I'm going to pull back the curtain for good or for ill here. But [00:02:30] you and I do this all the time. We write a script for a show and we write one another's voices. And when I write your voice, I have to think, What would Hannah actually think about this? Would she say it this way? Would she even know this? So I get that. But writing a script for a show like ours is very different from writing a speech that's supposed to sound like it's coming from the heart and soul of a political leader. So I have to ask, was everything Barack Obama said to the public written [00:03:00] by Sarada and other speechwriters?

Barack Obama: It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

Sarada Peri: Well, first of all, I don't think I think it would be disingenuous for us to say that we wrote and write everything as speechwriters. The best speeches are collaborations. And so what we're really trying to do and certainly [00:03:30] in the case of the president, but with anyone that you work with is to help them figure out what they want to say and then more often than not use their words to do that. So it's really a collaboration.

Hannah McCarthy: Let's go back to John F. Kennedy. His speechwriter was Theodore Sorensen. Now, for one thing, Sorensen never would have admitted to being the originator of the famous ask not line. In actual fact, when asked if he wrote those words, his responses varied from Kennedy wrote it all himself to I [00:04:00] simply don't remember to ask not. That said, here's Sorensen in an interview with WNYC back in 2008.

Theodore Sorensen: JFK never read a speech verbatim in his life that he had not previously reviewed and revised.

Nick Capodice: Which makes perfect sense. If you're a good politician. No matter how much you trust someone on your staff, you're still going to proofread your work and you're going to say, You know what? I wouldn't say it that way.

Hannah McCarthy: But to answer your question, who is writing most of [00:04:30] the words a president speaks to the public?

Theodore Sorensen: Starting in the fall of 1956, we spent three or four years traveling the country together, just the two of us to every one of the 50 states, and you get to know somebody and his way of thinking and his way of speaking pretty well. When you do it day after day in all 50 states for three years or more. And so the ideas [00:05:00] were his, the policies were his, the judgments and decisions were his. And when he expressed those decisions in the White House, it was not difficult to for me. Having participated in the meeting to go a few steps down the hall to my office and try to reflect, in words on paper, the first draft of the decision he wanted to convey to the public.

Nick Capodice: So [00:05:30] in other words, the answer is yes. The speechwriter is writing most of what a president says, but they have to get to know everything the president thinks and feels about the subject they're writing on

Hannah McCarthy: And how that person would choose to speak about that subject. I got the sense that spending time with the president is crucial for a successful speechwriter to be able to write something for someone that they would reasonably say. You have to know them pretty well. Here's Sarada again.

Sarada Peri: So I actually [00:06:00] think it's less about getting how someone speaks and more about how someone thinks. And so you really want to spend time sort of immersing yourself in in their thinking, which is often in the form of, you know, talking to them and spending as much time as you can in the case of working for the president. You might get limited time with the person, but I had the good fortune of working for somebody who had been in office for a few years and so I could read every single thing President Obama had said, you know, read all of the transcripts of the interviews he had given [00:06:30] his books, you know, even when he was on Jimmy Fallon or something.

Jimmy Fallon: A democracy requires compromise even when you're 100 percent right.

Barack Obama: Yeah.

Jimmy Fallon: Did you get that from Michelle? Because I think because I've been married, I've been married.

Barack Obama: It is. Yeah, that was a marital tip, as well as a tip about democracy...

Sarada Peri: Really immersing yourself in all of their public comments and as well as conversations with them to kind of figure out how they see the world and [00:07:00] use that to kind of develop your sense of their voice.

Nick Capodice: Well, it's not just a person's voice or their personality that's on the line. If we're talking about political speechwriters, presidential speechwriters, we're talking about politics, we're talking diplomacy and foreign policy. That part that's got to originate with the politician themselves, right?

Sarada Peri: With President Obama, we weren't making up policy. We weren't making up what he wanted to say. We got that direction from him. And you know, if you want credit for [00:07:30] what you say that or what you write, then write it under your own byline and go and give the speech. But ultimately, you know, when President Obama gave a speech that I had worked with him on, it was he who was held accountable for it, right? Not me. And so my job is is to help him do that the best he can. But we're not there to take the credit for having helped them craft that. At least that's what I think, right?

Nick Capodice: In terms of being held accountable, taking credit for the things you say. There are times when a president has to confront something that's difficult. It's not just the good stuff. [00:08:00] I'm thinking about Ronald Reagan having to give a speech after the challenger disaster.

Ronald Reagan: And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process. Sense of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted, belongs to the brave. The Challenger [00:08:30] crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow.

Nick Capodice: Or something that is much more nuanced, like George W. Bush's get on board speech after September 11th. I mean, how do you both condemn terrorism and encourage Americans to get back on airplanes?

George W. Bush: And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry is to tell the traveling public, get on board, do your business [00:09:00] around the country, fly and enjoy America's great destination spots.

Hannah McCarthy: Well, why don't we take one of the least enviable speeches any presidential speechwriter would ever have to contend with?

The afternoon --

Ray Price: On Tuesday afternoon, Al called me over to his office Tuesday, the 6th, and I came in and he was sitting there reading and just after a minute he looked up. We need a thousand words. He was going to resign. On Tuesday.

Hannah McCarthy: August [00:09:30] 1974, Richard Nixon and his staff decided the writing is on the wall. He is facing near certain impeachment and removal from office following the Watergate scandal. So as people call up his speechwriter, Ray Price, they tell him We need a thousand words on resigning.

Nick Capodice: That pressure must have been unbelievable. This was the speech about something claiming personal responsibility and resigning because of [00:10:00] their actions. How do you do that with someone else? Did did Ray Price work with Nixon to get it done right?

Hannah McCarthy: Here's Price describing what it was like. This is from a C-SPAN interview that was done on the 15th anniversary of the August 9th, 1974 resignation.

Ray Price: We went back and forth. He would call me, I would call him. We would revise and reedit, as we frequently did Wednesday night. We'd been through a couple of more drafts, meanwhile, and I was working in my office and I just checked back [00:10:30] before we came in here. Some of the times I got a call from him at 8:30 with some more thoughts on the thing, and he had a quote from from from Teddy Roosevelt that he particularly wanted to use a man in the arena, which he did. And a couple of other things.

Richard Nixon: And when my heart's dearest died, died, the light went from my life forever. That [00:11:00] was T.R. in his 20s.

Hannah McCarthy: That, by the way, is Nixon reading the tribute Teddy Roosevelt wrote following the death of his young wife.

Nick Capodice: Wow, that is a very intense way of putting the end of your presidency. Was that Nixon's idea?

Hannah McCarthy: Apparently.

Ray Price: 4:15 a.m., 4:30 a.m. he called again some more thoughts on that, working it out, 4:45, they called again. Still more thoughts on that, working it out and that section, which you'll see in a moment the whole toward the end of it, the whole section about what the important [00:11:30] legacy is and the important thing is the world and the country must do near as it was essentially worked out in those early morning calls Thursday morning, the last call from was it seven minutes after 5:00 Thursday morning

Nick Capodice: While we're on the subject? Hannah, what exactly is the process for the average speechwriter? I'm going to guess that writing a resignation speech involves significantly more back and forth and anxious phone calls than, say, a president's address at the Ford plant.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, to [00:12:00] be clear, it all depends on the structure of the administration. Like Kennedy's speechwriter, who we heard from earlier, Ted Sorensen, he didn't work with a team. He was in addition to being Kennedy's speechwriter, a close presidential adviser, as well. So his process was pretty much right. It run it past Kennedy, make some edits and get it back to the president. Things tend not to work that way anymore. So let's talk about how it worked in the Obama White House.

Sarada Peri: Every White House is different, although I, you know, think that the processes are probably [00:12:30] kind of passed along. So in our case, our director of speechwriting, my boss Cody Keenan, would sit down with with us, with our team and kind of go through the schedule and help tell us what was coming up generally and then kind of divide up the speeches based on people's time, people's interest, you know, who had availability.

Nick Capodice: So in the Obama White House, we're talking about a whole team of people devoted to speechwriting.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, over the years, presidential administrations have learned that that is what it takes to ensure that you've got a constant flow of speeches [00:13:00] ready to go.

Sarada Peri: So you get assigned a speech and it could be anything from this is happening in two days. Sorry, you better get going on it or it could be. This is happening. You know, this is a commencement address that's happening in a month and a half and you have some time. Typically, it was maybe a week ahead of time that we had. And then if it was a policy speech or something along those lines, you would meet with the relevant policy people. You learn about the policy, they tell you kind of generally what the message ought to be. And then you go back and you work on a draft. And [00:13:30] from there I would, you know, we would write a draft. Let's say I was writing an education policy speech. I would do a draft, send it to my boss, who would then edit it, and then we would circulate it around the building.

Nick Capodice: They circulate the speech around the building, how many people see this thing before the president presents it?

Sarada Peri: The lawyers are seeing it. The fact checkers are seeing it, the policy, people are seeing it and everybody has an opportunity to weigh in with their thoughts. Make sure things are accurate. Make making sure that we're also appropriately [00:14:00] reflecting the policy. And then it goes to the president who would make his edits usually by hand because he was a, you know, a writer in that way. And then we would take the draft from there and go final. There are some speeches, many actually, where we would get his input on the front end so we might meet with him as in advance as possible to get his thinking up front and then use that to incorporate into your draft and then you go back and forth with him from there. But it really depended on the nature of the speech. [00:14:30]

Hannah McCarthy: So Nick, I have to confess at first I was thinking to myself that would be really hard for me. You know, in the highly plausible universe in which I become president, I'm supposed to get up there and act as though the words that I'm communicating to the press and the American people and foreign nations are words that are my own. And then I realized, Oh yeah, speeches take days or weeks to work on what president has time for that?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. Aren't they giving a speech basically every day? [00:15:00]

Hannah McCarthy: Pretty much. And then, you know, there's the fact that a speech isn't just given to convey information to the public. It's meant to stir emotion.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, you mentioned being riled up by Kennedy. That's that's part of the point. You're supposed to feel something to come away with some kind of inspiration or comfort. And that speech, Kennedy's inaugural, is famous in part because of how it made people feel. And that's the thing about speechwriters, Hannah, that leaves me a little bit in awe [00:15:30] their ability to create something that makes the hair stand up on your arm, something that makes you lean forward in your seat. So what's the secret? How do you write something that makes someone's stomach flip?

Sarada Peri: So when people think about what makes a great speech, they'll often think that it's sort of really beautiful, soaring language and a kind of rhetoric. But I actually think that if you were to strip all of that away, what you would really find in the best [00:16:00] speeches is a clear and persuasive argument. And the way you get to that is by having a central purpose sort of knowing why you're giving this speech and what exactly you want to convey so that at the end of the speech, the audience knows what it ought to think and feel and do. And what often happens when we give a speech is that if the speaker has not identified what that is, why am I delivering [00:16:30] this and what do I want the audience to think at the end? It can kind of become what we call a Christmas tree. You sort of put a lot of ornaments on the tree. It gets filled up with ideas, but there's no sort of driving animating idea behind it. And so it gets cluttered, but a great speech kind of strips all of that away and makes an argument for one central idea.

Nick Capodice: All right. So while we're on the subject of good presidential speeches, I have to ask a question that I might not want to know the answer to. To me, there is one speech in particular [00:17:00] that is the antithesis of the Christmas tree. It is content and style and meaning at its finest, and being written by the president is actually pretty essential to its power. So here I go. Are you going to break my heart, Hannah, and tell me that Abraham Lincoln did not dash off the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope?

Hannah McCarthy: I've got the answer to that, but I'm going to withhold it just a little till after the break, which is right now.

Nick Capodice: But [00:17:30] before we go to the break, dear listener, it is my quick weekly reminder that while this show is and always will be free to You, it's not free to make. We want to ensure that we can continue bringing you the ins and outs of American democracy for years to come. And if you can lend us a helping hand in that mission, we would be much obliged. If you can spare a little pocket change or a lot of pocket change, consider making a gift at our website. You can get there by clicking the Donate button at civics101podcast.org. Many, many, many, many thanks. [00:18:00]

Hannah McCarthy: All right, we're back.

Nick Capodice: All right. Hannah, you were just about to tell me whether one of the more romantic stories about Abraham Lincoln and his towering genius is in fact true.

Hannah McCarthy: All right, give me the story that you have heard.

Nick Capodice: Ok, the story I know. And it's the only story that maybe I want to know [00:18:30] is that Abraham Lincoln en route to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to dedicate a new national cemetery, wrote one of the greatest orators ever to be delivered on the back of a big envelope while sitting on a train.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, that story is not true.

Nick Capodice: Why are you doing this?

Hannah McCarthy: I why I read one of the most thorough historical deep dives into this question that I could find. The closest thing to truth that we have got is that Lincoln had a full two weeks [00:19:00] to work on his remarks prior to arriving at Gettysburg, and he used them. The speech was mostly, if not entirely, completed by the time he arrived in Pennsylvania in 1863. There are some eyewitness accounts of his drafting a copy of the speech on the back of a yellow government envelope once at the hotel in Gettysburg. But this speech was not a stroke of sudden, impromptu genius.

Nick Capodice: But he did, in fact, write it.

Hannah McCarthy: Honest Abe? Yeah, he wrote [00:19:30] it.

Nick Capodice: All right, I can live with that. I just was worried I was going to hear that the Gettysburg Address was the work of a team of presidential ghostwriters

Colin Powell: Four score, and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent

Colin Powell: A new nation...

Hannah McCarthy: Because that would have hurt, right?

Nick Capodice: Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: Because there's this image of Abraham Lincoln laboring over that speech. This sense that it was a part of him that he was conveying to the American public.

Colin Powell: Or any nation so conceived. And so dedicated can long endure...

Hannah McCarthy: If that [00:20:00] isn't the case, then that speech somehow loses potency. It feels more like political messaging than it does a heartfelt message to the American people.

Nick Capodice: Exactly. And which is so different from today. We just heard the ins and outs of political speechwriting from a recent administration, and I'm in no way wounded by the idea that Obama had people crafting his words didn't bother me at all. So what happened? At what point did presidents stop writing all their own speeches? [00:20:30]

Hannah McCarthy: At no point, George Washington's inaugural address was written in large part by James Madison. Alexander Hamilton contributed a lot to Washington's famous farewell address.

Nick Capodice: I had no idea.

Hannah McCarthy: You weren't supposed to have any idea because for a long time, it was totally taboo for a president to admit to having help with speechwriting. When William Henry Harrison ran for president in 1840, people were not happy that he had a correspondence committee to help him [00:21:00] answer letters. Citizens wanted a leader who appeared genuine and human, not someone whose message was carefully cultivated by a team. Still, Mark Twain secretly helped President Grant to write his memoir. Warren Harding had a full time ghostwriter on the DL in the 1920s.

Nick Capodice: All right, so my question is, was Lincoln just the exception to the rule? Did presidents leave speechwriting to the professionals from the very beginning?

Hannah McCarthy: Not entirely. But then they really [00:21:30] didn't have to consider the fact that Lincoln gave maybe sixteen speeches in a year, whereas Obama, in his first year of the presidency, gave over 400.

Nick Capodice: That's outlandish. That's more than a speech a day, just constant speeches.

Hannah McCarthy: That is the modern presidency. In the earlier days of governing the country, though, there was time to craft your own speeches or take a lot of time to work closely with people you trusted to get your message across. I [00:22:00] mean, Woodrow Wilson, for example, is pretty widely accepted as having written all of his own speeches. It wasn't really until Franklin Delano Roosevelt that all of that changed the presidency had just gotten too big.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Harry Truman: If we fail in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely [00:22:30] endanger the welfare of this nation.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: It is what the book of history and not with isolated pages that the United States will ever wish to be identified.

Hannah McCarthy: By the time Kennedy was in office, he was calling his speechwriter his intellectual blood bank.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: I am talking about genuine peace, a kind of peace that makes life on Earth worth living if the kind that enables men and nations to grow.

Nick Capodice: In other words, Kennedy's speechwriter was the life support for a major [00:23:00] component of the presidency.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, we should emphasize here that speeches are very high stakes thing. They are the most public and widely publicized thing that a president regularly does. Having a really good speechwriter can be a true boon to the presidency.

Nick Capodice: It's interesting. And even though the public is aware and accepting of speechwriters nowadays, there does seem to be a lingering desire for the unpolished, un practiced, seemingly [00:23:30] unwritten presidential speech. And we've got a really recent example of that in former President Donald Trump. He prided himself on riffing and was not one to admit to reading words other people had written for him. And a lot of people were totally enamored of that.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I actually recently watched a montage that The Washington Post put together, illustrating some of Trump's most off the cuff speeches.

Donald Trump: You have you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to [00:24:00] say that. But I'll say it right now. I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. It says, I love all of the people of our country. I didn't say, I love you because you're black or I love you because you're white or I love you because you're from Japan or you're from China, [00:24:30] or you're from Kenya, or you're from Scotland or Sweden. I love all the people of our country,

Hannah McCarthy: And I think, Nick, the reason you have voters who watch this kind of performance and really like it is that the one thing that did not die out with the modern presidency is this very American desire for seeming authenticity in a president. If a politician seems obviously staged, it gets our hackles up or the very least, it gets a heavy eye roll. [00:25:00] And actually, this brings me back to this question I have about modern, definitely ghostwritten presidential speeches. What is going on in these operations that has an effect that is moving or calming or inspiring regardless of where it originated? Why is it OK that Kennedy did not write his Moon speech that his intellectual blood bank Ted Sorensen did?

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: We choose [00:25:30] to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things? Not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal...

Nick Capodice: You want my honest take?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, please.

Nick Capodice: Because that's a promise the president can make. The president has power. If Ted Sorensen promised us the Moon, it wouldn't mean a thing because he couldn't do it. And that power also means that the president can read someone else's words without penalty. [00:26:00] Really, the question is, can the president perform well? Are they a good orator? Can they stir something in the hearts of the American people?

Hannah McCarthy: Which Kennedy pretty much knocked out of the park, right? He was considered a consummate performer. And to your point about power, I want to play you one last thing, Nick.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: In short, both the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies have a mutually deep interest in a [00:26:30] just and genuine peace. And in holding the arms race agreements to this end, are in the interests of the Soviet Union, as well as ours and even the most hostile nations.

Theodore Sorensen: I know many people think the inaugural was his best, but this was better and more important because it said more in addition to the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere than what you mentioned. That [00:27:00] speech called for a reexamination of the Cold War. No president had ever done that. It called for a reexamination of our relations with the Soviet Union. No president had ever done that. It called for a reexamination, part of which you heard of what we mean by peace itself. So it was an important speech and I had a lot to do with it. Yes. Uh, the president...

Nick Capodice: So Sorensen is saying, Yeah, [00:27:30] I wrote that. What does that matter? These are the president's ideas. This is the president breaking new ground because it's the president's ground to break. I am simply the arm of the administration that makes these ideas great on paper. The president is the one who makes the great speech,

Theodore Sorensen: And on the way back, he made the decision and cleared it on the Air Force One telephone with Bob McNamara in Defense and Mac Bundy back [00:28:00] in the White House to add to that speech, the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere, which he hoped would help bring the Soviets to the bargaining table. And it did. And later that same summer, a treaty was signed in Moscow, the first step toward arms control in the nuclear age the limited nuclear test [00:28:30] ban treaty. So speeches can have consequences. They aren't just empty words.

Nick Capodice: You know, you talked about speechwriters as these ghosts of the White House, Hannah. But when you think about it like this, the way they capture policy desires pinned them to a page, make them beautiful or funny and then hand them back to the leader of the free world to present to the American people. [00:29:00] They're more like mediums than they are ghosts. The president needs to say something, and they have the time and the writing chops to make those words happen.

Hannah McCarthy: This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Ketsa, Xylo Zico [00:29:30] and Evan Schaefer. If you like this episode and want more, you can check out our whole catalog of adventures in American democracy and history at civics101podcast.org. And there is a really easy way to never miss a Civics episode. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Civic 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

How Does Security Clearance Work?

From top secret (the names and locations of intelligence agents) to confidential (the drinking habits of a prime minister) the federal government has a lot of sensitive information. What are the different levels of security clearance, and how does clearance work?

Helping us untangle this web is Juliette Kayyem, professor of international security at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and national security analyst for CNN. She formerly served as Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama. 

Security Clearance - Final1.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Security Clearance - Final1.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah, if you had top secret clearance and you could access any classified government information. What would you want to know about?

Hannah McCarthy:
I think I would want to know what the real plan is in the event of nuclear war.

Dr. Strangelove clip:
No point in you getting hysterical at a moment like this.

Hannah McCarthy:
I bet it's a little more grim than we think it is. What about you?

Nick Capodice:
The Mary Celeste.

Hannah McCarthy:
Is it the ghost ship?

Nick Capodice:
When it was discovered no one was on board and there was no sign of a scuffle. It was like the eighteen hundreds, though I don't think that top secret, top secret clearance is going to tell me about the Mary Celeste. I have another question for you, though. How good are you at keeping secrets?

Hannah McCarthy:
I think I'm pretty good. But then at the same time, when I buy someone something fun for their birthday, like I could just tell you right now. I've always prided myself on the idea that I think I would be able to keep any secret if I really had to, if the stakes were high enough and it was like people will get hurt if you share the secret. Yeah, I'm taking it to my grave. Like, what a privilege.

Top Gun clip:
It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Nick Capodice:
Well, there's a job, Hannah, that requires that kind of dedication, and I think you just might be the person for it.

Bridesmaids clip:
I work for the government. I have the highest possible security clearance. Don't repeat that. I can't protect you

Nick Capodice:
Because the federal government has a huge amount of sensitive information, from military movements to criminal investigations to scientific and technological developments to information about individuals. Close to three million people have some form of security clearance, which gives them access to that classified information.

The Post clip:
Must be precious cargo. Yeah, it's just government secrets.

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice:
And I'm Nick Capodice. Today, we're talking about how the government keeps its secrets and what it takes to get into the classified club.

The Simpsons:
Mr. Simpson, please cover your ears while I say the secret access word. Geez.

Nick Capodice:
Today's guest is Juliette Kayyem, professor of international security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and National Security Analyst for CNN. She formerly served as assistant secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama, and she spoke with her former host, Virginia Prescott, in Twenty Seventeen.

Juliette Kayyem:
Ok, so there's three levels, at least for the federal government. The top level is, of course, top secret. That's information that, if disclosed, would cause exceptionally grave damage, that's the standard.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok. Hang on. What does she mean by exceptionally grave damage?

Nick Capodice:
Some examples of exceptionally grave damage include armed hostilities against the United States or its allies. The compromise of vital national defense plans. Or complex cryptologic and communications intelligence systems. The revelation of sensitive intelligence operations. And finally, the disclosure of scientific or technological developments vital to national security.

Hannah McCarthy:
But is that... Just boil it down for me?

Nick Capodice:
Basically, top secret information is the most important information, and that classification is used relatively sparingly.

Hannah McCarthy:
So how does the government decide what rises to that very highest level of top secret?

Nick Capodice:
There is a way to distinguish between top secret and everything else.

Juliette Kayyem:
The key difference between the top secret and the other classification levels is that top secret tends to show to the reader, say the president or secretary of defense, what we call sources and methods. How are we getting that information? You know, we have a spy in an ISIS ring in Germany, and he's telling us this. And so gosh, if that were disclosed or made public, You basically someone that person would die.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right. Got it. Top secret is the highest clearance. What are the other two?

Juliette Kayyem:
The next is secret, which is, if disclosed or released, would cause serious damage and then confidential. It just tends to be. These are things that the government needs to know for a variety of reasons, and it could be expected to cause damage.

Hannah McCarthy:
It's so interesting that you've got these qualifications of exceptionally serious, serious and just damage, right? Like someone in the government had to sit down and define that. What does that mean? I wouldn't even know how to define that for my own self. So you've got top secret, that's exceptionally grave damage, right? Secret is serious damage, but what is the difference between exceptionally grave and serious damage?

Nick Capodice:
This is information that is still pretty important, but without those sources and methods. So it could be intel about an ISIS ring in Germany, but it wouldn't include the people who got the information or how they got it.

Hannah McCarthy:
But OK, when it comes to confidential, right? Juliette said it could just cause damage. So is that like, you know, like casual, callous gossip,

Nick Capodice:
You're actually not far off!

Juliette Kayyem:
A good example of that would be maybe a memo from someone in the State Department discussing the, you know, the drinking habits of the prime minister of some country. You just don't want, you know, you don't want that out there.

Hannah McCarthy:
My question is if someone has top secret security clearance. Are they able to know all of the government secrets about anything?

Nick Capodice:
That would be cool, wouldn't it? But it's a little more complicated than that.

Juliette Kayyem:
It's very compartmentalized and rightfully so so that the fact that you have the access does not grant you the right to see all materials that are designated as, say, top secret. In other words, if I have top secret clearance as relates to, say, Homeland Security issues, I can't just email, you know, or call someone in the department security offices and say, I'm really interested in North Korea's nuclear policy. Can I see those top secret materials?

Nick Capodice:
And that's where the phrase "need to know" comes in.

The Rock clip:
You're on a need to know basis. And you don't need to know.

Nick Capodice:
Even if someone has the clearance for certain intelligence, they may not have access to it unless they need that information for a specific purpose. This is important because, as we said earlier, around three million people have some sort of security clearance, and that group isn't just made up of government employees and military personnel.

Juliette Kayyem:
For example, the Department of Defense may ask a team of cyber experts to come in and and give them advice on cybersecurity. So that's why outsiders sometimes have security clearances.

Nick Capodice:
However, the majority of people who have clearance about 70 percent in 2013 were military and government employees like Juliette, who worked for the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama.

Hannah McCarthy:
So I've heard a lot, especially in the past, like six to eight years or so about applying for security clearance, right. And how it can be this long, massive process.

Nick Capodice:
If you've been invited to do work that requires a clearance, you have to undergo an investigation. The government digs into your personal information and your background to determine if you're trustworthy.

Hannah McCarthy:
That sounds stressful. So who is in charge of approving or denying security clearance?

Nick Capodice:
Most agencies and departments of the government, they conduct their own investigations using the same basic procedures and an investigation service provider or ISP. The main ISP is the Office of Personnel and Management, which is an independent agency in the executive branch. And you want to take a guess, Hanna, as to which department has the most security clearances.

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm going to guess the one that's conducting secret, dangerous operations all over the world that they don't want people to know about, a.k.a. the Department of Defense.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, you got it. The Department of Defense holds over 80 percent of security clearances, and the DOD has its own investigation, service provider called the Defense Investigative Service.

Hannah McCarthy:
When you say investigation, like what does that actually mean?

Nick Capodice:
Well, essentially the government is trying to create a timeline of your life, including all the big moments and all the people in it.

Juliette Kayyem:
So in my case, and in most cases, what you do is you, you know, fill out the famous forms with lots of details about where you've lived, your debt, your marital status, your husband or wife or partners, actions where you've traveled, who you've known, who you've talked to, any questions about drug use about your, you know, support of the United States and its government. It is painful from any from any perspective.

Nick Capodice:
The form she's talking about is called the SF 86. It's got all your identifying information, including your proof of citizenship. By the way, Hannah, only U.S. citizens can get security clearance, though in some circumstances a non-U.S. citizen can receive a limited access authorization.

Hannah McCarthy:
A lifetime in America has taught me that government forms are boring enough as it is, so I can only imagine that this is the epitome of the boring government form.

Nick Capodice:
You also have to provide information about your parents and your siblings, including step parents, half and step siblings, children and in-laws.

Hannah McCarthy:
So if you have any kind of family drama which is every human being on the planet, I can imagine that can get a little tough or awkward.

Nick Capodice:
And then there is a record of your mental and psychological health, your criminal record and a history of drug and alcohol use. And here's one that is super interesting to me your financial record. What I was most shocked to learn is that over half of the people who are denied security clearance are denied because of financial issues like significant debt,

Hannah McCarthy:
Like my student loans might hurt my chances.

Nick Capodice:
Yes, any unpaid bills.

Hannah McCarthy:
I understand that, though, because if you're on the hook for a great deal of money to some other organization, you're kind of a liability.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, if you owe a large amount of money to someone, to anyone, it's much easier for outside forces to manipulate you, to give you favors to take care of that debt.

Hannah McCarthy:
How long does this whole process take?

Nick Capodice:
Like a lot of things, it depends on the level of urgency and who the person is.

Juliette Kayyem:
Let's use someone like Rex Tillerson a perfect example, probably someone who who may have had security clearances in the past. He's a private citizen. He's got complicated financial dynamics.

News clip :
Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil giant ExxonMobil, now tapped to be Trump's secretary of state, a man with no government experience but decades of dealmaking and international business ties. Those ties include extensive relations with Russia and most notably, Vladimir Putin ties.

Juliette Kayyem:
They can probably get through that one in two to three weeks, but they're putting a lot of resources behind it. For a lot of people like, say, my students who may be coming in as a CIA analyst just, you know, looking at things online and doing analysis for the CIA. It can take anywhere from six to eight months.

Hannah McCarthy:
I want to come back to this fact that over half of the people who don't get security clearance are denied because of debt. But what are some of the other reasons someone might be denied?

Nick Capodice:
Things like personal conduct, like if you're telling fibs on an application or you have a history of conduct issues, another issue is quote foreign influence like you have foreign family members or a financial stake in other countries.

Juliette Kayyem:
I think it's more common that the agents will come back to you and say, we have some questions about this. So my parents, my mother, was born in Lebanon. You know, there's greater concern about people with foreign born relatives, especially a mother or father or a spouse. That seems fair since these are national security issues. And so then they did need me to go back and sort of validate or verify not just her, but her nine brothers and sisters. So we're sort of diving into the depths of your own history

Nick Capodice:
And drug use. For example, marijuana use, though it is legal in many states, is still a red flag for security clearance.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right, once the government has finished combing through your personal life and decided that you are trustworthy enough to get clearance, what happens next? Do you have a special badge? Do you have a card that you keep in your wallet?

Nick Capodice:
All right, we'll get to that, and we're going to talk about how security clearance works in the day to day operations of the government and what it's like to have it right after this.

Hannah McCarthy:
But before the break, this is your weekly reminder that we have a newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks, and I warmly recommend that if you haven't subscribed yet, you take a moment to subscribe right now at civics101podcast.org. Basically, the newsletter is the place where we put all of the stuff that we had to cut from the episode. So if you want to know, for example, about the different classified information that has been leaked or see some pictures of the secure rooms where top secret meetings take place, you can get all that, but only if you are subscribed to extra credit again. Go to Civics101podcast.org to subscribe today, and I swear it's not annoying. It's just a really great newsletter. Welcome back. You're listening to Civics 101 and we are attacking security clearance. Ok, so Nic, let's just say that I just got top secret security clearance, basically my dream. How do I prove that I have that clearance?

Juliette Kayyem:
You don't walk around with a badge all the time that says TS for top security clearance. You carry that clearance everywhere you go. And so you will be invited or not invited to various briefings, depending on that security level. Most government agencies have what's called security offices. That's people designated to ensure that government employees who get access to certain information are allowed to get access to that information. So that's essentially how it works in terms of functioning of government.

Nick Capodice:
And this gets back to what Juliette said earlier about how there's a lot of need to know and compartmentalization top secret clearance doesn't automatically get you into any briefing.

Juliette Kayyem:
So most of the time you will meet in rooms that are designated by the classification. So the meeting will be designated a certain classification level. So you're actually can't go unless you have that classification level. So you meet and you don't meet in, you know, the hallway you meet in what's called a SCIF,

Nick Capodice:
That's S-C-I-F.

Juliette Kayyem:
That's a secure, compartmentalized information facility. So those are spread throughout the federal government, for example, at Homeland Security, there are, I think, a couple dozen skiffs within the facility, including the secretary's office. And so in that way, there are processes that keep the wrong people out well before you're sitting in the room. So it would be it would mean it was bad planning if someone in the room were given top secret information and they didn't have that classification.

Nick Capodice:
Another big no-no in the skiff is cell phones.

Hannah McCarthy:
The cell phone things make sense. I mean, you can use a cell phone to record anything, right? And what about the president? Does the president just automatically have the highest security clearance? Are there any restrictions on the president's access?

Juliette Kayyem:
No, none. I mean, none that I know of. You know, maybe there's some super squirrely world. No. If the president wanted any information, he could be subject to it. I think people should know, though, is each principle, whether it's, you know, lower assistant secretary, high or secretary or a president. Each principal likes their information given to them in certain ways,

Nick Capodice:
The principals or those officials who have security clearance and the staff who prepare intelligence reports for them. They're known as briefers.

Juliette Kayyem:
And so what will happen is the briefers will amend how they present classified information to the principal, depending on their issues. Great anecdote that I wrote about about Secretary Napolitano, my boss at the Department of Homeland Security. People forget this, but she wanted her first part of her classified briefing. Most of this is not classified to be weather reports because for her before she got to the classified stuff, she wanted her briefings to include unclassified weather reports. And so that's what the agents did.

News clip :
I would encourage you not to focus too much on whether it's a category two or three if you are in the storm path. You won't be able to tell much difference.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now, I have heard that you can have your security clearance revoked, which would be such a bummer. How does that happen?

Juliette Kayyem:
So one is the obvious one, which is you abuse the the obligations you have for having that security clearance and you either abuse it purposefully leaks or whatever else or even on accident.

News clip :
A federal judge today ordered the New York Times to suspend temporarily publication of a series of reports based on a secret Pentagon study of how the United States became involved in the Vietnamese war.

Nick Capodice:
The Pentagon Papers. It is one example of deliberate leaking of top secret information. Nineteen seventy one Daniel Ellsberg smuggled thousands of pages of a classified report about the war in Vietnam, which showed that President Johnson had engaged in expanded secret military operations and lied about it to Congress and the public.

News clip :
I can't regret having done what I knew at the time to be what I ought to do my duty as a citizen. I have no no way that I can regret that.

Nick Capodice:
Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property. But it doesn't have to be that big. Even small mistakes can cost you your clearance.

Juliette Kayyem:
You know, there are rules about how we treat classified information for a reason, and I'm I'm incredibly unsympathetic to people who even make mistakes. I mean, you are you are briefed on this stuff. You don't take stuff home. You don't put stuff in your briefcase.

Hannah McCarthy:
One of the things we always see in TV shows and movies are people with security clearance getting in trouble for spilling secrets to their partners or spouses. Is that a thing?

Nick Capodice:
Apparently it is Hannah, because there are rules about it.

Juliette Kayyem:
The thing that they tell you, which I always take to heart because my husband also had top secret clearance at a different part of federal government is pillow talk. You cannot casually say, Oh, we're dealing with this, like you actually have to have, you know, sort of enough devotion to your service, to the country, to not disclose to a spouse because the worry is, is someone says to their spouse, you know, oh, we're we're doing x, y and Z or I'm really nervous about that. That spouse casually says to someone else. And then that person ends up being married to a reporter.

Nick Capodice:
For example, former CIA director David Petraeus was investigated after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, came to light. Meanwhile, FBI

News clip:
Investigators continue to pore over Broadwell's computer and boxes of evidence taken from her Charlotte home to determine if she had classified information she was not entitled to possess.

Nick Capodice:
This morning?

Juliette Kayyem:
The other way it gets revoked is obviously termination. You've got to sign a whole bunch of stuff giving up your security clearance hand in anything that you might have in your office that's designated as secure and be escorted off the facilities.

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm curious about Juliette's opinion on this. Does she believe that the security clearance system works?

Juliette Kayyem:
I do. I do. I mean, I think you hear a lot about it now because there's a certain casualness about classified information or top secret information that you saw in the early days of the Trump administration. He's he's getting briefed at Mar a Lago or they're having meetings that aren't exactly skiffs

News clip :
In Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Abe dining in public at Mar a Lago this weekend, learning North Korea just launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, the two appearing to handle the preliminary response right there in front of other diners.

Juliette Kayyem:
You know, it's not so much. You worry that the people in the room are talking to reporters is that, you know, unless you have a secure room, whatever is being discussed, including top secret information, could be eavesdropped on by foreign agencies.

Nick Capodice:
However, there was one thing we mentioned earlier that Juliet said, is a challenge for security clearance.

Juliette Kayyem:
Government contractors remember a lot of government work, especially in national security. Intelligence is done by contractors because you just really need a lot of bodies and it's sometimes easier to get them outside. Those people do go through security clearance reviews, but you know, if you look at Edward Snowden and some cases since, that seems to be where there is a loophole.

News clip :
Government investigators thought they knew Edward Snowden. He went through a background check, took a polygraph test and sat through personal interviews. And then the government gave him access to some of its biggest secrets from Edward.

Nick Capodice:
Snowden was the contractor who leaked classified information from the NSA, the National Security Agency, revealing government surveillance programs that had secretly monitored individuals through their phones.

Hannah McCarthy:
I also remember how after President Trump was elected, there was some controversy about his son in law, right? Jared Kushner being given clearance.

Nick Capodice:
Right. Kushner, like Rex Tillerson, had, quote, foreign interests those personal or financial ties to other countries and Kushner's case. He had met with Russian contacts, including the ambassador and the head of a Russian owned bank, in the months leading up to his security clearance investigation.

Juliette Kayyem:
Any other human being who did what he did. And just to remind your listeners, he failed to disclose a lot of these meetings and his first round of disclosures through the classified screening process. Any normal person like you and me who was going through this process, who did that like, you're like so not going to get your security clearance or it's going to be revoked. In other words, if I got security clearance and then it was later learned that I had recent, that's what I have to remind people. These were recent meetings between myself and Russia. My my security clearance would be revoked.

Hannah McCarthy:
It's interesting because you have this ostensibly airtight process to grant someone security clearance and a person like me, or you would have to jump through so many hoops to get there. Right, right. But someone with potentially more red flags than either of us combined. Given how close they are to power, how much power they themselves have can find the loophole into that elite world of security clearance. People have entirely different experiences on getting security clearance based on how much power they have.

Nick Capodice:
This is a system that was put into place to ensure that only people who could be trusted with sensitive information are able to have access to it, especially information that could impact our safety and security. But as with most systems of government, it is designed and run by people, so it's only as strong and secure as the individuals who uphold it.

Hannah McCarthy:
This episode was produced by Christina Phillips are staff includes Jacqui Fulton, Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.

Nick Capodice:
Music In this episode by Pro Reese First Bassists, The Waiting World at Large Knoy. Commodity Cats, Blue Note Sessions, Chris Zabriskie and Animal Weapon.

Hannah McCarthy:
You can find every episode of Civics 101 at Civics101podcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nick Capodice:
Civic's one on one is production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Transcript

Nick Capodice: [00:00:00] Hannah, if you had top secret clearance and you could access any classified government information. What would you want to know about?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:09] I think I would want to know what the real plan is in the event of nuclear war.

Dr. Strangelove clip: [00:00:15] No point in you getting hysterical at a moment like this.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:18] I bet it's a little more grim than we think it is. What about you?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:23]  The Mary Celeste.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:25] Is it the ghost ship?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:26] When it was discovered no one was on board and there was no sign of a scuffle. It was like the eighteen hundreds, though I don't think that top secret, top secret clearance is going to tell me about the Mary Celeste. I have another question for you, though. How good are you at keeping secrets?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:43] I think I'm pretty good. But then at the same time, when I buy someone something fun for their birthday, like I could just tell you right now. I've always prided myself on the idea that I think I would be able to keep any secret if I really had to, if the stakes were high enough and it was like people will get hurt if you share the secret. Yeah, I'm taking it to my grave. Like, what a privilege.

Top Gun clip: [00:01:12] It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:16] Well, there's a job, Hannah, that requires that kind of dedication, and I think you just might be the person for it.

Bridesmaids clip: [00:01:21] I work for the government. I have the highest possible security clearance. Don't repeat that. I can't protect you

Nick Capodice: [00:01:28] Because the federal government has a huge amount of sensitive information, from military movements to criminal investigations to scientific and technological developments to information about individuals. Close to three million people have some form of security clearance, which gives them access to that classified information.

The Post clip: [00:01:50]  Must be precious cargo. Yeah, it's just government secrets.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:57] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice: [00:01:59] And I'm Nick Capodice. Today, we're talking about how the government keeps its secrets and what it takes to get into the classified club.

The Simpsons: [00:02:07] Mr. Simpson, please cover your ears while I say the secret access word. Geez.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:13] Today's guest is Juliette Kayyem, professor of international security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and National Security Analyst for CNN. She formerly served as assistant secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama, and she spoke with her former host, Virginia Prescott, in Twenty Seventeen.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:02:32] Ok, so there's three levels, at least for the federal government. The top level is, of course, top secret. That's information that, if disclosed, would cause exceptionally grave damage, that's the standard.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:46] Ok. Hang on. What does she mean by exceptionally grave damage?

Nick Capodice: [00:02:51] Some examples of exceptionally grave damage include armed hostilities against the United States or its allies. The compromise of vital national defense plans. Or complex cryptologic and communications intelligence systems. The revelation of sensitive intelligence operations. And finally, the disclosure of scientific or technological developments vital to national security.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:14] But is that... Just boil it down for me?

Nick Capodice: [00:03:16] Basically, top secret information is the most important information, and that classification is used relatively sparingly.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:29] So how does the government decide what rises to that very highest level of top secret?

Nick Capodice: [00:03:34] There is a way to distinguish between top secret and everything else.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:03:39] The key difference between the top secret and the other classification levels is that top secret tends to show to the reader, say the president or secretary of defense, what we call sources and methods. How are we getting that information? You know, we have a spy in an ISIS ring in Germany, and he's telling us this. And so gosh, if that were disclosed or made public, You basically someone that person would die.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:05] All right. Got it. Top secret is the highest clearance. What are the other two?

Juliette Kayyem: [00:04:09] The next is secret, which is, if disclosed or released, would cause serious damage and then confidential. It just tends to be. These are things that the government needs to know for a variety of reasons, and it could be expected to cause damage.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:23] It's so interesting that you've got these qualifications of exceptionally serious, serious and just damage, right? Like someone in the government had to sit down and define that. What does that mean? I wouldn't even know how to define that for my own self. So you've got top secret, that's exceptionally grave damage, right? Secret is serious damage, but what is the difference between exceptionally grave and serious damage?

Nick Capodice: [00:04:49] This is information that is still pretty important, but without those sources and methods. So it could be intel about an ISIS ring in Germany, but it wouldn't include the people who got the information or how they got it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:02] But OK, when it comes to confidential, right? Juliette said it could just cause damage. So is that like, you know, like casual, callous gossip,

Nick Capodice: [00:05:12] You're actually not far off!

Juliette Kayyem: [00:05:14] A good example of that would be maybe a memo from someone in the State Department discussing the, you know, the drinking habits of the prime minister of some country. You just don't want, you know, you don't want that out there.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:26] My question is if someone has top secret security clearance. Are they able to know all of the government secrets about anything?

Nick Capodice: [00:05:33] That would be cool, wouldn't it? But it's a little more complicated than that.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:05:37] It's very compartmentalized and rightfully so so that the fact that you have the access does not grant you the right to see all materials that are designated as, say, top secret. In other words, if I have top secret clearance as relates to, say, Homeland Security issues, I can't just email, you know, or call someone in the department security offices and say, I'm really interested in North Korea's nuclear policy. Can I see those top secret materials?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:06] And that's where the phrase "need to know" comes in.

The Rock clip: [00:06:10] You're on a need to know basis. And you don't need to know.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:13] Even if someone has the clearance for certain intelligence, they may not have access to it unless they need that information for a specific purpose. This is important because, as we said earlier, around three million people have some sort of security clearance, and that group isn't just made up of government employees and military personnel.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:06:32] For example, the Department of Defense may ask a team of cyber experts to come in and and give them advice on cybersecurity. So that's why outsiders sometimes have security clearances.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:44] However, the majority of people who have clearance about 70 percent in 2013 were military and government employees like Juliette, who worked for the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:02] So I've heard a lot, especially in the past, like six to eight years or so about applying for security clearance, right. And how it can be this long, massive process.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:14] If you've been invited to do work that requires a clearance, you have to undergo an investigation. The government digs into your personal information and your background to determine if you're trustworthy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:26] That sounds stressful. So who is in charge of approving or denying security clearance?

Nick Capodice: [00:07:31] Most agencies and departments of the government, they conduct their own investigations using the same basic procedures and an investigation service provider or ISP. The main ISP is the Office of Personnel and Management, which is an independent agency in the executive branch. And you want to take a guess, Hanna, as to which department has the most security clearances.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:55] I'm going to guess the one that's conducting secret, dangerous operations all over the world that they don't want people to know about, a.k.a. the Department of Defense.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:06] Yeah, you got it. The Department of Defense holds over 80 percent of security clearances, and the DOD has its own investigation, service provider called the Defense Investigative Service.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:18] When you say investigation, like what does that actually mean?

Nick Capodice: [00:08:21] Well, essentially the government is trying to create a timeline of your life, including all the big moments and all the people in it.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:08:29] So in my case, and in most cases, what you do is you, you know, fill out the famous forms with lots of details about where you've lived, your debt, your marital status, your husband or wife or partners, actions where you've traveled, who you've known, who you've talked to, any questions about drug use about your, you know, support of the United States and its government. It is painful from any from any perspective.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:57] The form she's talking about is called the SF 86. It's got all your identifying information, including your proof of citizenship. By the way, Hannah, only U.S. citizens can get security clearance, though in some circumstances a non-U.S. citizen can receive a limited access authorization.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:14] A lifetime in America has taught me that government forms are boring enough as it is, so I can only imagine that this is the epitome of the boring government form.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:26] You also have to provide information about your parents and your siblings, including step parents, half and step siblings, children and in-laws.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:37] So if you have any kind of family drama which is every human being on the planet, I can imagine that can get a little tough or awkward.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:45] And then there is a record of your mental and psychological health, your criminal record and a history of drug and alcohol use. And here's one that is super interesting to me your financial record. What I was most shocked to learn is that over half of the people who are denied security clearance are denied because of financial issues like significant debt,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:08] Like my student loans might hurt my chances.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:10] Yes, any unpaid bills.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:13] I understand that, though, because if you're on the hook for a great deal of money to some other organization, you're kind of a liability.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:21] Yeah, if you owe a large amount of money to someone, to anyone, it's much easier for outside forces to manipulate you, to give you favors to take care of that debt.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:32] How long does this whole process take?

Nick Capodice: [00:10:34] Like a lot of things, it depends on the level of urgency and who the person is.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:10:38] Let's use someone like Rex Tillerson a perfect example, probably someone who who may have had security clearances in the past. He's a private citizen. He's got complicated financial dynamics.

News clip : [00:10:49] Rex Tillerson, CEO of oil giant ExxonMobil, now tapped to be Trump's secretary of state, a man with no government experience but decades of dealmaking and international business ties. Those ties include extensive relations with Russia and most notably, Vladimir Putin ties.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:11:09] They can probably get through that one in two to three weeks, but they're putting a lot of resources behind it. For a lot of people like, say, my students who may be coming in as a CIA analyst just, you know, looking at things online and doing analysis for the CIA. It can take anywhere from six to eight months.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:26] I want to come back to this fact that over half of the people who don't get security clearance are denied because of debt. But what are some of the other reasons someone might be denied?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:35] Things like personal conduct, like if you're telling fibs on an application or you have a history of conduct issues, another issue is quote foreign influence like you have foreign family members or a financial stake in other countries.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:11:48] I think it's more common that the agents will come back to you and say, we have some questions about this. So my parents, my mother, was born in Lebanon. You know, there's greater concern about people with foreign born relatives, especially a mother or father or a spouse. That seems fair since these are national security issues. And so then they did need me to go back and sort of validate or verify not just her, but her nine brothers and sisters. So we're sort of diving into the depths of your own history

Nick Capodice: [00:12:18] And drug use. For example, marijuana use, though it is legal in many states, is still a red flag for security clearance.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:32] All right, once the government has finished combing through your personal life and decided that you are trustworthy enough to get clearance, what happens next? Do you have a special badge? Do you have a card that you keep in your wallet?

Nick Capodice: [00:12:44] All right, we'll get to that, and we're going to talk about how security clearance works in the day to day operations of the government and what it's like to have it right after this.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:52] But before the break, this is your weekly reminder that we have a newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks, and I warmly recommend that if you haven't subscribed yet, you take a moment to subscribe right now at civics101podcast.org. Basically, the newsletter is the place where we put all of the stuff that we had to cut from the episode. So if you want to know, for example, about the different classified information that has been leaked or see some pictures of the secure rooms where top secret meetings take place, you can get all that, but only if you are subscribed to extra credit again. Go to Civics101podcast.org to subscribe today, and I swear it's not annoying. It's just a really great newsletter. Welcome back. You're listening to Civics 101 and we are attacking security clearance. Ok, so Nic, let's just say that I just got top secret security clearance, basically my dream. How do I prove that I have that clearance?

Juliette Kayyem: [00:14:12] You don't walk around with a badge all the time that says TS for top security clearance. You carry that clearance everywhere you go. And so you will be invited or not invited to various briefings, depending on that security level. Most government agencies have what's called security offices. That's people designated to ensure that government employees who get access to certain information are allowed to get access to that information. So that's essentially how it works in terms of functioning of government.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:46] And this gets back to what Juliette said earlier about how there's a lot of need to know and compartmentalization top secret clearance doesn't automatically get you into any briefing.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:14:57] So most of the time you will meet in rooms that are designated by the classification. So the meeting will be designated a certain classification level. So you're actually can't go unless you have that classification level. So you meet and you don't meet in, you know, the hallway you meet in what's called a SCIF,

Nick Capodice: [00:15:15] That's S-C-I-F.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:15:17] That's a secure, compartmentalized information facility. So those are spread throughout the federal government, for example, at Homeland Security, there are, I think, a couple dozen skiffs within the facility, including the secretary's office. And so in that way, there are processes that keep the wrong people out well before you're sitting in the room. So it would be it would mean it was bad planning if someone in the room were given top secret information and they didn't have that classification.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:48] Another big no-no in the skiff is cell phones.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:51] The cell phone things make sense. I mean, you can use a cell phone to record anything, right? And what about the president? Does the president just automatically have the highest security clearance? Are there any restrictions on the president's access?

Juliette Kayyem: [00:16:08] No, none. I mean, none that I know of. You know, maybe there's some super squirrely world. No. If the president wanted any information, he could be subject to it. I think people should know, though, is each principle, whether it's, you know, lower assistant secretary, high or secretary or a president. Each principal likes their information given to them in certain ways,

Nick Capodice: [00:16:30] The principals or those officials who have security clearance and the staff who prepare intelligence reports for them. They're known as briefers.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:16:38] And so what will happen is the briefers will amend how they present classified information to the principal, depending on their issues. Great anecdote that I wrote about about Secretary Napolitano, my boss at the Department of Homeland Security. People forget this, but she wanted her first part of her classified briefing. Most of this is not classified to be weather reports because for her before she got to the classified stuff, she wanted her briefings to include unclassified weather reports. And so that's what the agents did.

News clip : [00:17:13] I would encourage you not to focus too much on whether it's a category two or three if you are in the storm path. You won't be able to tell much difference.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:28] Now, I have heard that you can have your security clearance revoked, which would be such a bummer. How does that happen?

Juliette Kayyem: [00:17:35] So one is the obvious one, which is you abuse the the obligations you have for having that security clearance and you either abuse it purposefully leaks or whatever else or even on accident.

News clip : [00:17:47] A federal judge today ordered the New York Times to suspend temporarily publication of a series of reports based on a secret Pentagon study of how the United States became involved in the Vietnamese war.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:58] The Pentagon Papers. It is one example of deliberate leaking of top secret information. Nineteen seventy one Daniel Ellsberg smuggled thousands of pages of a classified report about the war in Vietnam, which showed that President Johnson had engaged in expanded secret military operations and lied about it to Congress and the public.

News clip : [00:18:19] I can't regret having done what I knew at the time to be what I ought to do my duty as a citizen. I have no no way that I can regret that.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:30] Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property. But it doesn't have to be that big. Even small mistakes can cost you your clearance.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:18:40] You know, there are rules about how we treat classified information for a reason, and I'm I'm incredibly unsympathetic to people who even make mistakes. I mean, you are you are briefed on this stuff. You don't take stuff home. You don't put stuff in your briefcase.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:54] One of the things we always see in TV shows and movies are people with security clearance getting in trouble for spilling secrets to their partners or spouses. Is that a thing?

Nick Capodice: [00:19:05] Apparently it is Hannah, because there are rules about it.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:19:11] The thing that they tell you, which I always take to heart because my husband also had top secret clearance at a different part of federal government is pillow talk. You cannot casually say, Oh, we're dealing with this, like you actually have to have, you know, sort of enough devotion to your service, to the country, to not disclose to a spouse because the worry is, is someone says to their spouse, you know, oh, we're we're doing x, y and Z or I'm really nervous about that. That spouse casually says to someone else. And then that person ends up being married to a reporter.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:52] For example, former CIA director David Petraeus was investigated after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, came to light.

News clip: [00:20:00]Meanwhile, FBI investigators continue to pore over Broadwell's computer and boxes of evidence taken from her Charlotte home to determine if she had classified information she was not entitled to possess.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:20:16] The other way it gets revoked is obviously termination. You've got to sign a whole bunch of stuff giving up your security clearance hand in anything that you might have in your office that's designated as secure and be escorted off the facilities.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:32] I'm curious about Juliette's opinion on this. Does she believe that the security clearance system works?

Juliette Kayyem: [00:20:37] I do. I do. I mean, I think you hear a lot about it now because there's a certain casualness about classified information or top secret information that you saw in the early days of the Trump administration. He's he's getting briefed at Mar a Lago or they're having meetings that aren't exactly skiffs

News clip : [00:20:55] In Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Abe dining in public at Mar a Lago this weekend, learning North Korea just launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, the two appearing to handle the preliminary response right there in front of other diners.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:21:12] You know, it's not so much. You worry that the people in the room are talking to reporters is that, you know, unless you have a secure room, whatever is being discussed, including top secret information, could be eavesdropped on by foreign agencies.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:25] However, there was one thing we mentioned earlier that Juliet said, is a challenge for security clearance.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:21:32] Government contractors remember a lot of government work, especially in national security. Intelligence is done by contractors because you just really need a lot of bodies and it's sometimes easier to get them outside. Those people do go through security clearance reviews, but you know, if you look at Edward Snowden and some cases since, that seems to be where there is a loophole.

News clip : [00:21:54] Government investigators thought they knew Edward Snowden. He went through a background check, took a polygraph test and sat through personal interviews. And then the government gave him access to some of its biggest secrets from Edward.

Nick Capodice: [00:22:06] Snowden was the contractor who leaked classified information from the NSA, the National Security Agency, revealing government surveillance programs that had secretly monitored individuals through their phones.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:18] I also remember how after President Trump was elected, there was some controversy about his son in law, right? Jared Kushner being given clearance.

Nick Capodice: [00:22:26] Right. Kushner, like Rex Tillerson, had, quote, foreign interests those personal or financial ties to other countries and Kushner's case. He had met with Russian contacts, including the ambassador and the head of a Russian owned bank, in the months leading up to his security clearance investigation.

Juliette Kayyem: [00:22:44] Any other human being who did what he did. And just to remind your listeners, he failed to disclose a lot of these meetings and his first round of disclosures through the classified screening process. Any normal person like you and me who was going through this process, who did that like, you're like so not going to get your security clearance or it's going to be revoked. In other words, if I got security clearance and then it was later learned that I had recent, that's what I have to remind people. These were recent meetings between myself and Russia. My my security clearance would be revoked.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:21] It's interesting because you have this ostensibly airtight process to grant someone security clearance and a person like me, or you would have to jump through so many hoops to get there. Right, right. But someone with potentially more red flags than either of us combined. Given how close they are to power, how much power they themselves have can find the loophole into that elite world of security clearance. People have entirely different experiences on getting security clearance based on how much power they have.

Nick Capodice: [00:23:57] This is a system that was put into place to ensure that only people who could be trusted with sensitive information are able to have access to it, especially information that could impact our safety and security. But as with most systems of government, it is designed and run by people, so it's only as strong and secure as the individuals who uphold it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:38] This episode was produced by Christina Phillips are staff includes Jacqui Fulton, Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.

Nick Capodice: [00:24:45] Music In this episode by Pro Reese First Bassists, The Waiting World at Large Knoy. Commodity Cats, Blue Note Sessions, Chris Zabriskie and Animal Weapon.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:54] You can find every episode of Civics 101 at Civics101podcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nick Capodice: [00:25:01] Civic's one on one is production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The President and the Price of Gas

When this episode was recorded, gasoline prices in the US averaged $3.28 a gallon. Stickers of President Biden saying "I did that" decorated gas pumps across the country. What handles, if any, does a president have to lower the price of gas? How responsible are they for high prices? 

Today we get to the bottom of the oil barrel with two specialists; Robert Rapier from Proteum Energy and Irina Ivanova from CBS News. They guide us through a purely economic, scientific, and historical analysis of the powers of the chief executive, from the 70s to now, and the price of gasoline. 

Link to Robert’s article, How a President Can Impact Gas Prices

Link to Irina’s article, Can President Biden Do Anything to Lower Gas Prices?

Click here to find more charts of Civics 101 episodes from Periodic Presidents!

presidents and gas 2.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

presidents and gas 2.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Archival:
All righty, folks, check this out. You see that. That's all me. "I did that." Yeah, he did it. That's what's killing my business.

Nick Capodice:
You ever see one of those, Hannah

Hannah McCarthy:
And "I did that" sticker?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah.

Nick Capodice:
Would you describe it for me?

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, it's just Biden pointing, the sticker says, "I did that" and people will slap it on, like the gas pump at a gas station.

Archival:
Next person who gets their gas and they they get sticker shock. They get to remember that. President Biden did that. Here we go. Right next to that four Dollar and sixty seven cents a gallon gasoline.

Nick Capodice:
I was looking around for videos of these stickers at gas stations to make this episode, and you can buy them anywhere, by the way. One recent gas pump display I saw had three stickers. It had Joe Biden pointing and saying, I did that. And then a picture of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saying I helped. And then Vice President Kamala Harris saying, I just blank; the blank being a rude word I don't want to say on this podcast. And if we were like a hip, fast paced political talk show, we could make today's episode, Well, did he do that? Did Joe Biden make gas prices go up? And while we will answer that question today, we're going to frame it a bit differently because you're listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Capodice,

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice:
And today we're talking about the president and the price of gasoline. What is the relationship throughout American history between our chief executive and what we pay at the pump? And to start our journey, Hannah, I want to introduce you to Robert Rapier.

Robert Rapier:
So, yeah, my name is Robert Rapier. I'm a chemical engineer. I work for Proteum Energy. We take oilfield flare gas and other supplies, and we convert that into hydrogen. On the side, I write for Forbes.

Nick Capodice:
Just to reiterate, Robert is not a political scientist. He has worked in engineering in the fuel and oil industry for about 30 years. And March of 2021 he wrote an article called "Who is to blame for rising gas prices?" And I spoke with him and he let me in on a little secret.

Go on.

He told me the name of the person actually responsible for high gas prices.

Hannah McCarthy:
Who is it?

Nick Capodice:
Yoweri Museveni. He's the president of Uganda.

Robert Rapier:
So a friend of mine that lives in Uganda, he wrote to me about, you know, a few months ago, and he said gas prices here are up 50 percent. And I said, Wow. I said, Who do people blame? And he said, our politicians. And I said, OK, so now we know who to blame for gas prices. Uganda's politicians.

Nick Capodice:
He's joking, I'm joking, we're all joking. Please don't go putting stickers on Ugandan gas pumps.

Robert Rapier:
so I think that's, you know, it's universal. When gas prices go up, people blame the politicians. Basically, the underlying oil price movement is responsible for nearly all of gasoline price movement. So if you want to know why gas prices increase, it's almost always, well, oil prices increase. And what I said in that article is there are very few handles that a president has to influence gas prices in the short term.

Hannah McCarthy:
So what I'm getting here is that the short answer to is the president responsible for the price of gasoline is no.

Nick Capodice:
Correct. It is no. We can end the episode right now.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now this is such a touchy topic. Nick, what was the response to Robert's article?

Nick Capodice:
It was not pleasant. The reason I reached out to him specifically was because his analysis was explicitly nonpartisan. I wanted to talk to someone who would take the political fuel out of this debate.

Robert Rapier:
Yeah, I try to do that. But people will still say, Oh, you're being political, and I say, No, I'm not. I'm just telling you what's happening. You can view it that way if you want. But I'm telling you what's actually happening. And I got a lot of nasty, nasty messages from people who were like, Oh, you must be an idiot. Any idiot can see that Biden became president, and then we had this big surge in gas prices. How could he not be responsible? And then people would say, How can you spend all this stimulus money and not expect inflation? He canceled the Keystone Pipeline. How can you not see? And all these things? I mean, none of them. None of them have much of an impact on gas prices.

Nick Capodice:
And I'm going to get back to the Keystone pipeline because that is relevant to this topic. But it's not just President Biden. These accusations have happened to whomever has been president when gas was expensive. But as Robert said, the price of gas is ruthlessly firmly permanently tied to the price of oil.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, like how tied?

Nick Capodice:
I want to show you this graph, and I'm going to put it on our website if anyone wants to see it. Civics101podcast.org It is a chart of the price of oil and the price of gasoline in the U.S. since 1946.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh, they track almost exactly.

Nick Capodice:
Exactly, yeah. And it is hard sometimes to look outside of our star spangled shell. But the rise and fall of the price of gas in the U.S. over the years is the same in the U.K., Canada, Portugal, et cetera.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, so yes, you've made it very clear that the price of gas mirrors the price of oil, but can you answer for me why it is so expensive right now in January 2022?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, but first I have to put this in the broader historical picture.

Irina Ivanova:
People are really upset now because gas is over three dollars a gallon. You know, this does not even compare to what was going on in the 70s.

Nick Capodice:
This is Irina Ivanova, she's an economic reporter for CBS News, and she recently wrote an article called Can President Biden Do Anything to lower gas prices?

Irina Ivanova:
Right now we have. We have gas. It's expensive, it's definitely hurting people. You know, we need our cars. And if you're on a tight budget, it hurts your budget. In the seventies, I mean, we we had like gas lines around the block.

Archival:
This gas line at one station on the Upper West Side ran from Ninety Sixth Street and West End Avenue, all the way up to one hundred and Second Street. This is unreal. Isn't this disgusting? Why doesn't anybody contact the president? Why is he letting this happen to us?

Nick Capodice:
When I say energy crisis in the nineteen seventies, who's the first person that jumps into your mind? Who do people blame.

Hannah McCarthy:
Jimmy Carter? No?

Archival:
We face a problem, a problem with regard to energy heating. For example, this winter, just as we thought, we faced a problem of gasoline this summer and the possibility of brownouts.

Nick Capodice:
Carter popped into my head, too, but it started with Richard Nixon. The energy crises, plural, by the way, in the nineteen seventies were massive and complicated. They dominated the headlines. But to summarize. Are you familiar with OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries?

Hannah McCarthy:
Isn't it a group of countries that produce a lot of oil and so they agree on prices and production so that we don't run out of oil and so the market is not wildly unstable?

Nick Capodice:
Absolutely. And there's also OAPEC, which is the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. And a long story short, OAPEC created an embargo. They refused to sell oil to countries that had supported Israel in what is called the Yom Kippur War. The United States was one of the eight nations embargoed, and it was devastating.

Irina Ivanova:
The U.S. didn't have domestic oil production at that point, or if they did it, it was really minimal. You know, we were importing oil mostly from the Middle East. So there was this real sense of, you know, the U.S. being at the mercy of foreign powers and then the president not being able to to do anything about it. I mean, you know, what are what are what are you going to what are you going to do, say, like, Hey, guys, like create more oil, you know, it was a whole geopolitical crisis.

Nick Capodice:
And gas wasn't just expensive after this embargo, there just wasn't enough of it.

Irina Ivanova:
I mean, this is this is literally like, you need fuel. You cannot get it. People had to fill their tank based on the number on their license plate. And then, of course, you had people swapping around license plates so that on this day it was only plates ending and even numbers could get filled up. On the next day, it was, you know, plates ending in odd numbers.

Nick Capodice:
President Nixon established price controls on domestic oil. He asked gas stations to not sell gas on Saturday nights and Sundays. And Congress created the 55 mile per hour speed limit on federal highways, which was the inspiration for Sammy Hagar's hard rock anthem. I can't drive 55.

Hannah McCarthy:
The fifty five mile an hour speed limit was to control use of gas??

Nick Capodice:
Gas consumption, absolutely, you save gas when you drive slower. This was the issue in the Nixon administration. In a poll conducted in New York, seventy six percent of people said the energy crisis was the most important problem facing the country versus Watergate, which got about 15 percent. And then it was the issue in Gerald Ford's administration. And then Jimmy Carter made the energy crisis his own personal Waterloo. He gave speeches and how we all just have to use less gas. He installed solar panels on the White House. He asked Americans to just do more with less, which you can imagine was an extremely unpopular concept.

Archival:
If we learn to live truthfully and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust.

Nick Capodice:
It was so unpopular that it was parodied by Archie Bunker in all in the family.

Archival:
Bet you won't find none of them congressmen turning down their electric blankets tonight.

Nick Capodice:
And then things started to shift in the 1980s. Oil started to flow more freely from the Middle East. Ronald Reagan came in, removed those price controls that Nixon and created stopped pushing Carter's automobile efficiency standards, removed all environmental restrictions on local gas production and deployed soldiers in the Persian Gulf. And the last thing he did was to take the solar panels off the grid for the White House. Gas prices came down.

Hannah McCarthy:
Wow. Ok. All of that history brings up the question from the beginning of this episode. Can a president or a Congress do anything to lower the price of oil and therefore gasoline? Are there any executive powers that President Biden can use or has used?

Nick Capodice:
There are sort of, and we're going to talk about three of the things a president can do to lower the price of gas, along with the breakdown of what's going on right now. And finally, how the Keystone XL pipeline is tied to all of this right after the break.

Hannah McCarthy:
But before we break, just your friendly weekly reminder that we have a newsletter and it's not one of those annoying things, we're not going to bombard you with emails. It's just the place where we put all of the fun stuff that we learned about episodes while we were working on it. It is just a way to get to know us better and get to know more about civics. If you're into that, you can subscribe. Right now, it's at Civics101podcast.org. It comes out every other week and it's fun. All right.

Nick Capodice:
Civics 101 is a listener supported show, support the show with whatever you can, depending on the price of gas right now at our website civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy:
As of this recording, January twenty fifth, 2022 gas in the U.S. is at an average of three dollars and twenty two cents a gallon, up from a dollar and 80 cents in spring of twenty twenty. So how Nick, do we get here so fast?

Nick Capodice:
All right, here's Robert Rapier again.

Robert Rapier:
Okay, so as the pandemic was starting to get heated up, Saudi Arabia and Russia decided to engage in a price war over over oil that started prices dipping.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah, something I didn't know about was the concept of futures and investing. Don't turn off the podcast. It's interesting, I promise. People invest in oil futures, which is a lot riskier than just buying stocks, because what you're doing is you're committing to owing an infinite amount of money. If you invest a thousand dollars in oil futures and the price goes way down. You don't just earn zero, you're on the hook to owe a lot of money. Isn't that scary?

Hannah McCarthy:
I don't know anything about investing. It's a good thing I don't do it.

Robert Rapier:
And that's what happened, and a lot of people got caught. It caused some marginal producers to shut down. It caused some producers to go bankrupt. And then the pandemic hit and the stay at home orders and the demand for oil in the U.S. plummeted.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh, I remember this period, nobody was driving. We all had stay at home orders and so nobody was buying gas and it was something like under $2 a gallon.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. And then slowly Americans started going back to work and back to school

Robert Rapier:
After the stay at home order started to expire, demand started to recover and it recovered much faster than supply did. And so from negative prices, we saw prices start to take off. And then over the next year, supply was short. Demand increased back to about where it was and supply which had fallen by two or three million barrels a day. It took a much longer time to come back online. If people say why and I said, well, some of the companies don't even exist anymore. Some of the marginal wells were shut in, and you can't bring those back online. If you've got a stripper well, producing a few barrels a day and suddenly prices are negative. You might permanently shut that well down and you're not going to bring it back online. And that is the primary reason oil prices skyrocketed and gasoline prices followed. That is the single biggest reason, much bigger factor than anything Trump did or anything that Biden has done.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, I'm ready for it. What can the president do to lower gas prices?

Nick Capodice:
Alright, I got three for you. Three things. Here is Irina Ivanova again with number one.

Irina Ivanova:
There's one specific thing that the president could do and that Biden actually has done. That has a little bit of an impact that it can create a little blip in gas prices. And that is to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Hannah McCarthy:
What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Just like a massive tank of gas somewhere?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, it's a system of caverns along the Gulf Coast, massive underground salt domes that are full of oil and that oil can be turned into gasoline. It was created in 1975 in response to the oil embargo, and it can hold seven hundred and fourteen million barrels of crude. Some caverns hold sweet crude, some caverns hold sour crude. I'm going to get into that in the newsletter. But recently, Congress has been selling the oil in the reserve since 2015 to fund the deficit. And President Biden released 50 million barrels from it in November 2021.

Robert Rapier:
Presidents frequently do it leading up to elections because high gas prices are not a prescription for getting, getting reelected. And so that's one. It's not a, I mean, you can't just keep doing that. We have a strategic petroleum reserve for a reason, so there is a risk in doing it. But presidents have used that handle time and time again.

Irina Ivanova:
And the main reason is really signaling right. And voters, voters love it, you know? So there is there is that effect of like, Oh, the president's looking out for me. In the grand scheme of things just to sort of put it into numbers, you know, we rereleased something like 50 million barrels of oil, that is roughly what the entire U.S. uses in a single day.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right, sounds like number one, tap the piggy bank. It's a gesture, but a relatively ineffective one, right? So what's number two?

Nick Capodice:
Number two, it's to ban exports. Stop selling oil that we produce to other countries. Keep it all to ourselves, which we did for 40 years until 2015.

Robert Rapier:
President Obama agreed to end that ban on oil exports, and what was happening at the time is fracking had had increased oil supplie dramatically in the US.

Nick Capodice:
Fracking by the way, or hydraulic fracturing is a method of extracting oil and natural gas from deep underground, and we were getting a lot more gas from fracking in 2015.

Robert Rapier:
But there's a ban on exports, and so all of that had to go through domestic refineries. And that was depressing the price of oil. And what was happening is domestic refiners were then refining the oil, but there was no ban on finished product exports. So finished product exports went through the roof. Refiners were printing money. And in reality, it didn't really affect gas prices because gas prices still were set by the global market. And so it just shifted who made who was making the money. So you could make an argument that maybe it might have some influence because it would depress oil prices in the US? But, you know, unless you're banning finished product exports to its just, refiners are going to make a lot more money.

Hannah McCarthy:
So Robert is saying that if we stop exporting, oil refineries will just export the gas and diesel they make from that oil, and nothing will change, except refiners make more money.

Nick Capodice:
Yes. And there's another problem with stopping exports. Kind of an oil cold war.

Irina Ivanova:
The bigger issue, which a lot of people brought up with this idea of banning oil exports, is that it would cause other oil producing countries to use a technical term to completely flip out and lose their cool and and retaliate. I mean, if the U.S. can ban oil exports, other people can say, Well, we can't have your oil, you can't have our oil, you know, so, so so their their analysis is that it would just it would just lead to an arms race metaphorically where everybody's withholding their gasoline and we don't actually have, you know, more oil globally.

Nick Capodice:
And finally, action number three, cut taxes. There is a federal tax of about 18 cents per gallon of gasoline, but the much bigger tax comes from your state.

Irina Ivanova:
Different states have very, very different amounts of taxes. There's Texas. Tennessee have very low fuel taxes. California famously has extremely high fuel taxes. On average, the tax that the state imposes accounts for roughly 15 percent of the price at the pump. State governors could potentially try to make this stuff cheaper, and they, you know, they would work, especially in a place like California where you know, you're talking about 450 or more for for gas. You know, if, if, if you shave off 15 percent, that's that could be significant.

Hannah McCarthy:
We're calling this episode the president and the price of gas, but it sounds like you could just as easily call it the governor and the price of gas.

Nick Capodice:
You could indeed, your state's own little president. Or maybe it'd be better to call the episode your state legislature and the price of gas, since they're the ones who actually write the laws.

Hannah McCarthy:
Last thing I have heard a lot of criticism of President Biden's handling of the price of gasoline being tied to his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Can we get into that?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah.

Archival:
Well, we have thousands of young people here in the streets of Washington, D.C., marching to the White House to risk arrest, to demand the President Obama say no to Keystone XL...

Nick Capodice:
So, briefly, the Keystone Pipeline project, it's a proposed pipeline that transported oil from Canada to Texas. It was the subject of years of protests by indigenous activists, landowners and environmental groups. It was a protest that spanned three presidential administrations, and it was a successful protest as the project was abandoned in June 2021 after President Biden issued an executive order to ban the permit for it. Hannah, this is the talking point on conservative talk radio that the canceling of the pipeline increase the price of gas. So did it. Roberts says no.

Robert Rapier:
Why wouldn't that influence oil prices? Because the Keystone pipeline, that supply wasn't going to come along for years, and we don't know what the demand situation is like in years. So so this doesn't have a short term influence on oil prices. I said before, if scientists say we're going to have 50 percent more hurricanes in the Gulf Coast over the next two decades, that's not going to move oil prices. But if one is rolling through the Gulf Coast right now, it will. I mean, there's short term factors that increase the price, but longer term, these things just don't move the needle much. So a lot of the actions President Biden has taken, although they can influence the price in the long run, people mistakenly assume that's why prices are moving now. And for a lot of people, I point out between the time of the election and the time Biden was sworn in, oil prices moved up 40 percent. Do you blame Trump for that?

Hannah McCarthy:
Did people blame Trump for that?

Nick Capodice:
House and Senate Democrats sure did. They blamed it on his recent sanctions of Iran. President Trump tweeted at OPEC and said that they were to blame and they had to increase production. That didn't do much. So then he tweeted that it was Obama's fault because Obama had conspired with Saudi Arabia to lower prices before his reelection. Anyways, this is a playbook both parties have used. But to reiterate the effect of the Keystone Pipeline project, Irina spoke to Tom Kloza from OPIS, which is a major market analysis firm. And Tom said "The Keystone decision is something that might come back and haunt the administration in 2023. But it has absolutely nothing to do with why crude oil prices now have rallied so much since April 2020."

Hannah McCarthy:
Okay, this is making me think about the fact that no matter how much power we perceive our chief executive as having, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are instances where they are not the most important person in the room. And when I look at how the price of gas here tracks exactly with oil prices globally, it's also clear that just like a lot of issues when it comes to the price of oil, the United States is not the most important person in the room, either.

Nick Capodice:
We should make a new sticker.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh, yeah, what should we put on it?

Nick Capodice:
It like a huge sticker that is an illustrated embodiment of the global crude oil market saying, I did that! And then like much smaller, a sticker that's got like the House and the Senate. And like 50 different state legislatures and all the governors, the department who runs the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and you've got to like, have Nixon and Carter on it too, maybe actually every president thus far sort of all holding hands like it's a small world and they're all singing "and we all kind of helped."

Hannah McCarthy:
I'll call the print shop.

Nick Capodice:
Well, that'll just about do it. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jcqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and doesn't need to heat her home because of her coat. Because of her amazing jacket. Music In this episode by the inimitable Chris Zabriskie, Kevin McCleod, Lobo Loco, Dyalla, broke for free, Nico Staf, Bobby Renz, and this track playing here. We love it so much. Whispering through by Asura. Civics 101 is a production of NPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Transcript

presidents and gas 2.mp3

Archival: All righty, folks, check this out. You see that. That's all me. "I did that." Yeah, he did it. That's what's killing my business.

Nick Capodice: You ever see one of those, Hannah

Hannah McCarthy: And "I did that" sticker?

Nick Capodice: Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.

Nick Capodice: Would you describe it for me?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, it's just Biden pointing, the sticker says, "I did that" and people will slap it on, like the gas pump at a gas station.

Archival: Next [00:00:30] person who gets their gas and they they get sticker shock. They get to remember that. President Biden did that. Here we go. Right next to that four Dollar and sixty seven cents a gallon gasoline.

Nick Capodice: I was looking around for videos of these stickers at gas stations to make this episode, and you can buy them anywhere, by the way. One recent gas pump display I saw had three stickers. It had Joe Biden pointing and saying, I did that. And then a picture of Speaker of the House Nancy [00:01:00] Pelosi saying I helped. And then Vice President Kamala Harris saying, I just blank; the blank being a rude word I don't want to say on this podcast. And if we were like a hip, fast paced political talk show, we could make today's episode, Well, did he do that? Did Joe Biden make gas prices go up? And while we will answer that question today, we're going to frame it a bit differently because you're listening to Civics 101, I'm Nick Capodice,

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy,

Nick Capodice: And today we're talking about the president [00:01:30] and the price of gasoline. What is the relationship throughout American history between our chief executive and what we pay at the pump? And to start our journey, Hannah, I want to introduce you to Robert Rapier.

Robert Rapier: So, yeah, my name is Robert Rapier. I'm a chemical engineer. I work for Proteum Energy. We take oilfield flare gas and other supplies, and we convert that into hydrogen. On the side, I write for Forbes.

Nick Capodice: Just [00:02:00] to reiterate, Robert is not a political scientist. He has worked in engineering in the fuel and oil industry for about 30 years. And March of 2021 he wrote an article called "Who is to blame for rising gas prices?" And I spoke with him and he let me in on a little secret.

Go on.

He told me the name of the person actually responsible for high gas prices.

Hannah McCarthy: Who is it?

Nick Capodice: Yoweri Museveni. He's [00:02:30] the president of Uganda.

Robert Rapier: So a friend of mine that lives in Uganda, he wrote to me about, you know, a few months ago, and he said gas prices here are up 50 percent. And I said, Wow. I said, Who do people blame? And he said, our politicians. And I said, OK, so now we know who to blame for gas prices. Uganda's politicians.

Nick Capodice: He's [00:03:00] joking, I'm joking, we're all joking. Please don't go putting stickers on Ugandan gas pumps.

Robert Rapier: so I think that's, you know, it's universal. When gas prices go up, people blame the politicians. Basically, the underlying oil price movement is responsible for nearly all of gasoline price movement. So if you want to know why gas prices increase, it's almost always, well, oil prices increase. And what I said in that article is there are very few handles that a president [00:03:30] has to influence gas prices in the short term.

Hannah McCarthy: So what I'm getting here is that the short answer to is the president responsible for the price of gasoline is no.

Nick Capodice: Correct. It is no. We can end the episode right now.

Hannah McCarthy: Now this is such a touchy topic. Nick, what was the response to Robert's article?

Nick Capodice: It was not pleasant. The reason I reached out to him specifically was because his analysis was explicitly nonpartisan. I wanted to talk to someone who would [00:04:00] take the political fuel out of this debate.

Robert Rapier: Yeah, I try to do that. But people will still say, Oh, you're being political, and I say, No, I'm not. I'm just telling you what's happening. You can view it that way if you want. But I'm telling you what's actually happening. And I got a lot of nasty, nasty messages from people who were like, Oh, you must be an idiot. Any idiot can see that Biden became president, and then we had this big surge in gas prices. How could he not be responsible? And then people would say, How [00:04:30] can you spend all this stimulus money and not expect inflation? He canceled the Keystone Pipeline. How can you not see? And all these things? I mean, none of them. None of them have much of an impact on gas prices.

Nick Capodice: And I'm going to get back to the Keystone pipeline because that is relevant to this topic. But it's not just President Biden. These accusations have happened to whomever has been president when gas was expensive. But as Robert [00:05:00] said, the price of gas is ruthlessly firmly permanently tied to the price of oil.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, like how tied?

Nick Capodice: I want to show you this graph, and I'm going to put it on our website if anyone wants to see it. Civics101podcast.org It is a chart of the price of oil and the price of gasoline in the U.S. since 1946.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, they track almost exactly.

Nick Capodice: Exactly, yeah. And it is hard sometimes to look outside of our star spangled shell. But the [00:05:30] rise and fall of the price of gas in the U.S. over the years is the same in the U.K., Canada, Portugal, et cetera.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, so yes, you've made it very clear that the price of gas mirrors the price of oil, but can you answer for me why it is so expensive right now in January 2022?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, but first I have to put this in the broader historical picture.

Irina Ivanova: People are really upset now because gas is over three dollars a gallon. You know, this does not even [00:06:00] compare to what was going on in the 70s.

Nick Capodice: This is Irina Ivanova, she's an economic reporter for CBS News, and she recently wrote an article called Can President Biden Do Anything to lower gas prices?

Irina Ivanova: Right now we have. We have gas. It's expensive, it's definitely hurting people. You know, we need our cars. And if you're on a tight budget, it hurts your budget. In the seventies, I mean, we we had like gas lines around the block.

Archival: This [00:06:30] gas line at one station on the Upper West Side ran from Ninety Sixth Street and West End Avenue, all the way up to one hundred and Second Street. This is unreal. Isn't this disgusting? Why doesn't anybody contact the president? Why is he letting this happen to us?

Nick Capodice: When I say energy crisis in the nineteen seventies, who's the first person that jumps into your mind? Who do people blame.

Hannah McCarthy: Jimmy Carter? No?

Archival: We face a problem, a problem with regard to energy heating. For example, this winter, just as we thought, we faced a problem [00:07:00] of gasoline this summer and the possibility of brownouts.

Nick Capodice: Carter popped into my head, too, but it started with Richard Nixon. The energy crises, plural, by the way, in the nineteen seventies were massive and complicated. They dominated the headlines. But to summarize. Are you familiar with OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries?

Hannah McCarthy: Isn't it a group of countries that produce a lot of oil and so they agree on prices and production so that we don't run out of oil and so the market is not wildly [00:07:30] unstable?

Nick Capodice: Absolutely. And there's also OAPEC, which is the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. And a long story short, OAPEC created an embargo. They refused to sell oil to countries that had supported Israel in what is called the Yom Kippur War. The United States was one of the eight nations embargoed, and it was devastating.

Irina Ivanova: The U.S. didn't have domestic oil production at that point, or if they did it, it was really minimal. You know, we were importing oil mostly [00:08:00] from the Middle East. So there was this real sense of, you know, the U.S. being at the mercy of foreign powers and then the president not being able to to do anything about it. I mean, you know, what are what are what are you going to what are you going to do, say, like, Hey, guys, like create more oil, you know, it was a whole geopolitical crisis.

Nick Capodice: And gas wasn't just expensive after this embargo, there just wasn't enough of it.

Irina Ivanova: I mean, this is this is literally like, you need fuel. [00:08:30] You cannot get it. People had to fill their tank based on the number on their license plate. And then, of course, you had people swapping around license plates so that on this day it was only plates ending and even numbers could get filled up. On the next day, it was, you know, plates ending in odd numbers.

Nick Capodice: President Nixon established price controls on domestic oil. He asked gas stations to not sell gas on Saturday nights and Sundays. And Congress created the 55 mile per hour speed [00:09:00] limit on federal highways, which was the inspiration for Sammy Hagar's hard rock anthem. I can't drive 55.

Hannah McCarthy: The fifty five mile an hour speed limit was to control use of gas??

Nick Capodice: Gas consumption, absolutely, you save gas when you drive slower. This was the issue in the Nixon administration. In a poll conducted in New York, seventy six percent of people said [00:09:30] the energy crisis was the most important problem facing the country versus Watergate, which got about 15 percent. And then it was the issue in Gerald Ford's administration. And then Jimmy Carter made the energy crisis his own personal Waterloo. He gave speeches and how we all just have to use less gas. He installed solar panels on the White House. He asked Americans to just do more with less, which you can imagine was an extremely unpopular concept.

Archival: If we learn to live truthfully [00:10:00] and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust.

Nick Capodice: It was so unpopular that it was parodied by Archie Bunker in all in the family.

Archival: Bet you won't find none of them congressmen turning down their electric blankets tonight.

Nick Capodice: And then things started to shift in the 1980s. Oil started to flow more freely from the Middle East. Ronald Reagan came in, removed those price controls that Nixon and created stopped pushing Carter's automobile efficiency [00:10:30] standards, removed all environmental restrictions on local gas production and deployed soldiers in the Persian Gulf. And the last thing he did was to take the solar panels off the grid for the White House. Gas prices came down.

Hannah McCarthy: Wow. Ok. All of that history brings up the question from the beginning of this episode. Can a president or a Congress do anything to lower the price of oil and therefore gasoline? Are [00:11:00] there any executive powers that President Biden can use or has used?

Nick Capodice: There are sort of, and we're going to talk about three of the things a president can do to lower the price of gas, along with the breakdown of what's going on right now. And finally, how the Keystone XL pipeline is tied to all of this right after the break.

Hannah McCarthy: But before we break, just your friendly weekly reminder that we have a newsletter and it's not one of those annoying things, we're not going to bombard you with emails. It's just the place where we put all of the fun [00:11:30] stuff that we learned about episodes while we were working on it. It is just a way to get to know us better and get to know more about civics. If you're into that, you can subscribe. Right now, it's at Civics101podcast.org. It comes out every other week and it's fun. All right.

Nick Capodice: Civics 101 is a listener supported show, support the show with whatever you can, depending on the price of gas right now at our website civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: As [00:12:00] of this recording, January twenty fifth, 2022 gas in the U.S. is at an average of three dollars and twenty two cents a gallon, up from a dollar and 80 cents in spring of twenty twenty. So how Nick, do we get here so fast?

Nick Capodice: All right, here's Robert Rapier again.

Robert Rapier: Okay, so as the pandemic was starting to get heated up, Saudi Arabia and Russia decided to engage in a price war over [00:12:30] over oil that started prices dipping.

Nick Capodice: Hannah, something I didn't know about was the concept of futures and investing. Don't turn off the podcast. It's interesting, I promise. People invest in oil futures, which is a lot riskier than just buying stocks, because what you're doing is you're committing to owing an infinite amount of money. If you invest a thousand dollars in oil futures and the price goes way down. You don't just earn zero, you're on the hook [00:13:00] to owe a lot of money. Isn't that scary?

Hannah McCarthy: I don't know anything about investing. It's a good thing I don't do it.

Robert Rapier: And that's what happened, and a lot of people got caught. It caused some marginal producers to shut down. It caused some producers to go bankrupt. And then the pandemic hit and the stay at home orders and the demand for oil in the U.S. plummeted.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, I remember this period, nobody was driving. We all had stay at home orders and so nobody was buying gas [00:13:30] and it was something like under $2 a gallon.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. And then slowly Americans started going back to work and back to school

Robert Rapier: After the stay at home order started to expire, demand started to recover and it recovered much faster than supply did. And so from negative prices, we saw prices start to take off. And then over the next year, supply was short. Demand increased back to about where it was and supply which had fallen by two [00:14:00] or three million barrels a day. It took a much longer time to come back online. If people say why and I said, well, some of the companies don't even exist anymore. Some of the marginal wells were shut in, and you can't bring those back online. If you've got a stripper well, producing a few barrels a day and suddenly prices are negative. You might permanently shut that well down and you're not going to bring it back online. And that is the primary reason oil prices skyrocketed and gasoline prices followed. That is the single biggest reason, much bigger factor than [00:14:30] anything Trump did or anything that Biden has done.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, I'm ready for it. What can the president do to lower gas prices?

Nick Capodice: Alright, I got three for you. Three things. Here is Irina Ivanova again with number one.

Irina Ivanova: There's one specific thing that the president could do and that Biden actually has done. That has a little bit of an impact that it can create a little blip in gas prices. And that [00:15:00] is to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Hannah McCarthy: What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Just like a massive tank of gas somewhere?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's a system of caverns along the Gulf Coast, massive underground salt domes that are full of oil and that oil can be turned into gasoline. It was created in 1975 in response to the oil embargo, and it can hold seven hundred and fourteen million barrels of crude. Some caverns hold sweet crude, some caverns hold sour crude. I'm going [00:15:30] to get into that in the newsletter. But recently, Congress has been selling the oil in the reserve since 2015 to fund the deficit. And President Biden released 50 million barrels from it in November 2021.

Robert Rapier: Presidents frequently do it leading up to elections because high gas prices are not a prescription for getting, getting reelected. And so that's one. It's not a, I mean, you can't just keep doing that. We have a strategic petroleum reserve for a reason, so there is a risk in doing [00:16:00] it. But presidents have used that handle time and time again.

Irina Ivanova: And the main reason is really signaling right. And voters, voters love it, you know? So there is there is that effect of like, Oh, the president's looking out for me. In the grand scheme of things just to sort of put it into numbers, you know, we rereleased something like 50 million barrels of oil, that is roughly what the entire U.S. uses in a single day.

Hannah McCarthy: All [00:16:30] right, sounds like number one, tap the piggy bank. It's a gesture, but a relatively ineffective one, right? So what's number two?

Nick Capodice: Number two, it's to ban exports. Stop selling oil that we produce to other countries. Keep it all to ourselves, which we did for 40 years until 2015.

Robert Rapier: President Obama agreed to end that ban on oil exports, and what was happening at the time is fracking had had increased [00:17:00] oil supplie dramatically in the US.

Nick Capodice: Fracking by the way, or hydraulic fracturing is a method of extracting oil and natural gas from deep underground, and we were getting a lot more gas from fracking in 2015.

Robert Rapier: But there's a ban on exports, and so all of that had to go through domestic refineries. And that was depressing the price of oil. And what was happening is domestic refiners were then refining the oil, but there was no ban on finished product exports. [00:17:30] So finished product exports went through the roof. Refiners were printing money. And in reality, it didn't really affect gas prices because gas prices still were set by the global market. And so it just shifted who made who was making the money. So you could make an argument that maybe it might have some influence because it would depress oil prices in the US? But, you know, unless you're banning finished product exports to its just, refiners are going to make a lot more money. [00:18:00]

Hannah McCarthy: So Robert is saying that if we stop exporting, oil refineries will just export the gas and diesel they make from that oil, and nothing will change, except refiners make more money.

Nick Capodice: Yes. And there's another problem with stopping exports. Kind of an oil cold war.

Irina Ivanova: The bigger issue, which a lot of people brought up with this idea of banning oil exports, is that it would cause other oil producing countries to use a technical term to completely flip [00:18:30] out and lose their cool and and retaliate. I mean, if the U.S. can ban oil exports, other people can say, Well, we can't have your oil, you can't have our oil, you know, so, so so their their analysis is that it would just it would just lead to an arms race metaphorically where everybody's withholding their gasoline and we don't actually have, you know, more oil globally.

Nick Capodice: And [00:19:00] finally, action number three, cut taxes. There is a federal tax of about 18 cents per gallon of gasoline, but the much bigger tax comes from your state.

Irina Ivanova: Different states have very, very different amounts of taxes. There's Texas. Tennessee have very low fuel taxes. California famously has extremely high fuel taxes. On average, the tax that the [00:19:30] state imposes accounts for roughly 15 percent of the price at the pump. State governors could potentially try to make this stuff cheaper, and they, you know, they would work, especially in a place like California where you know, you're talking about 450 or more for for gas. You know, if, if, if you shave off 15 percent, that's that could be significant.

Hannah McCarthy: We're calling this episode the president and the price of gas, but [00:20:00] it sounds like you could just as easily call it the governor and the price of gas.

Nick Capodice: You could indeed, your state's own little president. Or maybe it'd be better to call the episode your state legislature and the price of gas, since they're the ones who actually write the laws.

Hannah McCarthy: Last thing I have heard a lot of criticism of President Biden's handling of the price of gasoline being tied to his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Can we get into that?

Nick Capodice: Yeah.

Archival: Well, we have thousands of young people [00:20:30] here in the streets of Washington, D.C., marching to the White House to risk arrest, to demand the President Obama say no to Keystone XL...

Nick Capodice: So, briefly, the Keystone Pipeline project, it's a proposed pipeline that transported oil from Canada to Texas. It was the subject of years of protests by indigenous activists, landowners and environmental groups. It was a protest that spanned three presidential administrations, and it was a successful protest [00:21:00] as the project was abandoned in June 2021 after President Biden issued an executive order to ban the permit for it. Hannah, this is the talking point on conservative talk radio that the canceling of the pipeline increase the price of gas. So did it. Roberts says no.

Robert Rapier: Why wouldn't that influence oil prices? Because the Keystone pipeline, that supply wasn't going to come along for years, and we don't know what the demand situation is like [00:21:30] in years. So so this doesn't have a short term influence on oil prices. I said before, if scientists say we're going to have 50 percent more hurricanes in the Gulf Coast over the next two decades, that's not going to move oil prices. But if one is rolling through the Gulf Coast right now, it will. I mean, there's short term factors that increase the price, but longer term, these things just don't move the needle much. So a lot of the actions President Biden [00:22:00] has taken, although they can influence the price in the long run, people mistakenly assume that's why prices are moving now. And for a lot of people, I point out between the time of the election and the time Biden was sworn in, oil prices moved up 40 percent. Do you blame Trump for that?

Hannah McCarthy: Did people blame Trump for that?

Nick Capodice: House and Senate Democrats sure did. They blamed it on his recent sanctions of Iran. President Trump tweeted [00:22:30] at OPEC and said that they were to blame and they had to increase production. That didn't do much. So then he tweeted that it was Obama's fault because Obama had conspired with Saudi Arabia to lower prices before his reelection. Anyways, this is a playbook both parties have used. But to reiterate the effect of the Keystone Pipeline project, Irina spoke to Tom Kloza from OPIS, which is a major market analysis firm. And Tom said "The Keystone decision is something [00:23:00] that might come back and haunt the administration in 2023. But it has absolutely nothing to do with why crude oil prices now have rallied so much since April 2020."

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, this is making me think about the fact that no matter how much power we perceive our chief executive as having, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are instances where they are not the most important person in the room. And when I look at how the price of gas here tracks exactly with oil prices [00:23:30] globally, it's also clear that just like a lot of issues when it comes to the price of oil, the United States is not the most important person in the room, either.

Nick Capodice: We should make a new sticker.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, yeah, what should we put on it?

Nick Capodice: It like a huge sticker that is an illustrated embodiment of the global crude oil market saying, I did that! And then like much smaller, a sticker that's got like the House and the Senate. And like 50 different state legislatures and all the governors, [00:24:00] the department who runs the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and you've got to like, have Nixon and Carter on it too, maybe actually every president thus far sort of all holding hands like it's a small world and they're all singing "and we all kind of helped."

Hannah McCarthy: I'll call the print shop.

Nick Capodice: Well, that'll just about do it. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jcqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and doesn't [00:24:30] need to heat her home because of her coat. Because of her amazing jacket. Music In this episode by the inimitable Chris Zabriskie, Kevin McCleod, Lobo Loco, Dyalla, broke for free, Nico Staf, Bobby Renz, and this track playing here. We love it so much. Whispering through by Asura. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Politics Of The Olympics

The Olympics are a global event. They take years of planning, negotiation and convincing -- not to mention billions of dollars -- to stage. This is how the games are used by the United States and others around the world. This is what it takes to host, what the games do for  a nation and what it means when you refuse to attend. Welcome to the Olympics. 

Our guests for this episode are Jules Boykoff, professor of government and politics at Pacific University and author of several books on the politics of the Olympics, and Nancy Qian, Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences at Northwestern University.

Transcript:

Note: This transcript was AI-generated and may contain errors

Nick Capodice: Can I do the John Williams Olympic theme of mouth trumpet?

Hannah McCarthy: Of course.

Nick Capodice: I think the Olympics theme is one of the unsung heroes of the John Williams repertoire. It's one of my favorites. It's up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark. My TV, when I was a kid, couldn't get any channels like local or cable or anything. All we could do is watch the VCR. So my grandmother every four years would mail about 20 tapes of the Olympics to me and my sister, and we'd watch them religiously.

Hannah McCarthy: What was your favorite year?

Nick Capodice: 1988, Seoul. Reebok. Reebok, Reebok. And you thought everything was happening in Seoul? We know all the commercials. Great Run winners give their best all the way to the finish line.

Hannah McCarthy: Did you love it for the commercials or for the athletes?

Nick Capodice: For both? Because we didn't have TVs, so the commercials were just as joyous.

Archival Seoul 1988 Olympics Commercial: And you thought everything was happening in Seoul?

Hannah McCarthy: Every two years, people who represent the absolute best in their field, the best in the world descend on one of the globe's cities and show us exactly what they can do.

Archival: Usain Bolt!

Archival: A perfect score, 10.0 for Nadia Comaneci, a perfect score. Cannot be, no one can run that fast. He's done it!

Hannah McCarthy: Billions of people tune in to watch the celebration of athleticism, of commitment and excellence. And that's what the Olympics are all about, right? The athletes.

Jules Boykoff: The Olympics are political. They have been political for a very long time, and they go back to being political all the way to the beginning.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Jules Boykoff. The guy who shattered my understanding of the Olympic Games. He's also professor of politics and government at Pacific University in Oregon and author of four books on the politics of the Olympic Games.

Jules Boykoff: In fact, if anybody tells you that the Olympics are not political, there is a very good chance that they are making their living off of the Olympic Games.

Hannah McCarthy: And that, my friends, is what we are digging into today. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And this is Civics 101. Today we are exploring the global games and how they are used by the United States and others around the world. We'll talk about what it takes to host the games, what the games do for a nation and what it means when you refuse to attend. Welcome to the Olympics.

Nick Capodice: Now, I always thought the Olympics were a pretty wholesome affair. So can we get into this whole Olympics being shattered for you thing?

Hannah McCarthy: All right. Let's just say I have a lot more to think about when I binge watch floor routines.

Jules Boykoff: 1936, there was the Berlin Olympics where Hitler made the games extremely political, and he used the games as a trampoline for his invasion into Europe after those games

Archival: the German team as hosts come last and then Germany's Führer declares the 11th

Jules Boykoff: Olympiad officially open.

fall forward from there to the Cold War era, where basically the Olympics became a proxy battlefield between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Hannah McCarthy: United States Olympic Committee voted to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.

Jules Boykoff: Shimmy forward from there. 2014. The Olympics happened in Sochi, Russia. Incredibly political. I mean, the host there in Russia had just passed an anti LGBTQ law that was very much clashing with principles in the Olympic Charter.

Archival: President Vladimir Putin wants to make it clear that gay visitors are welcome, but he's also keen to stress the country's ban on promoting homosexuality among minors.

Jules Boykoff: And so that was political, and it raised the political hackles of numerous athletes from the United States, for example, and diplomats from around the world. Then you go forward a little bit further. 2018 the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, where the International Olympic Committee played an active role, bringing together the governments of North Korea and South Korea to form a united team for those games.

Archival: Setting foot in South Korea tonight, these North Korean Olympians are making history.

Jules Boykoff: Obviously, every one of those examples show that the Olympics are political.

Hannah McCarthy: By the way, the modern Olympic Games were started in the 1890s by a French aristocrat as a nod to the ancient Greek sporting event. So we've been at this for well over 100 years. And if you're listening to this thinking, excuse me, Hitler used the games to pave the way to his European invasion? I promise you we will come back to that. But the point is, if you embark, as I did on a happy go lucky investigation of the world's greatest celebration of athleticism, you will find that there is a lot simmering just under the five ring surface. And to get there, we have to start here.

Jules Boykoff: If you want to understand the Olympics, looking at the International Olympic Committee as a great place to start, the International Olympic Committee oversees the Olympic Games. This is a nonprofit organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It might be a nonprofit, but it's incredibly profitable. It brings in billions and billions of dollars. It makes the rules for who gets to participate in the Olympics, which sports are in the Olympics, which games will be featured, where who will host the Olympics? They make those decisions.

Hannah McCarthy: The International Olympic Committee, otherwise known as the IOC, gets that tax exempt nonprofit status. And because it's a non-disclosure Switzerland, I can't give you a breakdown of what it spends its money on, but it's worth noting that Olympic athletes receive very little financial support from the IOC. It's also worth noting that committee membership comprises a fair number of royals and corporate executives, and then you have the two hundred and six countries who participate in the Olympics. Each has a National Olympic Committee. Ours is called the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Nick Capodice: Team USA.

Hannah McCarthy: Team USA. Oh, and just as an aside, we are one of the very few nations in the world that does not have a Ministry of Sports and does not federally fund our Olympic Committee, in part because we are one of the only countries in the world that debates the connection between politics and sports in other countries. That connection is explicitly acknowledged. There are, for example, left and right wing soccer clubs worldwide.

Nick Capodice: I mean, our president throws the first pitch of the baseball season. We sing the national anthem at sporting events.

Hannah McCarthy: We're about due, by the way, for quick dive into why we call elections races.

Nick Capodice: Oh, absolutely, it is a sports metaphor.

Hannah McCarthy: It is one hundred percent the sports metaphor. In Great Britain they called it a "standing." Anyway, the IOC would agree with all those politicians and franchise owners in the U.S. who assert that politics has no place in sports. It's literally on the books. You can find it in their charter, and we're going to get to that later. The Olympic Charter, by the way, that's the rules governing all Olympic operations. So here's how the Olympics have traditionally gone from a glint in a city's eye to the big event.

Jules Boykoff: For many decades, cities would vie against each other for the right to host the Olympic Games. And often you'd see multiple cities going for one Olympics and they would make bids. They put together candidature files that said what they were going to do should they get the right to host the Olympics. And what would happen was after they would make their pitches. The International Olympic Committee members, the whole body around a hundred or so members currently would vote on which City gets to host the Olympic Games, and in years where it was competitive, it could be a really tight vote.

Nick Capodice: You said the way they traditionally happen, so I'm going to guess that something changed.

Jules Boykoff: This changed massively in 2017, when again, numerous cities were going for the 2024 Olympics, but one after the other dropped out. Here in the United States, we saw in Boston a vigorous and rigorous activist community teamed up with local politicos to raise big questions about the idea of hosting the Olympics.

Archival: If you're like me, the idea of a Boston

Archival: Olympics at first is kind of exciting. So why the only 40 percent of Massachusetts voters support Boston 2024.

Jules Boykoff: Ultimately, decision makers elected officials in Boston handed back the bid that they had been handed by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Hannah McCarthy: I remember this in part because I grew up near Boston, and to be honest, I got a little thrill by the idea of the Olympics coming to town. But the public polling was bad enough to convince the city to withdraw its bid. So Boston backed out and nearly everyone else had already dropped out at this point.

Jules Boykoff: Only Los Angeles and Paris were still standing. And so at that time in 2017, they allocated the 2024 Olympics to Paris and the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles.

Nick Capodice: To how is it that the Olympics were just handed to Paris and L.A? Did residents of those two cities say they really wanted it?

Jules Boykoff: Neither city had had a ballot measure where everyday residents of those cities were given an opportunity to weigh in to say whether they wanted to host the Olympics or not.

Hannah McCarthy: It turns out that around a dozen Olympic bids were revoked between 2013 and 2018. The reason voting ballot measures at demands for a vote or someone winning office on an Anti-Olympic platform.

Jules Boykoff: And so what the general trend is, whenever you see an outburst of democracy that tends to not benefit the International Olympic Committee, then all my days studying the Olympic Games. I have never once seen a grassroots democratic bid come from the ground up in society, where everyday working people in the city say, Hey, we really want to host the Olympics. Never have I seen that. Instead, it's always well-connected political and economic elites who figure they can use the Olympics to trampoline their careers or to make some money. I mean, there really is a lot of money sloshing through the system.

Nick Capodice: But how does that work, exactly? If the Olympics are indeed largely unpopular with citizens, why would someone hoping to help their career even put in a bid?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, it's still the Olympics. It's still a prestigious major event that draws the attention of nearly the entire world. I mean, if you're the mayor who brought the summer games to your city, you are someone who got something enormous done. And by the way, you're networking with the other elite folks in your city and people who work at the International and National Olympic Committees, you're meeting important people. You're also probably not going to be the person in charge anymore. By the time the Olympics come to town, so you are unlikely to be blamed for the downsides of hosting the Olympics.

Nick Capodice: All right. And this is the part I need some help on. Jules is saying essentially that when you ask the voters if they want the Olympics, they tend to say, Heck, no. So why? What is so unappealing about hosting the Olympics in your hometown?

Jules Boykoff: This goes all the way back to a really interesting case that a lot of people don't think about in the 1970s, when Denver was handed the 1976 Winter Olympics.

Archival: The Denver Olympic story starts in a land of Olympian proportions.

Jules Boykoff: Your listeners might be saying Denver 1976 Olympics. I don't remember those. That's because they never happened, because people across the political spectrum, from fiscal conservatives to more a left of center environmentalists got on the ballot, a measure that said we will give no public money to host these Olympic Games and guess what? They won. Conservatives, liberals and everyone in between turned out and voted down. Hosting the Olympics in Denver with public money. And so those games never happened in Denver, the International Olympic Committee was forced to move them to Innsbruck, Austria.

Nick Capodice: Ok, I get that it's a money thing that's relatively easy to understand. We're going to spend massive amounts of public money is rarely a popular proposition with voters.

Hannah McCarthy: That's only part of it. But yeah, hosting the Olympics means investing a huge amount of money into infrastructure. After all, you need somewhere to host the competitions so we can start there. Jules broke it down for me like this. There are four major issues that citizens worry about when it comes to hosting the Olympics.

Jules Boykoff: Every single Olympics for which there is reliable data going all the way back to nineteen sixty has had cost overruns. In other words, I call this Etch-A-Sketch economics where in the bid phase of the Olympics, the people putting forth the bid say that it will only cost, say in the case of Tokyo, seven point three billion dollars. Then they get approved by the International Olympic Committee. They take that Etch A Sketch, they shake it up and they put a brand new number on it that is inevitably higher. In the case of Tokyo is around four times higher. I mean, estimates are in the neighborhood of $30 billion were spent on the Tokyo Olympics. So from 7.3 Billion to $30 billion.

Nick Capodice: 30 billion.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. It's -

Nick Capodice: 30 billion. 30.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.

Nick Capodice: With a B.

Hannah McCarthy: Yes. It's an immense amount of money. But I got to be clear here, the IOC does provide a chunk of that budget, but host cities are still responsible for the cost of venue construction, security, transport, medical services, customs and immigration and a bunch of other operational stuff.

Nick Capodice: Oh, I remember 2016 watching the Brazil opening ceremony, and there's this moment when it was just supermodel Gisele Bundchen walking the length of the stadium. And the announcer is like, yeah, they had some last minute budget cuts.

Jules Boykoff: A second trend the social scientists have identified is the militarization of public space

Hannah McCarthy: In recent years. In particular, the Olympics have become an explicit terrorist target, not to mention the standard security risk that comes with a massive infusion of people, teams and spectators.

Jules Boykoff: Essentially, local security forces use the Olympics like their own private cash machine, getting all the special weapons that they would never be able to get during normal political times. And they don't just return those after the Olympics. In fact, they keep them and they become part of everyday policing.

Hannah McCarthy: And then there's this factor that I think often flies under the radar when a city wins an Olympic bid. The Olympic Village, the competition venues, those are going to have to go somewhere in that city, and that means moving people around.

Jules Boykoff: There's also the displacement and eviction of everyday working people in the city. So when China hosted the Olympics back in 2008, one point five million people were displaced from their homes in order to make way for Olympic venues in Rio de Janeiro. For the twenty sixteen Olympics, there were seventy seven thousand people who were displaced to make way for the Olympics, even when the numbers aren't really high. The human cost is still very real. I visited Tokyo in July 2019, where I interviewed two women who are displaced by the 2020 Olympics. But not only were they displaced by the Twenty Twenty Olympics, they had actually previously been displaced by the nineteen sixty four Olympics, the same women. And so that social public housing complex of working people and working families was decimated. A community was decimated in Tokyo.

Hannah McCarthy: On top of all this, cities will often make promises about how the Olympics will benefit a city long term, widespread improvements to housing and other infrastructure. And if you look at Atlanta, for example, that City really did see a boon from the 1996 Olympics. Certain areas improved and stayed that way, but long neglected low income communities tended not to see that same benefit. In fact, it was only those communities closest to the action of the games that got a makeover back in ninety six. Finally, the last major concern for cities, especially for activists equipped to push back against the Olympics.

Jules Boykoff: The last trend that social scientists have pointed to more and more is the tendency to engage in greenwashing. In other words, promising big ecological gains in society by hosting the Olympics, but not really having much follow through. And again, Tokyo is really instructive in that sense. Originally, when they were to get the Olympics, they were telling the International Olympic Committee that these would be the quote recovery games that would help the affected areas around Fukushima that had been slammed by the triple whammy earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown to recover more quickly.

Hannah McCarthy: The thing is, Jules interviewed people in Japan, elected officials, scholars, people on the street, and they said that hosting the Olympics actually slowed down the green recovery process. A lot of the equipment and materials needed to deal with that crisis in Fukushima were sent to Tokyo, where the Olympics were being held instead of staying where they were pretty desperately needed.

Jules Boykoff: So because of those four trends, there are just simply fewer and fewer cities that are game to host the Olympic Games anymore.

Nick Capodice: Wow. So at this stage, Hannah, I'm starting to cast about looking for the upside. We've heard the Olympics are expensive. They militarize public space. They displace communities and they fail to deliver on environmental improvements. So what does a successful Olympic season look like? Do we even have them?

Jules Boykoff: So I've done a lot of research around the nineteen eighty four Olympics in Los Angeles. This is one that Olympic boosters often point to as one of the more successful Olympics, if you will.

Archival: Welcome to the opening ceremonies of the Games at the 23rd Olympiad at Los Angeles.

Jules Boykoff: First of all, we didn't lose a ton of money. They ended up with a small surplus. And if you talk to people in Los Angeles, some of them really do have a positive feeling about that.

Hannah McCarthy: Some people, though, Jules means like the mayor of L.A., Eric Garcetti and fellow Olympic supporters media tycoon Casey Wasserman. So yeah, there are people who will say that there's a major upside, but there's always the other side of the coin.

Jules Boykoff: I also interviewed lots of Latin X and African-American residents of Los Angeles who felt very different about those games. What they said when they thought about the nineteen eighty four Olympics was they remembered the words of the helicopter blades above their neighborhoods. They remember the machinery, the military. Her eyes, machinery that was brought in to keep activists at bay during the Olympics, who are trying to raise big questions about the spending around the 1984 Games and other elements. And so there's a real racialized remembrance of the Los Angeles Olympics, and we can't just brush the feelings and experiences of those folks under the table. We need to think about that as well.

Hannah McCarthy: By the way, those same marginalized communities are looking at the 2028 L.A. Olympics with the memory of how they did not benefit and were in fact negatively impacted back in nineteen eighty four, which is why you see groups like no Olympics L.A. taking a stand against their city's games.

Archival: And you know, our main mission is to stop the Olympic Games, not just from happening here in L.A, but just to educate people on why that's the thing that needs to happen.

Hannah McCarthy: But I want to pivot here, Nick, because the way a city's residents feel about hosting the Olympics, that is just one piece of the political puzzle. What are the other motivating factors for hosting the Olympic Games? How are these games used as a political tool and what do the athletes remember them? Think about this? That's all coming up after the break. Before we dive back into the international intrigue that is the Olympic Games, I am here to tell you that there is a great deal of stuff that did not make it into this episode and it is good stuff. The Olympics have layers upon layers of complicated dynamics, and that makes sense because this is a global event. But the point is the stuff that didn't make it in. You want to hear it? Trust me. For example, what does it mean for one TV network to have exclusive broadcast rights for the Olympic Games? It means a lot, people and I want to tell you and I will and our next extra credit newsletter, we send it out every other week, and it's packed with the other stuff we are learning and the clips from the cutting room floor. You can subscribe right this very moment at our website civics101podcast.org. All right. Let the games begin.

Nick Capodice: All right. Hannah, before the break, we heard about how the Olympics end up in a city and the impact of hosting for good or for ill. But it seems to me that the power of the Olympics extends beyond political hobnobbing and justifying major spending. So what else motivates cities to host them? What does it for them?

Nancy Qian: For over a year now, I've actually been working on a research project about the motivation that governments have for holding the Olympics.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Nancy Qian. She's a professor of economics and decision sciences at Northwestern. I spoke with her after reading an article she wrote called Good and Bad Olympic Nationalism. And she told me that over the course of her research, she's found that democracies tend to bid on the Olympic Games when they're doing well, economically speaking. But autocracies, a.k.a. governments where power is concentrated in one person's hand, are the opposite.

Nancy Qian: Autocracies are more likely to bid for the Olympics bid and win, I should say so. These are meaningful bids when things aren't going well economically.

Nick Capodice: Wow. So it's like, Hey, citizens pay no mind to the fact that things aren't going so well right now. We're going to try to host this flashy, distracting, prestigious event, which, by the way, is exactly what a bread and circus is. It's basically anything that superficially pleases people.

Nancy Qian: Obviously, most bids are not successful, right? So the vast majority of bids are just signals that the country is interested. And maybe it gives the country some news headlines like, you know, we're going for it. This is something interesting to do. And maybe it distracts the country from other types of news. But most bids are not serious bids, right? They don't have a chance.

Hannah McCarthy: This is an important factor. We can talk about the politics of hosting the Olympic Games and we will do more of that in just a moment. But that distinction is reserved for those nations who actually make the cut.

Nancy Qian: I think so often we just focus all of our attention on the big power players, right? Like the economic political superpowers who are also the one getting the most medals. And also most often they host the Olympics more often than the other countries, right? So there's good reason for focus. But there's so many countries, most countries, there's over one hundred countries that go to the Olympics. Most of them will never host the Olympics. Most countries don't win medals actually like any medals. And then for these countries, the Olympics are an entirely different experience,

Hannah McCarthy: And it's in that entirely different experience that you can find the difficult to measure positive vibes principle. What good can the Olympics do, especially when you are not the one hosting the games?

Nancy Qian: Researchers have shown using data from soccer games that, for example, for African countries competing together is really good for national unity, so it is still about patriotism and national unity. But it doesn't seem to have that negative element of international competition with other countries, which makes sense because they're not really contenders, right?

Nick Capodice: I would imagine that there's this sense of being sort of the David to the Goliath of the world's best sports teams, and that's something to bond over with other nations who are in the same boat as you. And also, you do get to play with the major contenders, and that's got to feel good.

Nancy Qian: All countries that go to international sporting games can get a big boost of patriotism and nationalism and bonding. But the political effect of that binding differs depending on where on the political spectrum of power you are, right? So if you're a weak state, that's fractionalized coming out of years of civil war, you know, competing in the Olympics. This is a moment of building solidarity for your country, which is good, right? By and large.

Nick Capodice: Oh yeah Hannah, this makes me think of South Sudan joining the 2016 Olympics, it was a huge deal because here you had this newly independent nation asserting its place on the world stage.

Archival: And a person that never heard about South Sudan or never see South Sudanese, to see that we are a new country. And also we need...

Hannah McCarthy: I do want to touch on this contendere question this idea that some nations are simply not contenders? Developing nations might not be meaningful contenders because their economic and political environment is not conducive to training and supporting their athletes. And there have been calls for the IOC to create a separate Olympic Games for developing nations or to build central training grounds for athletes who don't have access to them at home. Still, as it is now, these non contenders do stand to get something out of participation in the Olympic Games.

Nancy Qian: So really, it's it's more about a shared experience of being at the Games together, something that you've been doing, something you've been training for years that can actually build solidarity between people from different countries as well as different groups within countries, right?

Hannah McCarthy: For example, take the infamous divide of the Cold War. It was enough for the U.S. to boycott the Olympics in the Soviet Union and then for the Soviet Union to turn around and do the same to us. When the Cold War came to an end, Soviet and American athletes were face to face for the first time in a long time.

Archival: They're not one of the better serving teams in the world, and they can put a little pressure on the Soviets. They can make some points...

Nancy Qian: All of a sudden, you know, athletes who weren't allowed to talk to each other before, like the floodgates were open, and it turned out that all they had were like, these really positive feelings about the other athlete. So this sort of gives you the sense that a lot of the politics surrounding it is manufactured by the government and the media. My sense is that it's easier for the smaller countries because there's there's less incentives for governments and media to create tension, create political tension or magnify existing tensions.

Nick Capodice: Ok, Hannah, speaking of magnifying tensions, I have to ask about what is going on as we speak, which is a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.

Archival: A diplomatic boycott now of the Beijing Olympics over China's crackdown on democracy and human rights abuses.

Nick Capodice: The United States announced it first and then Canada, Australia and the UK followed suit. And from what I understand, China was not happy about it.

Archival: Yeah, David, they are calling this one pure political provocation, and they are now threatening countermeasures, though they are not specifying what those are....

Nick Capodice: So my first question is this does a boycott mean that we're not going to go to the Olympics at all?

Hannah McCarthy: Great question. It did. Once upon a time, I mentioned the U.S. boycott of the Soviet Olympic Games during the Cold War. That was a boycott in which even athletes were not permitted to attend the games, and we're not doing that this time.

Nancy Qian: I actually talked to some former Olympians about it. I just happened to have an opportunity and they were like, This is nothing like the Cold War, right? Because the Cold War, they didn't let the athletes go, and that was terrible for the athletes. That was a huge cost for the athlete. That was a price that was paid to make a huge political gesture.

Hannah McCarthy: In 1980, the Olympic Games were taking place in Moscow. The Soviet Union had recently invaded Afghanistan, and President Jimmy Carter set a deadline for Soviet troops to withdraw when they didn't make that deadline. Carter said, OK, we're boycotting the Olympics

Jimmy Carter: Human rights and who believe in peace. Let our voices be heard in an absolutely clear way and not add the imprimatur of approval to the Soviet Union and its government.

Hannah McCarthy: And not only that, any American athlete who attempted to attend the games under, say, a neutral banner would have their passport revoked.

Nick Capodice: And what does it move like that say to the rest of America?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, a lot of Americans pitied those athletes who couldn't compete. They were Olympians without the Olympics. Still, Carter was saying, we will in no way appear to support an anti-democratic regime. This was an acknowledgment of the political power gesture of going to the Olympics, of sitting with other leaders and diplomats and shaking hands and smiling while your country's athletes display their elite skill, which, by the way, brings me to a boycott that did not happen,

Nancy Qian: Such as the one in Berlin where people in hindsight thinks maybe someone should have banned it. But we all went. Everybody went the entire Western world who ended up at war with each other later all went and participated and celebrated.

Archival: And meanwhile, a packed

Speaker3: Stadium and flag draped cheering streets greet Chancellor Hitler on his way to perform the opening ceremony.

Hannah McCarthy: This is the 1936 Berlin Olympics, also known as Hitler's Olympics, and it started the first meaningful Olympic boycott movement in the United States. A lot of Americans were opposed to attending. Here's Jules Boykoff again.

Jules Boykoff: The boycott movement was widely supported in the United States, certainly by Jewish groups who could see the writing on the Wall already with what Hitler was doing after his rise in 1933. But it was really gaining steam even among certain athlete groups in the United States as well.

Hannah McCarthy: The quote boycott movement was widely publicly discussed leading up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. What message will it send if we send our athletes to Berlin? Will that legitimize this burgeoning Nazi regime?

Jules Boykoff: So what happened was the American Olympic honchos decided to send over a guy named Avery Brundage on a Fact-Finding mission to Berlin to figure out what was actually going on there. Well, Brundage, it should be said, was very pro-Nazi, very pro Germany. He was wined and dined by the Germans. He had his own translators, which were, of course, Nazi approved translators. And guess what? He comes back to the United States and says there's nothing to see there. Everything is going to be fine. And of course, don't even need to worry about this anyways, because the Olympics are neutral, they are not political. And so we have nothing to fear here.

Hannah McCarthy: Of course, that wasn't true. And closer to the games, it became apparent that there was in fact vehement anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany leading up to the Berlin games.

Jules Boykoff: And in fact, the president of the International Olympic Committee at the time account, named Henry Bilat, later was alarmed by the anti-Jewish signage that he saw in the countryside as he traveled to those Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. And he requested directly to Hitler that he get those signs down because they were going to do no good for the Olympic Games or really humanity more generally.

Hannah McCarthy: Mind you, Hitler was not really into sports. He was not convinced that he should go along with the IOC. Ultimately, Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister, convinced him to end. Germany then got to use the Olympic Games in a number of ways, for example, and this one blew my mind. It was the Germans who invented the modern Olympic torch relay.

Archival: Berlin's great day dawns with the arrival of the Olympic flame at the end of its 2000 mile journey from Greece.

Jules Boykoff: At that time, it was basically a scouting mission to figure out who are you are going to invade next for Germany and if you see where the torch went. Those were countries that were soon conquered, many of them.

Nick Capodice: Seriously? Why did I not know that little piece of information?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I hadn't either. Apparently, Hitler also saw this relay is a great way to tie the Olympic Games to their Greek roots, which was important to him because he saw a link between ancient Greece and the Aryan race. And then, of course, there's the fact that the Olympics meant major media coverage for Nazi Germany.

Jules Boykoff: The New York Times wrote glowingly of Hitler as one of the great leaders of our time after those Olympic Games. And so, you know, people who are following those Olympics were high on the five ring supply, if you will, at the time. And it really helped Hitler and gave him more space to maneuver politically moving forward.

Nick Capodice: All right. So if we want to look at exactly how politically powerful the Olympics are, this seems like the perfect example. The major power players of the world, including the United States, attend these games hobnob with Nazis, and it really helps that regime on the global scale.

Jules Boykoff: There's a lot of people wondering, are we essentially doing the same when we allow Russia to host the Olympics in twenty fourteen or China in twenty twenty two? And hey, there's plenty of people that are concerned about that. The Olympics are being held in the United States, which has eight hundred military bases around the world, it must be said, whereas China only has three who's the United States spends a huge amount of money on its military compared to these other countries. And so I think in fairness, that needs to be brought into the frame as well. When we're talking about these Olympic Games and the processes of democracy and how it can help forces in society that are anti-democratic gain a foothold through hosting the Olympic Games.

Hannah McCarthy: All right, so now we're going to move away from the politicians, the nation states the potential invasions, the diplomacy to the athletes, the actual Olympians at the heart of these games. How did their politics fit or not within the Olympics? That's coming up after the break.

Nick Capodice: But first, just a quick reminder that Civics 101 is a listener-supported show. Go to our website civics101podcast.org, click the donate button with whatever amount is good for you and you'll get a gold medal in our eyes.

Hannah McCarthy: Welcome back to Civics 101. We're talking the politics of the Olympics, including the politics of the people at the very heart of these games, the athletes, we know these games are a way to connect with other great athletes that for the competitors, the political divides of their nation are insignificant in the face of their mutual respect for others who train as hard as they do, who are a part of their very small club. But Olympians themselves figure it out a while ago that they too can use these games as a platform just as their home countries do.

Jules Boykoff: That epic moment of political dissent where John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood on the medal stand in Mexico City and thrust their black gloved fists into the Mexico City sky, while the person who plays second to gentleman from Australia named Peter Norman, a white guy from Australia, stood in solidarity wearing a button that said, OK, Air Olympic project for human rights.

Archival: There were some boos in the stadium last night. ABC Sports Editor Howard Cosell spoke to Tommie Smith after he accepted his gold medal.

Tommie Smith: The right glove that I wore on my right hand signifies the power within Black America, the left glove. My teammate, John Carlos, who on his left hand made an arc, my right hand to his left hand also signify black unity.

Nick Capodice: Yes, I know this moment very well. Carlos and Smith gave the black power salute. Smith later said that for him, it was the human rights salute. And it turned out that despite not giving the same salute, Peter Norman from Australia was in full support of their demonstration,

Hannah McCarthy: And this is still considered one of the most overtly political moments of modern Olympic history. And it really damaged Carlos and Smith's careers.

Jules Boykoff: And so, of course, the International Olympic Committee was in freakout mode after that happened, and they put loads of pressure on the United States Olympic Committee to give Carlos and Smith the boot from the Olympic Village, which is exactly what happened.

Hannah McCarthy: This highlights, by the way, the dissonance between the way that nations use the games and the expectations that the games themselves will be nonpolitical, that sports are inherently neutral, an insistence that the IOC eventually put on the books. So you had the Carlos and Smith moment in 1968, and then in 1972, Wayne Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collette stood on the medal stand and sort of disinterestedly spun their medals around on their fingers.

Jules Boykoff: The point is, after those two outbursts by U.S. African-American athletes in comradeship with other athletes, the IOC decided to put this rule on the books.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter. It bans any form of political demonstration during the games.

Jules Boykoff: And athletes are more and more aware of it, especially today, because I think it's fair to say we're living in what could be called the athlete empowerment era, where more athletes are standing up and socially conscious, politically motivated ways. And so the International Olympic Committee is certainly aware of that and is continuing to stand by this rule, even as it has made minor minor modifications along the way, which is what we saw in Tokyo, for example, when it allowed a little bit more space for athletes to express themselves. And what I mean by that is they adjusted the rule whereby athletes could speak out on issues or take a political stand before their competition began. And that's why you saw with some of the women's soccer games at the Tokyo Olympics, all the athletes taking a knee before the game. Now, you still couldn't do it during the game and you still couldn't do it on the medal stand.

Hannah McCarthy: Jules made this point near the end of our conversation, and for me, this really gets to the heart of, you know, how do we use the Olympics? What are they? Are they a celebration of athleticism, a deep commitment and sacrifice? Yes, absolutely. Do I drive an inimitable sense of awe when watching the world's greatest athletes do their thing? I do. Many of us do. And the Olympics are a platform participating nations find a way to use this platform. And some of the athletes at the heart of these games do the same thing or try to even if they're not really allowed,

Jules Boykoff: Even that didn't stop an amazing and I think epic act of political dissent from happening in Tokyo when the U.S. athlete Raven Saunders put her arms in a shape of an X on the medal stand to represent oppressed people across the world.

Raven Saunders: We kind of decided that the X was going to be like a sign of our sign of, you know, and what it stood for for us. And leading up to that podium standoff I was like, ehhh, all right I was like, all right, it's time.

Jules Boykoff: And it was a powerful, powerful moment. And fortunately, the International Olympic Committee did not crack down on Raven Saunders, in part because her mother was very ill at that time and they decided not to lash out with a penalty. It would have been even uncouth for them. And but the point is, you really can't put athlete activism into the bottle despite these kind of rules against it. It is not going to stop some athletes from taking a stand.

Nick Capodice: The IOC's position here sounds not totally dissimilar to what's happening in the U.S. right now with the intersection between sports and politics. You've got the people in power, which are politicians, sports league elites, franchise owners predominantly insisting that political demonstration or affiliation has no place on the field or the court. And then, on the other hand, you have athletes using their platform to take a stand. And specifically, in the U.S., these are athletes of color, and they're drawing attention to racial injustice.

Hannah McCarthy: Right? It's a raging debate. On the one hand, athletes are vilified for taking a knee during the national anthem at an NFL game. On the other hand, the NFL insists that the national anthem be played. On the one hand, the IOC demands athletes keep politics off the medal stand. On the other, the Olympics are a series of political decisions from beginning to end. And just a reminder, by the way, that other nations around the world make no buts about the connection between politics and sports.

Jules Boykoff: Let's not forget, despite everything I've been talking about with you here, Hannah. The Olympics are tremendously popular in the public sphere. So long as they are not happening in your city, then big questions tend to get raised, but otherwise they still are popular. Billions of people will tune in to watch them, which means that's a stage of billions of people that could see your political message if you're an athlete willing to share it on that big stage.

Hannah McCarthy: This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Ketsa, Metre, Xylo Zico, Mello-C and the inimitable John Williams. You can check out all of our episodes and more at Civics101podcast.org and make sure to never miss an update on how our democracy and government works. Follow our podcast on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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The USDA

From seeds to SNAP, from the Food Pyramid to crop subsidies; the United States Department of Agriculture is one of the most complex collections of responsibilities our government has ever seen. Taking us through the labyrinth are Professor Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, and Professor Jennifer Ifft, Agricultural Policy at Kansas State University.

USDA final.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

USDA final.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Nick Capodice:
Hannah, there's a game people play who have worked at the United States Department of Agriculture and it's called, Does the USDA do it?

Hannah McCarthy:
How do you play?

Nick Capodice:
I read about it in the Fifth Risk, a book by Michael Lewis. It's not dissimilar from two truths and a lie. One person says a thing, right? A far out strange thing. And the other person has to guess whether or not it's something the USDA does.

Hannah McCarthy:
All right. Hit me.

Nick Capodice:
Fire a hundred and six millimeter recoilless rifle to control avalanches at Mammoth Mountain. Give you a loan to buy a house, maintain a fleet of aircraft, inspect every single piece of meat and poultry in the United States and dispose of mule deer corpses infected with chronic wasting disease, provide hot lunch for over 30 million schoolchildren, shoot fireworks at geese near airport runways, research improving algorithms in the wind erosion protection system model for temporal changes in the state of surface conditions.

Hannah McCarthy:
They do it all, don't they?

Nick Capodice:
They do it all Hannah. I wouldn't be surprised if they hosted this podcast. You're listening to civics one on one. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy:
I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice:
And today we're breaking down a massive combination Instant Pot air fryer department, the USDA, how it began, what it does, what it spends, and how it affects the lives of everyone in this country.

Hannah McCarthy:
I guess I now know better than to ask what the USDA does. So can we start with its purpose instead?

Marion Nestle:
Well, I would say that from its inception, the USDA's function was to make sure that Americans have enough to eat.

Nick Capodice:
This is Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University Emerita and author of many wonderful books about food and politics, such as Food Politics.

Marion Nestle:
And so the big question is, how do you go about doing that? And over the years that the USDA was main food function was to promote industrial agriculture because industrial agriculture produces vast quantities of food and to make sure that that food was was available at a very low cost.

Nick Capodice:
Specifically, a cost low enough that people in all levels of income could afford it.

Hannah McCarthy:
So it was created to keep Americans fed, all Americans. And it did this through supporting farmers.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, though its genesis didn't start with farmers, it started with the patent office and seeds.

Hannah McCarthy:
Sees.

Nick Capodice:
Seeds.

Hannah McCarthy:
Seeds!

Nick Capodice:
Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, the commissioner of patents in the Department of State in the 1830s. He started to collect all these promising kinds of seeds, and he gave them to members of Congress to distribute to farmers in their states. And he's called the father of the Department of Agriculture, though he wouldn't live to see the creation of the USDA in 1862. Abraham Lincoln, a former farmhand himself who had run for president on a pro agriculture campaign, created the Department of Agriculture in the midst of the Civil War. This is a time when over half of Americans were involved with farming. Grover Cleveland incorporated it into the cabinet in 1889, and its purpose was to study seeds, animals, soil, anything to promote the production and support of the American farmer.

Hannah McCarthy:
So how did we get from seeds and soil to that exhaustive list that you had me earlier? When did the USDA start to do other things?

Marion Nestle:
It started in the Great Depression when two things were happening. People didn't have enough food and were on long lines to get food handouts, and farmers had no market for their food because people didn't have any money. And so instead of giving it away, they destroyed it,

Hannah McCarthy:
Destroyed it? Why would you destroy food in a time of hunger?

Nick Capodice:
This was not out of pure avarice. Politicians in the Roosevelt administration believed that the reason prices were so low for commodities like livestock and cotton was that farmers were just producing way too much. So to prevent further decline of prices, the government just bought 10 million acres of cotton crops in the south and plowed right under them.

The Triple A, the Agriculture Adjustment Act, seeks to bolster farm income by ordering crops plowed under and millions of acres of wheat, cotton, corn left unplanted. And yet men are hungry.

Marion Nestle:
And there were several shocking incidents during the depression of farmers destroying piglets and animals and just, you know, slaughtering them and throwing them in a big heap when there were people who were starving for lack of food.

Nick Capodice:
Millions upon millions of pigs and cows were bought by the government, killed, and just buried in the ground, and there was a huge scandal about it, naturally, farmers were horrified at how the livestock they'd raised was slaughtered and buried, and Americans were shocked that at a time of immense hunger, we buried food. And then if you or any of our listeners are horrified to hear this, you're not going to like the fact that in 2020, due to supply chain issues during the pandemic. Vegetables rotted on the fields. Millions of pigs and chickens were culled and millions of gallons of fresh milk were dumped down the drain every day. But back to when this happened in the nineteen thirties, the government stepped in and said it would buy food from farmers and distribute it to people who needed it. And this was the genesis of the food stamp program. And before we talk about the food stamp program and its modern day iteration of Snap, that's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, I want to talk quickly about the modern day budget of the USDA. Their total twenty twenty one budget was about one hundred and fifty billion dollars. That's the fourth largest budget of an executive department. And you know what percentage of that budget is devoted to nutrition and nutritional assistance?

Hannah McCarthy:
What percentage?

Nick Capodice:
Seventy five percent. And that's not just Snap, it's school lunch programs, which we're going to get to later. It's WIC women, infants and children. Fifteen programs in all

Hannah McCarthy:
They hearing about how it started, I would have expected the USDA to spend the majority of its budget on farming. So this is surprising. And by the way, how to snap benefits actually work, who is eligible to use them?

Nick Capodice:
Sure. We are scheduling a separate deep dive episode on governmental assistance programs, including the complex history of government cheese and what you can and can't get under these myriad programs. But briefly, families who make a certain income are entitled to snap benefits and currently a family of three with a combined income of twenty nine thousand dollars a month or less is eligible. And as an interesting aside, you know, there's all these programs that give rewards for using an EB or SNAP card at your local farmer's market.

Hannah McCarthy:
I've seen at farmers markets around the country you get an extra ten dollars worth of groceries or something when you use your EB card there.

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, that is how food stamps initially worked in the nineteen thirties.

Marion Nestle:
If you want a certain number of food stamps, you've got extra stamps for buying commodities that farmers produced and that worked for a while and went on up to the Second World War when everybody was employed, and so poverty levels went right down. And after the Second World War poverty returned, there were proposals for a food stamp program where the stamps would be used at retail stores. The farmers got dropped out of the picture, and the the program ended up as a retail program where you had stamps that you could take to the store and use for pretty much anything that was in any retail grocery store.

Nick Capodice:
And they changed it from stamps to the debit card, partly to reduce stigma. They came in little books of multicolored stamps, and our producer Jacqui, who was once in the program, told me when you went to the store to use them, it was embarrassing because everybody knew you were using them and they would judge your purchases.

Hannah McCarthy:
Can we also talk about the criticism of the program?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah. The majority of criticism from lawmakers regarding Snap is related to fraud.

Archival:
Dozens more have warrants out for their arrest. The sheriff's office is going after those fraudulently using their EBT cards...

Marion Nestle:
Yeah. Well, as with any federal program, there are always the potentiality for fraud, and the investigations of fraud in Snap usually show that there's not much, but there is some. It would be irresponsible to argue that there isn't any. You can trade food stamps, you can sell food stamps, you can do all kinds or the benefit cards. You can do the same with the benefit cards.

Nick Capodice:
A study from 2017 found that 60 percent of Americans believe that people misrepresent their financial situation to get food benefits, and that is patently untrue. You and your family's Social Security numbers are run through numerous databases. It's next to impossible to lie to get SNAP benefits. And while there are some instances of fraud, it is far more frequently people selling their food stamps to, say, restaurants who use them to get the food that they will sell. In twenty fourteen there were about 40 million Americans using Snap and forty five thousand individuals disqualified for fraud. That's 0.1 percent.

Marion Nestle:
What always amazes me about it is the tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent every year on fraud prevention. Because fraud prevention is a big issue, particularly for people who are against the government having a role in poverty reduction. And so there's a big focus on trying to prevent fraud. And I'm always astounded by the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars that's spent on fraud prevention every year. But the Department of Agriculture takes it very seriously because it has to take it very seriously for political reasons. And so, you know, for me, the political question is how much money do you want to spend on reducing a very tiny amount of fraud? And apparently you want to spend a lot.

Hannah McCarthy:
If one last question tied to nutrition and assistance, it's about something on the wall of my classroom in fourth grade,

Archival:
Good nutrition and physical activity Are fuel for your child's mind and body,and the food pyramid will help you find the right balance. Just remember every color, every day...

Nick Capodice:
Ok, yes, the USDA food pyramid. We're going to get into that and school lunches and the rest of the things the USDA does right after the break.

Hannah McCarthy:
But first, we always try to let our listeners know about our free newsletter. Extra credit. It is short. It's goofy, it shows up in your inbox every two weeks. Nick assures me that the next one will explain why milk and only milk is allowed as a non water beverage on the Senate floor. Sign up at civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice:
Civics 101 is supported in part by You You, right there, you listening? Donate to our show at civics101podcast.org or we'll cause an avalanche with the giant cannon.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, tell me about the food pyramid.

Nick Capodice:
So the USDA tells us what we should be eating. Here's Marion Nestle again.

Marion Nestle:
The USDA and Health and Human Services jointly produced dietary guidelines. Those are supposed to be for policy makers, even though everybody uses them as advice to the public. Then they've issued food guide since the early 1900s. The most recent one was in 2010, and that was the My Plate food guide. The thing with the squares on it, one of which is protein, drives me crazy. There's fruits, vegetables, grains and protein and milk off on the side. And, you know, vegetables and grains have proteins. Anyway, it's very confusing

Archival:
With as much drama as the Department of Agriculture could muster, and with help from the First Lady, America today got a new symbol for Good nutrition. What's more useful than a plate? What's more simple than a plate?

Marion Nestle:
The My Plate was designed to replace the 1992 pyramid, which was enormously controversial, I think, because everybody understood it. I thought they should have kept it and tweaked it a little bit, but they didn't listen to me.

Nick Capodice:
The food pyramid controversy was fairly epic, and it was a battle between nutritionists and the meat and dairy lobby. The guideline in 1977 from nutritionists was eat less meat. And now we've got a pyramid that says eat two to three servings of meat every day, and then we had huge scuffles around the graphic design, like the size of the glass of milk on the pyramid. What kind of meat is shown in the protein section? Is that a steak or a turkey leg? But the food pyramid is indeed gone. Now it is myplate, and while we're still in the mind frame of your fourth grade classroom, Hannah, the USDA funds school lunches across the country. This is one of the very rare ways the federal government gives money to schools through funding free and reduced hot lunch programs.

Marion Nestle:
And so the USDA determines the nutritional standards of the school meals, reimburses schools for the school meals and runs the show. And so once again, you're dealing with nutrition standards in an agency whose main responsibility is industrial agriculture. And so you have the Department of Agriculture. There's a small office that is issuing dietary guidelines to eat less saturated fat, salt and sugars at the same time that it's dealing with sugar production and sugar beets and cane and all of these other things. I mean, it's a crazy system.

Nick Capodice:
Do you remember the ketchup as a vegetable debate?

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh I Do. Was it the USDA that redefined things like ketchup and relish as a vegetable so schools could serve them?

Nick Capodice:
Yes. This was during the Carter administration and later the Reagan administration. They loosened food restrictions on federally funded school lunches, and it caused a huge backlash. Those restrictions, by the way, have since changed.

Marion Nestle:
But what happened with the Obama administration was that one of the accomplishments of Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign was to improve the nutrition standards for school meals. The lobbyists went to work, particularly the lobbyists for pizza, potatoes and tomato paste. I mean, kind of amazing, actually, and they just go straight to Congress and then Congress then passes regulations or instructs the Department of Agriculture to back off.

Nick Capodice:
And I don't know how much big potato and big tomato paste make on supplying schools with lunches every year. But I want to mention that under the old rules, there was a famous loophole where two tablespoons of tomato paste on a piece of pizza counted as eight tablespoons of vegetables because that tomato paste was at one time, a lot more fresh tomatoes.

Hannah McCarthy:
Come on! I wonder if we could get to the A part of the USDA at this point, I mean, you said that back when the USDA was created, more than half of America was involved with farming. But that's definitely not the case now, right? What's the percentage now?

Nick Capodice:
It's about one point three percent of the U.S. employed population. But even so, there is a lot of farming going on in the U.S., which I'll get to in a minute. The first off, the USDA decides how it supports farms in the U.S. via a massive piece of legislation called the Farm Bill.

Marion Nestle:
It's the agricultural act of whatever year it is. There's a new one about every five years, and this is a bill that's a thousand pages of small print, a table of contents that usually goes on for 10 or 15 pages of small print. It is so absolutely enormous that it's incomprehensible there may be people who have an overview of it that is reasonable, but I spent a year trying to deal with it and found it absolutely impossible. I just couldn't do it.

Nick Capodice:
Marion told me she came up with what I think is a very cool idea for a course to teach a piece of legislation to teach the farm bill. And she said, with utter humility and generosity that it was a catastrophic failure.

Marion Nestle:
I tried to make a list of all the programs that it covers, and I couldn't. I gave up after a hundred or so. Each of those programs has detailed requirements, its own set of lobbyists, its own set of constituents, its own target audience. I mean, each of them is a story in its own. And in discussing people on the Agriculture Committee of Congress, staff people and I had one of them come and talk to my class because I thought she was really remarkable in her understanding of the farm bill. My question for her was how did you learn it? And she said it took her about eight years and she learned it because lobbyists would come to the Department of Agriculture and she would sit in on the lobbying meetings and listen to the lobbyists, talk about the details of those programs, and that's how she learned the programs one by one.

Nick Capodice:
In twenty twenty one, agriculture related corporations spent $108 million on lobbyists. These are people they paid to speak with members of the House and the Senate to get things passed in the farm bill. That helped those companies immensely, and the benefit to the politicians is also staggering. For example, in Twenty Nineteen Representative Mike Conaway, he headed the House Committee on Agriculture, received $850000 in contributions from agribusinesses. And thus ends this episode's short aside on lobbying, which should never be far from any topic we discuss.

Hannah McCarthy:
So it sounds like the farm bill is Byzantine and deeply influenced by lobbyists, just like most legislation in the United States. Regardless, the outcome is a piece of legislation that helps American farms and farmers right? And how many farms do we have in the U.S., by the way?

Jennifer Ifft:
So today we have two million farms about, and it's been pretty stable for a couple of decades.

Nick Capodice:
This is Jennifer Ifft. She's a professor of agricultural policy at Kansas State University.

Jennifer Ifft:
The whole thing of what is a farm and we talk a lot about this a lot. What is a farm? You could do a whole episode on that. And I start off with my students. I say, Who cares what a farm is? If you want to call yourself a farmer, it doesn't matter, but it matters a lot for taxes, and it matters a lot for policy. So the USDA says a farm is if you have the capacity to produce a thousand dollars of sales within a year. Doesn't take much to get to a thousand. So you have two million farms, a half of them are very small and half of them lose money farming every year. They're not farming as a business. The majority of farms in the U.S. are not operated as a business because you can't run a business and lose money every year. They're reliant on other sources of income.

Nick Capodice:
And the USDA supports those small farms by giving them a vast array of grants and loans. The big farms they support via subsidies, government money paid to farms for growing things, and the most common subsidy is something called crop insurance.

Jennifer Ifft:
Crop insurance protects you against unexpected changes in revenue. So in the spring, let's say I'm going to plant a plant, some corn. I know how much I've produced in the past, so I have a a yield that I could expect in a normal year. I can buy a policy that says, OK if my revenue in the fall. Is less than 80 percent of what I expected, I'll get a payout to make up that difference, but crop insurance does not guarantee a profit for a farm operation. It has nothing to do with expenses. It has nothing to do with how efficient your operation is. It has nothing to do with non weather or sort of price related losses. If you're very inefficient, You high costs, if there's human failure, you could still lose money.

Hannah McCarthy:
So in other words, just because a farm gets support from the government, that doesn't mean that they're guaranteed to succeed.

Nick Capodice:
Absolutely not. And you'd be hard pressed to find an op ed from anyone claiming that farming is an easy and secure occupation, subsidized or not. But when it comes to those subsidies, Jennifer said there are three crops that dominate

Jennifer Ifft:
Corn, soybeans, wheat. Efforts to sort of broaden that are ongoing, but still dollar wise. Corn, soybeans and wheat.

Nick Capodice:
And there's a reason Jennifer started with corn. It is our biggest crop in the U.S. by far. In twenty nineteen two point seven billion dollars were paid in corn subsidies

Marion Nestle:
So much that it's not needed for food or even feed for animals, so that 40 percent of the amount that's grown again, that's not an exact percentage, but it's a big chunk of corn production is ethanol for automobiles and goes up in smoke. Most of what the USDA does is to support the production of food for animals and fuel for automobiles.

Nick Capodice:
Ethanol is mixed with gasoline to make a more efficient lower emission fuel. In December 2021, the USDA gave $800 million to ethanol producers who had lost income during the height of the pandemic, when people just weren't driving as much. And I have to add it's not just subsidies that help farmers. The USDA funds an enormous amount of research into sustainability see genetics, soil fertilizers, anything to help farms make food. So we have fewer farms in America now, but their output is exponentially greater.

Hannah McCarthy:
Nick, we have done a lot of shows together at this point, but this one feels more than any other like it is all over the place. And I get it. So too is the USDA. But how did that happen? How did a relatively simple mission involving seeds,

Nick Capodice:
Seeds.

Hannah McCarthy:
And the patent office turn into this?

Nick Capodice:
Remember when I told you about Marion's failed class, where she tried to teach the farm bill? She told me that the first activity she did in that class with her students was to come up with a new one.

Marion Nestle:
On the first day of class, I asked the students what they thought are reasonable agricultural policy would be. They laid it out. On the first day of class. I mean, these were these were masters students. They were in food studies. They knew exactly what a reasonable agricultural policy should do. It should provide enough food for people to eat it, to provide a living for the farmers who produce the food. It should be linked to health so that it's producing healthy food and promotes the health of the American population. It shouldn't be linked to climate change, so it doesn't make climate change worse. I mean, it should be kind to animals. I mean, it was not very hard to think up things that a a reasonable, thoughtful, integrated food policy ought to do and and then to look at the reality of it was absolutely astounding.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, why can students lay it out? But we can't make it a reality? What happened to the USDA?

Marion Nestle:
Well, it grew. It just grew. You know, it's these things were incremental.

Nick Capodice:
This is how you end up with USDA employees shooting fireworks at geese near airport runways. The USDA runs the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, preventing invasive species from endangering crops and livestock and such. And that department is made up of six other departments, one of which is wildlife services, which manages the relationship between us and wildlife. And they're the ones who have to keep the geese off the runways. So I'll reiterate what Marion said. It just grew.

Marion Nestle:
And so first of all, you have a bill that's so big that nobody can understand it. I mean, you're expecting a member of Congress to read this. No, that's an unreasonable that's an unreasonable expectation. What about the agriculture staff people on their committees? Well, some of them are going to be good and some of them aren't. But I'm arguing that no one person can possibly have a vision for all of this. So there's no vision in this and the people who are coming in and arguing for one or another policy or people with a vested interest in that policy and they're paid, lobbyists are paid. And if you don't understand why advocates for healthier policies don't get anywhere, you have to look at who's paid to do what. I mean, most food advocates aren't paid to do lobbying. It's really hard to get a job where you're paid to do that kind of thing because you're not the groups that you're working for aren't making the kind of money that big agricultural producers are.

Nick Capodice:
Well, that's the USDA.I could go on, I would go on, I've barely started, but I got to get working on this episode about executive powers and the price of gasoline. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Christina Philips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and definitely played percussion on the song she and all other former band participants call Rodeo. While much of the rest of the world calls it Beef, it's what's for dinner by Aaron Copeland, also featured in this episode. As for the rest of the music in this episode, it was by Kevin McCloud, Chris Zabriskie, Emily Sprague, Martin Shelekenns, DivKid, Sarah the Illstrumentalist, and this year is ProletR. I kind of like their style. Civics one on one is a production of NPR New Hampshire Public Radio. All right, see you next time.

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Transcript

USDA final.mp3

Nick Capodice: Hannah, there's a game people play who have worked at the United States Department of Agriculture and it's called, Does the USDA do it?

Hannah McCarthy: How do you play?

Nick Capodice: I read about it in the Fifth Risk, a book by Michael Lewis. It's not dissimilar from two truths and a lie. One person says a thing, right? A far out strange thing. And the other person has to guess whether or not it's something the USDA does.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. Hit me.

Nick Capodice: Fire [00:00:30] a hundred and six millimeter recoilless rifle to control avalanches at Mammoth Mountain. Give you a loan to buy a house, maintain a fleet of aircraft, inspect every single piece of meat and poultry in the United States and dispose of mule deer corpses infected with chronic wasting disease, provide hot lunch for over 30 million schoolchildren, shoot fireworks at geese near airport runways, research improving algorithms in the wind erosion protection system model for temporal changes in the state of surface conditions.

Hannah McCarthy: They do it all, don't they?

Nick Capodice: They do it all Hannah. I [00:01:00] wouldn't be surprised if they hosted this podcast. You're listening to civics one on one. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: And today we're breaking down a massive combination Instant Pot air fryer department, the USDA, how it began, what it does, what it spends, and how it affects the lives of everyone in this country.

Hannah McCarthy: I guess I now know better than to ask what the USDA does. So can we start with its purpose instead?

Marion Nestle: Well, I would say that [00:01:30] from its inception, the USDA's function was to make sure that Americans have enough to eat.

Nick Capodice: This is Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University Emerita and author of many wonderful books about food and politics, such as Food Politics.

Marion Nestle: And so the big question is, how do you go about doing that? And over the years that the USDA [00:02:00] was main food function was to promote industrial agriculture because industrial agriculture produces vast quantities of food and to make sure that that food was was available at a very low cost.

Nick Capodice: Specifically, a cost low enough that people in all levels of income could afford it.

Hannah McCarthy: So it was created to keep Americans fed, all Americans. And it did this through supporting farmers.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, [00:02:30] though its genesis didn't start with farmers, it started with the patent office and seeds.

Hannah McCarthy: Sees.

Nick Capodice: Seeds.

Hannah McCarthy: Seeds!

Nick Capodice: Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, the commissioner of patents in the Department of State in the 1830s. He started to collect all these promising kinds of seeds, and he gave them to members of Congress to distribute to farmers in their states. And he's called the father of the Department of Agriculture, though he wouldn't live to see the creation of the USDA in 1862. [00:03:00] Abraham Lincoln, a former farmhand himself who had run for president on a pro agriculture campaign, created the Department of Agriculture in the midst of the Civil War. This is a time when over half of Americans were involved with farming. Grover Cleveland incorporated it into the cabinet in 1889, and its purpose was to study seeds, animals, soil, anything to promote the production and support of the American farmer.

Hannah McCarthy: So how did we get from seeds [00:03:30] and soil to that exhaustive list that you had me earlier? When did the USDA start to do other things?

Marion Nestle: It started in the Great Depression when two things were happening. People didn't have enough food and were on long lines to get food handouts, and farmers had no market for their food because people didn't have any money. And so instead of giving it away, they destroyed [00:04:00] it,

Hannah McCarthy: Destroyed it? Why would you destroy food in a time of hunger?

Nick Capodice: This was not out of pure avarice. Politicians in the Roosevelt administration believed that the reason prices were so low for commodities like livestock and cotton was that farmers were just producing way too much. So to prevent further decline of prices, the government just bought 10 million acres of cotton crops in the south and plowed right under them.

The Triple A, [00:04:30] the Agriculture Adjustment Act, seeks to bolster farm income by ordering crops plowed under and millions of acres of wheat, cotton, corn left unplanted. And yet men are hungry.

Marion Nestle: And there were several shocking incidents during the depression of farmers destroying piglets and animals and just, you know, slaughtering them and throwing them in a big heap when there were people who were starving for lack of food.

Nick Capodice: Millions upon millions of pigs and [00:05:00] cows were bought by the government, killed, and just buried in the ground, and there was a huge scandal about it, naturally, farmers were horrified at how the livestock they'd raised was slaughtered and buried, and Americans were shocked that at a time of immense hunger, we buried food. And then if you or any of our listeners are horrified to hear this, you're not going to like the fact that in 2020, due to supply chain issues during the pandemic. Vegetables rotted on the fields. Millions [00:05:30] of pigs and chickens were culled and millions of gallons of fresh milk were dumped down the drain every day. But back to when this happened in the nineteen thirties, the government stepped in and said it would buy food from farmers and distribute it to people who needed it. And this was the genesis of the food stamp program. And before we talk about the food stamp program and its modern day iteration of Snap, that's [00:06:00] Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, I want to talk quickly about the modern day budget of the USDA. Their total twenty twenty one budget was about one hundred and fifty billion dollars. That's the fourth largest budget of an executive department. And you know what percentage of that budget is devoted to nutrition and nutritional assistance?

Hannah McCarthy: What percentage?

Nick Capodice: Seventy five percent. And that's not just Snap, it's school lunch programs, which we're going to get to later. It's WIC women, infants and children. Fifteen programs [00:06:30] in all

Hannah McCarthy: They hearing about how it started, I would have expected the USDA to spend the majority of its budget on farming. So this is surprising. And by the way, how to snap benefits actually work, who is eligible to use them?

Nick Capodice: Sure. We are scheduling a separate deep dive episode on governmental assistance programs, including the complex history of government cheese and what you can and can't get under these myriad programs. But briefly, families who make a certain income are entitled to snap benefits and [00:07:00] currently a family of three with a combined income of twenty nine thousand dollars a year or less is eligible. And as an interesting aside, you know, there's all these programs that give rewards for using an EB or SNAP card at your local farmer's market.

Hannah McCarthy: I've seen at farmers markets around the country you get an extra ten dollars worth of groceries or something when you use your EB card there.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, that is how food stamps initially worked in the nineteen thirties.

Marion Nestle: If you want a certain number of food stamps, you've got extra stamps for [00:07:30] buying commodities that farmers produced and that worked for a while and went on up to the Second World War when everybody was employed, and so poverty levels went right down. And after the Second World War poverty returned, there were proposals for a food stamp program where the stamps would be used at retail stores. The [00:08:00] farmers got dropped out of the picture, and the the program ended up as a retail program where you had stamps that you could take to the store and use for pretty much anything that was in any retail grocery store.

Nick Capodice: And they changed it from stamps to the debit card, partly to reduce stigma. They came in little books of multicolored stamps, and our producer Jacqui, who was once in the program, told me when you went to the store to use [00:08:30] them, it was embarrassing because everybody knew you were using them and they would judge your purchases.

Hannah McCarthy: Can we also talk about the criticism of the program?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. The majority of criticism from lawmakers regarding Snap is related to fraud.

Archival: Dozens more have warrants out for their arrest. The sheriff's office is going after those fraudulently using their EBT cards...

Marion Nestle: Yeah. Well, as with any federal program, there are always the potentiality for fraud, and the [00:09:00] investigations of fraud in Snap usually show that there's not much, but there is some. It would be irresponsible to argue that there isn't any. You can trade food stamps, you can sell food stamps, you can do all kinds or the benefit cards. You can do the same with the benefit cards.

Nick Capodice: A study from 2017 found that 60 percent of Americans believe that people misrepresent their financial situation to get food benefits, and that is [00:09:30] patently untrue. You and your family's Social Security numbers are run through numerous databases. It's next to impossible to lie to get SNAP benefits. And while there are some instances of fraud, it is far more frequently people selling their food stamps to, say, restaurants who use them to get the food that they will sell. In twenty fourteen there were about 40 million Americans using Snap and forty five thousand individuals disqualified for fraud. That's 0.1 percent.

Marion Nestle: What always [00:10:00] amazes me about it is the tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent every year on fraud prevention. Because fraud prevention is a big issue, particularly for people who are against the government having a role in poverty reduction. And so there's a big focus on trying to prevent fraud. And I'm always astounded by the tens to hundreds of [00:10:30] millions of dollars that's spent on fraud prevention every year. But the Department of Agriculture takes it very seriously because it has to take it very seriously for political reasons. And so, you know, for me, the political question is how much money do you want to spend on reducing a very tiny amount of fraud? And apparently you want to spend a lot.

Hannah McCarthy: If one [00:11:00] last question tied to nutrition and assistance, it's about something on the wall of my classroom in fourth grade,

Archival: Good nutrition and physical activity Are fuel for your child's mind and body,and the food pyramid will help you find the right balance. Just remember every color, every day...

Nick Capodice: Ok, yes, the USDA food pyramid. We're going to get into that and school lunches and the rest of the things the USDA does right after the break.

Hannah McCarthy: But first, [00:11:30] we always try to let our listeners know about our free newsletter. Extra credit. It is short. It's goofy, it shows up in your inbox every two weeks. Nick assures me that the next one will explain why milk and only milk is allowed as a non water beverage on the Senate floor. Sign up at civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice: Civics 101 is supported in part by [00:12:00] You You, right there, you listening? Donate to our show at civics101podcast.org or we'll cause an avalanche with the giant cannon.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, tell me about the food pyramid.

Nick Capodice: So the USDA tells us what we should be eating. Here's Marion Nestle again.

Marion Nestle: The USDA and Health and Human Services jointly produced dietary guidelines. Those are supposed to be for policy makers, even though [00:12:30] everybody uses them as advice to the public. Then they've issued food guide since the early 1900s. The most recent one was in 2010, and that was the My Plate food guide. The thing with the squares on it, one of which is protein, drives me crazy. There's fruits, vegetables, grains and protein and milk off on the side. And, you know, vegetables and grains have proteins. Anyway, it's very confusing

Archival: With [00:13:00] as much drama as the Department of Agriculture could muster, and with help from the First Lady, America today got a new symbol for Good nutrition. What's more useful than a plate? What's more simple than a plate?

Marion Nestle: The My Plate was designed to replace the 1992 pyramid, which was enormously controversial, I think, because everybody understood it. I thought they should have kept it and tweaked it a little bit, but [00:13:30] they didn't listen to me.

Nick Capodice: The food pyramid controversy was fairly epic, and it was a battle between nutritionists and the meat and dairy lobby. The guideline in 1977 from nutritionists was eat less meat. And now we've got a pyramid that says eat two to three servings of meat every day, and then we had huge scuffles around the graphic design, like the size of the glass of milk on the pyramid. What kind of meat is shown in [00:14:00] the protein section? Is that a steak or a turkey leg? But the food pyramid is indeed gone. Now it is myplate, and while we're still in the mind frame of your fourth grade classroom, Hannah, the USDA funds school lunches across the country. This is one of the very rare ways the federal government gives money to schools through funding free and reduced hot lunch programs.

Marion Nestle: And so the USDA determines the nutritional standards of the school meals, reimburses schools for [00:14:30] the school meals and runs the show. And so once again, you're dealing with nutrition standards in an agency whose main responsibility is industrial agriculture. And so you have the Department of Agriculture. There's a small office that is issuing dietary guidelines to eat less saturated fat, salt and sugars at the same time that it's dealing with sugar production [00:15:00] and sugar beets and cane and all of these other things. I mean, it's a crazy system.

Nick Capodice: Do you remember the ketchup as a vegetable debate?

Hannah McCarthy: Oh I Do. Was it the USDA that redefined things like ketchup and relish as a vegetable so schools could serve them?

Nick Capodice: Yes. This was during the Carter administration and later the Reagan administration. They loosened food restrictions on federally funded school lunches, and it caused a huge backlash. [00:15:30] Those restrictions, by the way, have since changed.

Marion Nestle: But what happened with the Obama administration was that one of the accomplishments of Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign was to improve the nutrition standards for school meals. The lobbyists went to work, particularly the lobbyists for pizza, potatoes and tomato paste. I mean, kind of amazing, actually, and they just go straight to Congress and then Congress then passes [00:16:00] regulations or instructs the Department of Agriculture to back off.

Nick Capodice: And I don't know how much big potato and big tomato paste make on supplying schools with lunches every year. But I want to mention that under the old rules, there was a famous loophole where two tablespoons of tomato paste on a piece of pizza counted as eight tablespoons of vegetables because that tomato paste was at one time, a lot more fresh tomatoes.

Hannah McCarthy: Come on! I [00:16:30] wonder if we could get to the A part of the USDA at this point, I mean, you said that back when the USDA was created, more than half of America was involved with farming. But that's definitely not the case now, right? What's the percentage now?

Nick Capodice: It's about one point three percent of the U.S. employed population. But even so, there is a lot of farming going on in the U.S., which I'll get to in a minute. The first off, the USDA decides how it supports farms [00:17:00] in the U.S. via a massive piece of legislation called the Farm Bill.

Marion Nestle: It's the agricultural act of whatever year it is. There's a new one about every five years, and this is a bill that's a thousand pages of small print, a table of contents that usually goes on for 10 or 15 pages of small print. It is so absolutely enormous that it's incomprehensible there may be people [00:17:30] who have an overview of it that is reasonable, but I spent a year trying to deal with it and found it absolutely impossible. I just couldn't do it.

Nick Capodice: Marion told me she came up with what I think is a very cool idea for a course to teach a piece of legislation to teach the farm bill. And she said, with utter humility and generosity that it was a catastrophic failure.

Marion Nestle: I tried to make [00:18:00] a list of all the programs that it covers, and I couldn't. I gave up after a hundred or so. Each of those programs has detailed requirements, its own set of lobbyists, its own set of constituents, its own target audience. I mean, each of them is a story in its own. And in discussing people on the Agriculture [00:18:30] Committee of Congress, staff people and I had one of them come and talk to my class because I thought she was really remarkable in her understanding of the farm bill. My question for her was how did you learn it? And she said it took her about eight years and she learned it because lobbyists would come to the Department of Agriculture and she would sit in on the lobbying meetings and listen to the lobbyists, talk about the details [00:19:00] of those programs, and that's how she learned the programs one by one.

Nick Capodice: In twenty twenty one, agriculture related corporations spent $108 million on lobbyists. These are people they paid to speak with members of the House and the Senate to get things passed in the farm bill. That helped those companies immensely, and the benefit to the politicians is also staggering. For example, in Twenty Nineteen Representative Mike Conaway, he headed the House Committee on Agriculture, received [00:19:30] $850000 in contributions from agribusinesses. And thus ends this episode's short aside on lobbying, which should never be far from any topic we discuss.

Hannah McCarthy: So it sounds like the farm bill is Byzantine and deeply influenced by lobbyists, just like most legislation in the United States. Regardless, the outcome is a piece of legislation that helps American farms and farmers right? And how many farms do we have [00:20:00] in the U.S., by the way?

Jennifer Ifft: So today we have two million farms about, and it's been pretty stable for a couple of decades.

Nick Capodice: This is Jennifer Ifft. She's a professor of agricultural policy at Kansas State University.

Jennifer Ifft: The whole thing of what is a farm and we talk a lot about this a lot. What is a farm? You could do a whole episode on that. And I start off with my students. I say, Who cares what a farm is? If you want to call yourself a farmer, it doesn't matter, but it matters a lot for taxes, and it matters a lot for policy. So the USDA says a farm is [00:20:30] if you have the capacity to produce a thousand dollars of sales within a year. Doesn't take much to get to a thousand. So you have two million farms, a half of them are very small and half of them lose money farming every year. They're not farming as a business. The majority of farms in the U.S. are not operated as a business because you can't run a business and lose money every year. They're reliant on other sources of income.

Nick Capodice: And the USDA supports those small farms [00:21:00] by giving them a vast array of grants and loans. The big farms they support via subsidies, government money paid to farms for growing things, and the most common subsidy is something called crop insurance.

Jennifer Ifft: Crop insurance protects you against unexpected changes in revenue. So in the spring, let's say I'm going to plant a plant, some corn. I know how much I've produced in the past, so I have a a yield that I could expect in a normal year. I can buy a policy that [00:21:30] says, OK if my revenue in the fall. Is less than 80 percent of what I expected, I'll get a payout to make up that difference, but crop insurance does not guarantee a profit for a farm operation. It has nothing to do with expenses. It has nothing to do with how efficient your operation is. It has nothing to do with non weather or sort of price related losses. If you're very inefficient, You high costs, if there's [00:22:00] human failure, you could still lose money.

Hannah McCarthy: So in other words, just because a farm gets support from the government, that doesn't mean that they're guaranteed to succeed.

Nick Capodice: Absolutely not. And you'd be hard pressed to find an op ed from anyone claiming that farming is an easy and secure occupation, subsidized or not. But when it comes to those subsidies, Jennifer said there are three crops that dominate

Jennifer Ifft: Corn, soybeans, wheat. Efforts to sort of broaden that are ongoing, but still dollar wise. Corn, [00:22:30] soybeans and wheat.

Nick Capodice: And there's a reason Jennifer started with corn. It is our biggest crop in the U.S. by far. In twenty nineteen two point seven billion dollars were paid in corn subsidies

Marion Nestle: So much that it's not needed for food or even feed for animals, so that 40 percent of the amount that's grown again, that's not an exact percentage, but it's a big chunk of corn production is ethanol [00:23:00] for automobiles and goes up in smoke. Most of what the USDA does is to support the production of food for animals and fuel for automobiles.

Nick Capodice: Ethanol is mixed with gasoline to make a more efficient lower emission fuel. In December 2021, the USDA gave $800 million to ethanol producers who had lost income during the height of the pandemic, when people just weren't driving as much. And I have to add it's not just subsidies that help farmers. The USDA funds an enormous [00:23:30] amount of research into sustainability see genetics, soil fertilizers, anything to help farms make food. So we have fewer farms in America now, but their output is exponentially greater.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, we have done a lot of shows together at this point, but this one feels more than any other like it is all over the place. And I get it. So too is the USDA. But how did that [00:24:00] happen? How did a relatively simple mission involving seeds,

Nick Capodice: Seeds.

Hannah McCarthy: And the patent office turn into this?

Nick Capodice: Remember when I told you about Marion's failed class, where she tried to teach the farm bill? She told me that the first activity she did in that class with her students was to come up with a new one.

Marion Nestle: On the first day of class, I asked the students what they thought are reasonable agricultural policy would be. They laid it out. On the first day of class. I mean, these [00:24:30] were these were masters students. They were in food studies. They knew exactly what a reasonable agricultural policy should do. It should provide enough food for people to eat it, to provide a living for the farmers who produce the food. It should be linked to health so that it's producing healthy food and promotes the health of the American population. It shouldn't be linked to climate change, so it doesn't make climate change worse. [00:25:00] I mean, it should be kind to animals. I mean, it was not very hard to think up things that a a reasonable, thoughtful, integrated food policy ought to do and and then to look at the reality of it was absolutely astounding.

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, why can students lay it out? But we can't make it a reality? What happened to the USDA?

Marion Nestle: Well, it grew. It [00:25:30] just grew. You know, it's these things were incremental.

Nick Capodice: This is how you end up with USDA employees shooting fireworks at geese near airport runways. The USDA runs the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, preventing invasive species from endangering crops and livestock and such. And that department is made up of six other departments, one of which is wildlife services, which manages the relationship between us and wildlife. And they're the ones who have to keep the geese off [00:26:00] the runways. So I'll reiterate what Marion said. It just grew.

Marion Nestle: And so first of all, you have a bill that's so big that nobody can understand it. I mean, you're expecting a member of Congress to read this. No, that's an unreasonable that's an unreasonable expectation. What about the agriculture staff people on their committees? Well, some of them are going to be good and some of them aren't. But I'm arguing that no one person can possibly [00:26:30] have a vision for all of this. So there's no vision in this and the people who are coming in and arguing for one or another policy or people with a vested interest in that policy and they're paid, lobbyists are paid. And if you don't understand why advocates for healthier policies don't get anywhere, you have to look at who's paid to do what. I mean, most food advocates aren't paid to do [00:27:00] lobbying. It's really hard to get a job where you're paid to do that kind of thing because you're not the groups that you're working for aren't making the kind of money that big agricultural producers are.

Nick Capodice: Well, that's the USDA.I could go on, I would go on, I've [00:27:30] barely started, but I got to get working on this episode about executive powers and the price of gasoline. Today's episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Christina Philips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer and definitely played percussion on the song she and all other former band participants call Rodeo. While much of the rest of the world calls it Beef, it's what's for dinner by Aaron Copeland, also featured in this episode. As for the rest of the music in this episode, it was by Kevin McCloud, Chris Zabriskie, Emily [00:28:00] Sprague, Martin Shelekenns, DivKid, Sarah the Illstrumentalist, and this year is ProletR. I kind of like their style. Civics one on one is a production of NPR New Hampshire Public Radio. All right, see you next time.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Congressional Investigations

They're meant to expose wrongdoing and corruption or find the cracks in the systems in order to remedy them. But what, exactly, is Congress allowed to investigate, what is the end goal and what does it mean to be held in contempt?  

Linda Fowler, Professor of Government and Policy at Dartmouth College, is our guide to congressional investigations -- how they happen, why they happen and what happens afterward.

Congressional Investigations: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Congressional Investigations: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the This transcript may contain errors.

Hannah McCarthy:
Nick, I must have told you this about a dozen times at this point, but I will never forget when a British friend of mine and this was a few years ago heard of some recent turn of political events that she disagreed with in the United States. And she just goes, OK, so when does your secret shadow government step in? Isn't it about time for that?

Nick Capodice:
You have told me this story a dozen times.

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, I think when things go off the rails or seem to go off the rails, the question is often who is in charge here? Isn't anyone going to do anything about this?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, especially when you're talking about big federal business, national goings on. It's also high level and it's outside of our power.

Hannah McCarthy:
Part of the reason Civics 101 got started is that after the 2016 election, listeners kept writing in to ask us, Can that government official actually do that? Is that legal? And we were like, I don't know, we'll ask someone for you.

Nick Capodice:
That's true, and it's exactly what we do. And more often than not, the answer has been that person can do that unless someone else notices it and does something about it.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah. Well, today we're going to talk about what it looks like when someone does something about it or tries to. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice:
I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy:
And this is an investigation into... Exactly that. Investigations. Congressional investigations.

Archival:
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last, have you left no sense of the fact that I wasn't involved in an obstruction of justice, the fact that I assisted another in perjured testimony, if those responsible are not held accountable and if Congress does not act responsibly, this will remain a cancer on our constitutional. I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. I've come to that later, but I'll answer the question now. I wish you would. I have the witnesses, but I didn't have. And what?

Nick Capodice:
All right, first things first, let's define what a congressional investigation actually is

Hannah McCarthy:
A congressional investigation is when a committee of the House or Senate or both requests information and testimony about something that seems to be illegal or dangerous or done in bad faith, something that's going

Hannah McCarthy:
Wrong.

Linda Fowler:
It implies there was wrongdoing.

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Linda Fowler, professor emeritus of government and policy studies at Dartmouth College and author of several books, most recently Watchdogs on the Hill. She spoke with former host Virginia Prescott back in 2017,

Nick Capodice:
And as we're having this conversation January 20 22, there is a congressional investigation that is getting a lot of attention.

Archival:
The House Select Committee on January six will hold public hearings in the New Year on the attack on the United States Capitol. The Washington

Hannah McCarthy:
Right. There's a House committee investigating the Jan. six insurrection in Washington, D.C. This committee is named for obvious reasons the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.

Nick Capodice:
A very fitting name, and here's something I've never really understood where in the Constitution is Congress empowered to conduct investigations?

Hannah McCarthy:
Nowhere.

Linda Fowler:
There's no specific language that says Congress has the power to investigate the executive branch, so it's an implied power. But basically, since Congress is charged with making all the laws, it needs to inquire whether the executive branch is following the laws that it passed and whether it's doing those things properly.

Hannah McCarthy:
Congress can essentially investigate anything as long as it is something that they can pass legislation or take action about.

Nick Capodice:
Ok, so Congress ability to investigate is tied to the fact that they have the ability to make laws and act as a check on the other branches.

Hannah McCarthy:
Exactly. These investigations are about keeping an eye on federal agencies about making sure legislation is appropriate, about looking into matters of national importance to see if legislation might need to be passed. The goal is to expose problems or wrongdoing by subpoenaing people to testify before Congress and by requesting documents. Woodrow Wilson once described congressional investigations as, quote a semi judicial examination into corners suspected to be dirty.

Nick Capodice:
It almost sounds like you're saying that Congress can investigate anything as long as it suspects something is afoot.

Hannah McCarthy:
Oh, these investigations run the gamut. Abuses of power in intelligence gathering at the CIA and FBI.

Archival:
There has never been a full public accounting of FBI domestic intelligence operations. Therefore, this committee has undertaken such an investigation.

Hannah McCarthy:
The sinking of the Titanic.

Nick Capodice:
Wow.

Hannah McCarthy:
The government response to Hurricane Katrina

Archival:
With the help of former FEMA director Michael Brown, we will attempt to construct, for the record, a timeline of what FEMA did and didn't do before, during and after the catastrophic

Archival:
storm.

Hannah McCarthy:
Delays and mismanagement of the Department of Veterans Affairs, even rigged game shows in the 1950s.

Archival:
Along the waterfront. No, I'm sorry. The answer is Marty Marty. You lose five points.

Hannah McCarthy:
I put you back. And since the beginning, these investigations have received resistance and pushback. Let's take the first one ever.

Linda Fowler:
Well, actually, it was in George Washington's presidency. There were troops engaged on the western border of fighting various tribes, and Congress had an inquiry about how that was going.

Hannah McCarthy:
Congress asked George Washington for paperwork pertaining to the fighting with these American Indian tribes. And Washington questioned whether he really needed to provide the documents. Ultimately, he gave Congress some, but not all this executive privilege was born.

Nick Capodice:
All right. And we saw this in the case of the January 6th investigation. I know that President Trump sued to prevent the National Archives from turning over White House documents claiming executive privilege,

Hannah McCarthy:
Which as of early December was denied by a circuit court of Appeals. Historically, not a whole lot has been done on the part of the courts to limit Congress's ability to investigate.

Nick Capodice:
All right, I got rigged game shows and the sinking of the Titanic. But what are the big ones? What are the real monumental ones that have affected America in the last hundred years?

Linda Fowler:
Well, a really famous one was on war profiteering during World War Two that was led by then-Senator Harry Truman. Of course, the Watergate investigations in the nineteen seventies by Sam Ervin, a southern Democrat from North Carolina who chaired the Judiciary Committee.

Speaker3:
Now, the evidence in this case shows that seven men were indicted for burglarizing and bugging the Watergate, including three employees of the committee to reelect the

Linda Fowler:
President.

Linda Fowler:
We've also had recent investigation about conditions at Walter Reed Hospital, the in addition to Watergate, many people may remember the McCarthy investigations of domestic communism.

Nick Capodice:
Wait, wait a minute. I would like to pause here. I know the courts haven't done much to limit congressional investigations, but weren't the McCarthy hearings the House un-American Activities Committee investigations considered universally to be pretty bad?

Archival:
Communists subversive activities has developed into hysterical frenzy, which grows daily. Appointed by Congress to investigate. Chairman Parnell Thomas opens the hearing investigating alleged communist influence and infiltration in the moving picture industry must not be considered.

Hannah McCarthy:
This one is actually trickier than it seems. A lot of people were opposed to these investigations, but the meaningful question here is what the courts had to say when Congress started investigating private citizens in the 1930s for suspected disloyalty, a.k.a. being a communist. People did refuse to answer their questions about past behaviors, and they were held in contempt of Congress. In one case, Watkins v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the contempt charge was invalid under the Fifth Amendment, but the court later walked that back when they sustained a separate contempt charge in Barron Blatt, the United States that was another House un-American Activities Committee case. Basically, SCOTUS ruled that the government's interest outweighed that of the private citizen.

Nick Capodice:
Ok, so it sounds like these investigations are nearly like trials, but without a court. So do they share any features of courtroom proceedings?

Linda Fowler:
Yes and no. So they have some quasi legal features. For example, the subpoena that if you ignore a subpoena from a congressional committee, you can be compelled to testify. You can be locked up for contempt of Congress. If you don't, you can be locked up.

Nick Capodice:
Locked up?

Hannah McCarthy:
After you were found in contempt of Congress. The presiding officer of whatever chamber is citing contempt then refers that matter to the U.S. Attorney of D.C., who then refers that matter to a grand jury. It is a criminal offense with a penalty of no less than one month nor more than 12 in jail and a fine between 100 and $100000.

Nick Capodice:
Wow.

Linda Fowler:
It used to be the case that during the McCarthy era, people who refused to testify were nevertheless threatened with being locked up for contempt of Congress. So after the mid 50s, there are more procedural protections for witnesses. They can't be compelled to testify against them.

Nick Capodice:
And we keep calling these congressional investigations. But the January 6th investigation is specifically a House Committee investigation. Is it common to have one chamber conduct an investigation while the other one doesn't.

Linda Fowler:
Well, you have to go back to 1946 after World War Two, when committees could launch investigations, but they had to get approval from their chamber to do it. After nineteen forty six, when Congress enacted a statute, it required all standing committees in the House and the Senate to engage in oversight and conduct inquiries. And gradually, these committees, such as the Armed Services Committee or the Judiciary Committee, were granted subpoena powers so they could compel witnesses to come before them to testify. So you can get investigations in one chamber, but not the other.

Nick Capodice:
But and again, this is in the case of the January six investigation. The U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol is not, I'm going to guess, a standing committee that's been around for a while.

Hannah McCarthy:
Correct. Good guess.

Nick Capodice:
So where did this committee come from?

Linda Fowler:
Their standing committees, which are the regular committees that Congress uses to vet legislation markup bills, then you may have either the Senate or the House or jointly authorize an investigative committee. So for example, the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee both launched inquiries after the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was overrun by a mob and several Americans were killed.

Archival:
Today, the oversight committee convenes a fourth hearing related to the security situation in Libya before, during and after the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four Americans.

Linda Fowler:
They had their inquiry. They had public testimony. Republicans in the House at the time were not satisfied. They were convinced that Secretary Clinton had been negligent. So the House then went ahead and authorized an investigation, and they set up a special committee with special staff. So the difference, I think, between an investigatory committee and an oversight committee has to do with whether the Senate is using its existing organizations or whether it creates a new one with a very special purpose.

Hannah McCarthy:
But committees, as it turns out, are not the only way to investigate things at the congressional level. The other option just happens to have one important obstacle. We'll get to that and to the point of these investigations after the break.

Nick Capodice:
But before we do, we just want to let you know that we have a biweekly newsletter called Extra Credit, where we put in all the stuff that we couldn't squeeze into the episode. You can subscribe at civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy:
Before we get on with the show, this is your weekly reminder that while Civics 101 will always be free to You, it is tragically not free to make. It takes a staff, it takes a lot of research and it takes a lot of equipment to make the show, which takes money. If you believe in what Civics 101 does and you have the ability to contribute, I am asking you to take just a moment. It's quick, it's easy, and it actually makes a world of difference to us. Go to Civics101podcast.org and click the donate button

Nick Capodice:
And you'll get a fancy new sticker.

Nick Capodice:
While supplies last.

Hannah McCarthy:
It says The Constitution is my copilot and it's pretty cool.

Nick Capodice:
All right, here we go now, Hannah. We've covered the committees that conduct these investigations, but there's another path that I've heard of that I'd like to dig into before the January 6th House investigation started. There was a call in the Senate for something called an independent commission to look into the January 6th events. And I remember hearing that that measure failed. But what exactly would it have meant if it had succeeded? What is an independent commission?

Hannah McCarthy:
An independent commission is a special group that Congress establishes to look into an issue and provide independent advice. These groups are not necessarily made up of members of Congress, but of experts who might be better suited than members of Congress to understand a problem. This makes them either nonpartisan or if members of Congress are a part of the group, often bipartisan.

Linda Fowler:
And they are appointed in various combinations by the executive branch or by the Congress or some combination of the two. So an independent commission has to be authorized by statutes, which means it has to pass both chambers and it has to be signed by the president into law.

Nick Capodice:
Ok, I see a problem here when it comes to investigations being signed into law and it has to do with the executive branch. So what president would happily sign that statute into law?

Linda Fowler:
It depends on what Congress puts in the statute, but you can well imagine with Republicans controlling the House and the Senate that they might give the president more voice than if the Democrats were controlling the House and Senate when they drafted the law. There's a lot of horse trading that goes on in deciding how big the commission is going to be, who's going to be on it. So a classic example would be a different kind of independent commission was used to look at budget deficits.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, so this one was created by Barack Obama. Back in 2010, he appointed members of Congress, former members of Congress and some experts. This group was given the job of coming up with a plan for reducing the deficit. These groups come up with recommendations. They can even draft legislation to pass on to lawmakers.

Nick Capodice:
It occurs to me, Hannah, that when, for example, the Justice Department is investigating something, the people doing the investigating are trained. It's their job. How effective can a congressional investigation be if these are just politicians asking questions?

Linda Fowler:
Well, the whole point of the committee system in Congress is that members develop expertize in a particular policy area, so people on the Intelligence Committee are supposed to have had at least some experience in dealing with intelligence matters. People are armed services may have a special expertize on our on defense matters, but there's a lot of variation among chairs and among members.

Hannah McCarthy:
Take former congressman Devin Nunes, for example. He was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, but he had essentially no experience in intelligence matters and had some difficulty in that role. But then you have the late Senator John McCain, a war veteran who had done Navy liaison work with the Armed Services Committee, who later became chair of that committee.

Linda Fowler:
There's a wide range of expertise. Some chairs and committee members are very conscientious. They work hard on their committees. Others, not so much.

Nick Capodice:
Now, ultimately. Congress is not a court. So I'm wondering Hannah, aside from holding someone in contempt for not giving over documents or providing testimony. What's the purpose? Why do these investigations?

Hannah McCarthy:
No, but these investigations, as we've seen over the past few years, are both public and widely reported on the public cares about them. So does the Justice Department. If a congressional investigation reveals widespread wrongdoing, the next step is often a court case. For example, let's look at the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s.

Nick Capodice:
Oh, Teapot Dome. Good old Teapot Dome.

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, I bring this up, right? Because when you hear that term, you're like, Oh yeah, the Teapot Dome scandal. But Nick, do you remember what this scandal was?

Nick Capodice:
I don't. I know it's something to do in the nineteen twenties, and I'm sorry. Mr. Zecka, my eighth grade social studies teacher. I don't know what it was.

Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, I couldn't remember either. And it really is scandalous. The former secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, was charged with accepting bribes from oil companies in exchange for exclusive drilling rights on federal lands. This investigation resulted in Albert Albertville going to jail, and it was the first time a cabinet member went to jail for a felony committed while in office.

Nick Capodice:
It's a very memorable name. What is the Teapot Dome part of it?

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, I had to look that up. That was the name of a big, teapot shaped rock formation on land that Albert promised in Wyoming.

Nick Capodice:
How about that? All right, last question here. We started this whole conversation by talking about the fact that federal wrongdoing feels so far out of our reach as members of the public. It's a who watches the Watchmen kind of question, but these investigations being public involving politicians and elected officials must carry some political weight. Does it really matter if someone puts in a call to their rep and says, Hey, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark? Can you please take a look?

Linda Fowler:
Of course it does. What the public does have a responsibility to do is to insist that this be handled in a judicious manner and that Republican views and Democratic views are weighed carefully.

Hannah McCarthy:
I think it's important to remember the political aspect of these investigations. They aren't just used to look into something. They are an opportunity for grandstanding and with great media coverage to boot. In some ways, I think the voter is as important as the actual subject of the investigation. Your representatives want you to see them giving you what you want, saying what you want to hear.

Archival:
Have a few more things to say. But for the richest man in the world to come here and hide behind the poorest people in the world and say, that's who you're really trying to help.

Speaker3:
Let us not forget that the wave of innovation is spreading across the world with or without us. So that's why I believe that American innovation is on trial this day in this hearing. 2025 Initiative has been working for years to increase diversity and to somebody else, you know, to say, OK, what? Somebody posted on this really isn't true. And here's what the facts are. Rather than having a Twitter or a Facebook, take it down.

Nick Capodice:
So in some ways, this high level, seemingly beyond our reach procedure is not so far away, after all,

Hannah McCarthy:
Especially if you make your priorities known.

Hannah McCarthy:
This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton and Christina Phillips. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Xylo Zico, Ketsa and Bio Unit. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Declaring War

The United States hasn't officially declared war against another country since World War II, and yet, we've been in dozens of conflicts since then. So what does it mean to "declare war," and how has the definition of war, and how the United States engages in it, changed since our framers wrote the Constitution? 

Albin Kowalewski, a historical publication specialist at the U.S. House of Representatives, helps us answer these questions. He spoke with our former host, Virginia Prescott, in 2017.

Declaring War_Final.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Declaring War_Final.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Hannah McCarthy:
Nick, before I ever got this wonderful job on this wonderful show, I was not a civics buff. Are you shocked?

Nick Capodice:
Completely appalled.

Hannah McCarthy:
However, I did have this one fact that I just loved pulling out, which was the fact that the U.S. Congress has not declared war since World War Two. It was my makes you think, doesn't it fact?

Nick Capodice:
Yeah, I learned that fact in a movie theater in 1997 when I first saw Wag the Dog.

Movie Sound:
Two things I know to be true. There's no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war we show in NASA confirms there is the Canadian border,

Nick Capodice:
And that fact is bizarre to comprehend because of course, we have been to war a bunch of times since then, right?

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Nick Capodice:
Since World War Two off the top of my head, we've got the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

Hannah McCarthy:
So what I hope you are thinking right now is how is that possible, given the fact that we haven't actually declared war in so long? The way the framers intended it for Congress to make an official declaration essentially seems like a thing of the past.

Nick Capodice:
I feel like we also need to consider the fact that war looks very different now than it did when the framers wrote the Constitution. Like, if the government is a house, you've got the Constitution as the foundation frame, and everyone who came after that foundation was laid has added to it. We need

HGTV:
To create a larger master bedroom closet,

Nick Capodice:
Change things

HGTV:
Around, expand and update the teen bathroom, put up walls, enlarge my daughter's closets,

Nick Capodice:
Build editions,

HGTV:
Create a home office for me.

Nick Capodice:
There's some pretty outlandish wallpaper in the third floor bathroom, courtesy of the Supreme Court. But still, it's a historical property, so it's pretty hard for someone to come and just tear the whole thing down.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, actually, this is really good. Like you look at the house a few hundred years in the future, and it's built on that foundation, but has an entirely different entrance or a whole new wing. One president could come in and decide to make it an open concept and bust all the walls down between the living room, dining room and kitchen. But after a while, it's like the Winchester mystery house. It becomes difficult to trace how and when and why certain things have changed because they're all building on top of each other. And there's that staircase that leads to nowhere.

Nick Capodice:
All right. So the question is, how did we stop using the front door to declare war and ask everyone to please come in through the back?

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. I'm Nick Capodice, and today we're talking about the thing we haven't done since nineteen forty two declaring war.

Archival Sound:
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the utmost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again and dangerous. We are a united nation. Let us boldly proclaim we will not permit any force to strike down. Alien civilization depends on what we do on what we do now and in the months ahead. I have no higher obligation than to safeguard the lives

Archival Sound:
Of American citizens. The House of Representatives. And some days again, I'm. You can end the war.

Albin Kowalewski:
When the United States declares war, it sets in motion a process that the framers of the Constitution first envisioned in 1787.

Hannah McCarthy:
This is Albin Kowalewski, an historical publication specialist at the U.S. House of Representatives. He spoke with our former host, Virginia Prescott, in 2017.

Albin Kowalewski:
For them, war was not an abstract concept at all. You know, these guys, almost to a man, had served in some capacity during the American Revolution. The vast majority of them had military experience, either with the Continental Army or with state militias. If they couldn't serve for one reason or another, you know, in the military, they would serve in the safety councils. And I think even one or two of them had been surgeons as well. So these guys had seen the face of war up front. This is something real to them. They had seen the destruction that war could bring to a people. And so the overriding thought at the constitutional convention was to make war difficult to enter.

Nick Capodice:
It makes sense, though, that something so destructive should be so hard to do.

Albin Kowalewski:
Peace peace should be easy. That should be the easy part. That should be the status quo. But war war should be difficult to enter, and so they began considering ways to make that happen. One of the ideas that they settled on was that open debate among the people's representatives could really kind of cool temperatures, cool the push for war. So what the framers ended up doing is that they gave the war powers to the legislative branch. There was some discussion of whether or not they should give the war powers to the president, and they quickly got rid of the idea of giving it to the president. I think only one person brought up the idea at the convention. Everybody more or less seemed convinced that Congress, the legislative branch, should have that power.

Nick Capodice:
And that makes sense because Congress is a large, slow deliberative body and it's hard to get stuff done there.

Albin Kowalewski:
So the idea for declaring war is that by giving Congress the power to declare war, what you're essentially doing is you're getting the American people behind you. You know, you look at the transitive property. Voters elect the representatives. If a majority of the representatives vote to support war, then technically the voters, the American people will have supported war.

Hannah McCarthy:
And given that the framers put Congress first in the Constitution right there in Article one. That is where you find those fighting words. Congress shall have the power, et cetera, et cetera, to declare war. Grant letters of marque and reprisal. Don't worry about that. We're not going to cover that in this episode and make rules concerning captures on land and water.

Nick Capodice:
And what does it actually look like when Congress goes for it?

Albin Kowalewski:
Any time Congress has declared war, it's always been preceded by either a written statement or an address in front of Congress by the president asking for that conflict.

Archival Sound:
The vice president, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate of the House of Representatives.

Hannah McCarthy:
The way that works and mind you, this is in the case of a formal declaration, is that the president asks for permission to go to war through a joint address to Congress.

Archival Sound:
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger it.

Hannah McCarthy:
The joint address is for fancy stuff. This is also how the State of the Union is delivered. It happened when Nixon resigned. You've been hearing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking Congress to declare war on Japan after the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Archival Sound:
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Nick Capodice:
All right, and assuming Congress is amiable to the suggestion, what happens next,

Hannah McCarthy:
Congress passes a joint resolution, which means identical resolutions in both the House and the Senate that declare war against a nation

Archival Sound:
When the historic role is called. I hope there will not be a single dissenting voice.

Albin Kowalewski:
Declaring a state of war is one thing, basically taking, you know, a state of peace and turning it into a state of war, and then Congress is also always authorize the president to employ the military.

Nick Capodice:
What actually practically changes after a declaration of war? To go back to that house metaphor, we just painted our peace house bright red. So what does that mean?

Hannah McCarthy:
Declaring war opens up a set of statutes that give the executive branch and the president special powers things like detaining foreign enemies, taking over transportation systems to supply the war effort and certain intelligence gathering. We are that much closer to the point when we started going to war without declaring war. We'll get to those president war powers after this quick break.

Nick Capodice:
A word here to remind everyone that Civics 101 is a listener supported show. And today I am asking for your support. If you go to our website Civics101podcast.org or just click the link in our show notes to make a donation in any amount, we will give you a sleek, shiny new Civics 101 sticker that says the constitution is my copilot. You can stick it anywhere you want on your laptop, on your car, on your Cuisinart, on your cat to show your love for our podcast and for democracy again, civics101podcast.org. And we are so grateful for your help.

Hannah McCarthy:
Welcome back to Civics 101. We're talking declaring war.

Nick Capodice:
All right, this is where things are getting interesting because we're talking about the role of the president, because even though only Congress has the power to declare war, the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, right?

Hannah McCarthy:
Exactly. The framers recognized that going to war should take careful consideration. Thus, the don't make it too easy congressional vote to actually declare war. But the methodological red tape approach is not necessarily practical when it comes to actually succeeding in war. Imagine if, in order to decide to invade a region, the commanders of the armed forces had to bring their proposals to Congress. Ask the House and Senate to approve these measures, and only then once approved, could they take the action. That would not be the sleekest approach.

Nick Capodice:
I mean, you need someone to literally make executive decisions in this case, i.e. the chief executive, the president. So now this, I understand. But what I am struggling with is how that same executive has in effect taken us to war a bunch of times without the congressional process. What is empowered our presidents to take us to Vietnam, to Afghanistan, et cetera.

Albin Kowalewski:
This was a debate that has not stopped more or less since 1787. So throughout the course of American history, America has used its military to different ways. So you have the declaration of war. And Congress has declared war 11 times against 10 countries during five separate conflicts since 1789. And those those five separate conflicts are the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War one and World War Two. Declarations of war, I think carry with it like a terrible scale, right? Like a war vote is something big and it's imposing, and it's the idea of marshaling resources of one nation state against the resources of another nation state. Kind of a clash of the Titans sort of deal. But for the vast majority of the times that America has used its military, it's been through a simple authorization. Today, we call these things authorizations for the use of military

Hannah McCarthy:
Force, otherwise known as an AUMF, which is what well, essentially Congress has given the president the ability to say we are going to use these forces in this way.

Albin Kowalewski:
The term AUMF is kind of a product of the modern era. I think it kind of came into use during the Gulf War in 1991, but this is the interesting thing. Congress has never declared war without also including an authorization for the use of force, but it has authorized force many, many times without formally declaring war.

Hannah McCarthy:
The technical term AUMF did not come into use until 2001, when President Bush wanted to have the authorization to use military force against terrorists following September 11th. Since World War Two, presidents have been using their role as commander in chief to justify taking military action without the rigmarole of declaring war.

Archival Sound:
Finally, if Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ICE, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists for over a year. I have ordered our military to take thousands of airstrikes against ISIL targets. I think it's time for Congress to vote to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed to this fight.

Hannah McCarthy:
But like Albin said, this method of engaging in warfare was happening before the official term came into law.

Albin Kowalewski:
On one level, the nature of war has changed since 1787. Back then, it was a lot of state versus state actors. Since then, America has, you know, gone to war or engaged in conflicts with non-state actors. You know, the rise of these international obligations that the United States now has to meet with the United Nations or NATO. The world is far more interconnected than the founders could have ever have imagined. Back in the 18th century, when Congress declared war, it set in motion a whole bunch of these different provisions in international law about belligerency and about neutrality. And now it is. The United Nations kind of manages that.

Nick Capodice:
So the world changed and Congress let the declaration of war stand down in favor of presidential military force.

Albin Kowalewski:
But I think the biggest change has to do with the rise of nuclear warfare. It requires quick decision making. A ballistic missile is not going to wait for Congress to get together, to vote to draft legislation and to vote on that legislation. In addition to that, you know, America has never really demobilized. After World War Two, we went from World War Two straight into the Cold War.

Archival Sound:
We'll know when it comes. We hope it never comes, but we must get ready.

Albin Kowalewski:
And now it has military installments across the globe.

Nick Capodice:
And besides interconnectivity, what else happened?

Hannah McCarthy:
After World War Two, the U.S. had developed this reputation as a global leader and enforcer of democracy, and this was used as justification for sending military troops into places that were, for example, threatened by dictators. Dictatorships are antithetical to the ethos of the United States.

Albin Kowalewski:
But in going to war, taking unilateral action as a president without the support of Congress or without an authorization, it can be dangerous. It can be tricky.

Hannah McCarthy:
So Truman, for example, ordered military action in South Korea to defend it from invasion by North Korea, which was being aided by Russia. Now, Truman justified this by saying that it was part of our agreement with the United Nations, and therefore it was his right as president to command those forces.

Albin Kowalewski:
That was a terrible war. That was a bloody war. And by the end of it, you know, people were calling it Truman's war.

Archival Sound:
I cannot find it in me to exalt in this hour whether it is a time for prayer that we may succeed in our difficult endeavor to turn this armistice to the advantage of mankind.

Albin Kowalewski:
And so without the support of Congress, the president will then take on the responsibility for it completely. But in going through an authorization or through a declaration, the president can then kind of share that responsibility with the legislative branch.

Nick Capodice:
This really speaks to the power of presidential precedent, right? Because then during the Vietnam War, Johnson increased the number of forces in Vietnam, despite the war being largely unpopular among the people and Congress. And then Nixon ordered secret invasions and bombings in Cambodia without telling Congress. It just feels like we've moved so far away from what the framers intended. That war should be a major symbolic action that requires the buy-in of the people and careful consideration by Congress.

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, Congress did try to tamp down on the president's military power with the War Powers Act of 1973.

Archival Sound:
The War Powers Act was an act of congressional desperation. It grew out of the agony of the Vietnam War out of a series of unchecked presidential commitments of troops and treasure to a cause that failed.

Hannah McCarthy:
This act required the president to alert Congress at least 48 hours before a military action. And then the president had 60 days to get retroactive or continued authorization from Congress.

Nick Capodice:
And if a president could do something in under 60 days, they don't need permission of Congress, essentially.

Hannah McCarthy:
And in 2001, President Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force. That's the AUMF into law quote to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons. He determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Nick Capodice:
Which, to clarify, was a law passed by Congress. Yes. So basically, the president is allowed to take military action if it is for the purposes of preventing terrorism.

Hannah McCarthy:
And note the fact that as opposed to the specificity of a declaration of war, the AUMF does not name a specific enemy. It's just anybody essentially related to those terrorist attacks. With the rise in the use of emergency powers. You can check out our recent episode on that. A lot of the things that a president used to need a congressional declaration of war to do, like controlling transportation lines and deploying troops can now be done if the president declares a state of emergency.

Albin Kowalewski:
As soon as you give the president the source of powers to commit the military overseas without necessarily having to consult Congress, or even if you know the president doesn't consult Congress initially, but then goes and asks Congress to retroactively authorize that decision. It's incredibly difficult for Congress to get those powers back again.

Nick Capodice:
I think about the fact that a guest once told me that whatever official executive orders that president does, it's easy to overturn by the following administration and acts of Congress are a lot more difficult to unwind. But with military action, it's something that president after president took advantage of. And then finally, Congress passed this act that cemented those powers in a way. And my question is. In essence, has declaring war become obsolete?

Albin Kowalewski:
It's a great question whether or not we've moved past the point in which we will no longer declare war. I guess it's to be determined.

Hannah McCarthy:
This episode was written and produced by Christina Phillips with help from me, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. Our team includes Jacqui Fulton. Our executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie. Music in this episode by Chris Zabriskie Broke for Free, Krakatoa, Maarten Schellekens, Poddington Bear and Cza. And while we try to pack every episode full of as many facts as we can, there's so much left on the cutting room floor. Luckily, we have a place to put it our newsletter Extra Credit, which you can subscribe to at our website. Civics101podcast.org Civic's one to one is a production of Nhpr.org New Hampshire Public Radio.

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---

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:02] Nick, before I ever got this wonderful job on this wonderful show, I was not a civics buff. Are you shocked?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:11] Completely appalled.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:13] However, I did have this one fact that I just loved pulling out, which was the fact that the U.S. Congress has not declared war since World War Two. It was my makes you think, doesn't it fact?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:27] Yeah, I learned that fact in a movie theater in 1997 when I first saw Wag the Dog.

Movie Sound: [00:00:33] Two things I know to be true. There's no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war we show in NASA confirms there is the Canadian border,

Nick Capodice: [00:00:45] And that fact is bizarre to comprehend because of course, we have been to war a bunch of times since then, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:52] Yeah. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:55] Since World War Two off the top of my head, we've got the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:04] So what I hope you are thinking right now is how is that possible, given the fact that we haven't actually declared war in so long? The way the framers intended it for Congress to make an official declaration essentially seems like a thing of the past.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:21] I feel like we also need to consider the fact that war looks very different now than it did when the framers wrote the Constitution. Like, if the government is a house, you've got the Constitution as the foundation frame, and everyone who came after that foundation was laid has added to it. We need

HGTV: [00:01:38] To create a larger master bedroom closet,

Nick Capodice: [00:01:41] Change things

HGTV: [00:01:42] Around, expand and update the teen bathroom, put up walls, enlarge my daughter's closets,

Nick Capodice: [00:01:48] Build editions,

HGTV: [00:01:49] Create a home office for me.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:51] There's some pretty outlandish wallpaper in the third floor bathroom, courtesy of the Supreme Court. But still, it's a historical property, so it's pretty hard for someone to come and just tear the whole thing down.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:05] Yeah, actually, this is really good. Like you look at the house a few hundred years in the future, and it's built on that foundation, but has an entirely different entrance or a whole new wing. One president could come in and decide to make it an open concept and bust all the walls down between the living room, dining room and kitchen. But after a while, it's like the Winchester mystery house. It becomes difficult to trace how and when and why certain things have changed because they're all building on top of each other. And there's that staircase that leads to nowhere.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:37] All right. So the question is, how did we stop using the front door to declare war and ask everyone to please come in through the back?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:44] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. I'm Nick Capodice, and today we're talking about the thing we haven't done since nineteen forty two declaring war.

Archival Sound: [00:02:55] I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the utmost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again and dangerous. We are a united nation. Let us boldly proclaim we will not permit any force to strike down. Alien civilization depends on what we do on what we do now and in the months ahead. I have no higher obligation than to safeguard the lives

Archival Sound: [00:03:37] Of American citizens. The House of Representatives. And some days again, I'm. You can end the war.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:04:11] When the United States declares war, it sets in motion a process that the framers of the Constitution first envisioned in 1787.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:20] This is Albin Kowalewski, an historical publication specialist at the U.S. House of Representatives. He spoke with our former host, Virginia Prescott, in 2017.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:04:29] For them, war was not an abstract concept at all. You know, these guys, almost to a man, had served in some capacity during the American Revolution. The vast majority of them had military experience, either with the Continental Army or with state militias. If they couldn't serve for one reason or another, you know, in the military, they would serve in the safety councils. And I think even one or two of them had been surgeons as well. So these guys had seen the face of war up front. This is something real to them. They had seen the destruction that war could bring to a people. And so the overriding thought at the constitutional convention was to make war difficult to enter.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:10] It makes sense, though, that something so destructive should be so hard to do.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:05:15] Peace peace should be easy. That should be the easy part. That should be the status quo. But war war should be difficult to enter, and so they began considering ways to make that happen. One of the ideas that they settled on was that open debate among the people's representatives could really kind of cool temperatures, cool the push for war. So what the framers ended up doing is that they gave the war powers to the legislative branch. There was some discussion of whether or not they should give the war powers to the president, and they quickly got rid of the idea of giving it to the president. I think only one person brought up the idea at the convention. Everybody more or less seemed convinced that Congress, the legislative branch, should have that power.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:58] And that makes sense because Congress is a large, slow deliberative body and it's hard to get stuff done there.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:06:05] So the idea for declaring war is that by giving Congress the power to declare war, what you're essentially doing is you're getting the American people behind you. You know, you look at the transitive property. Voters elect the representatives. If a majority of the representatives vote to support war, then technically the voters, the American people will have supported war.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:25] And given that the framers put Congress first in the Constitution right there in Article one. That is where you find those fighting words. Congress shall have the power, et cetera, et cetera, to declare war. Grant letters of marque and reprisal. Don't worry about that. We're not going to cover that in this episode and make rules concerning captures on land and water.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:45] And what does it actually look like when Congress goes for it?

Albin Kowalewski: [00:06:48] Any time Congress has declared war, it's always been preceded by either a written statement or an address in front of Congress by the president asking for that conflict.

Archival Sound: [00:06:57] The vice president, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate of the House of Representatives.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:05] The way that works and mind you, this is in the case of a formal declaration, is that the president asks for permission to go to war through a joint address to Congress.

Archival Sound: [00:07:15] I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:38] The joint address is for fancy stuff. This is also how the State of the Union is delivered. It happened when Nixon resigned. You've been hearing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking Congress to declare war on Japan after the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Archival Sound: [00:07:54] I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:27] All right, and assuming Congress is amiable to the suggestion, what happens next,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:31] Congress passes a joint resolution, which means identical resolutions in both the House and the Senate that declare war against a nation

Archival Sound: [00:08:39] When the historic role is called. I hope there will not be a single dissenting voice.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:08:49] Declaring a state of war is one thing, basically taking, you know, a state of peace and turning it into a state of war, and then Congress is also always authorize the president to employ the military.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:00] What actually practically changes after a declaration of war? To go back to that house metaphor, we just painted our peace house bright red. So what does that mean?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:13] Declaring war opens up a set of statutes that give the executive branch and the president special powers things like detaining foreign enemies, taking over transportation systems to supply the war effort and certain intelligence gathering. We are that much closer to the point when we started going to war without declaring war. We'll get to those president war powers after this quick break.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:47] A word here to remind everyone that Civics 101 is a listener supported show. And today I am asking for your support. If you go to our website Civics101podcast.org or just click the link in our show notes to make a donation in any amount, we will give you a sleek, shiny new Civics 101 sticker that says the constitution is my copilot. You can stick it anywhere you want on your laptop, on your car, on your Cuisinart, on your cat to show your love for our podcast and for democracy again, civics101podcast.org. And we are so grateful for your help.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:28] Welcome back to Civics 101. We're talking declaring war.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:31] All right, this is where things are getting interesting because we're talking about the role of the president, because even though only Congress has the power to declare war, the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:43] Exactly. The framers recognized that going to war should take careful consideration. Thus, the don't make it too easy congressional vote to actually declare war. But the methodological red tape approach is not necessarily practical when it comes to actually succeeding in war. Imagine if, in order to decide to invade a region, the commanders of the armed forces had to bring their proposals to Congress. Ask the House and Senate to approve these measures, and only then once approved, could they take the action. That would not be the sleekest approach.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:19] I mean, you need someone to literally make executive decisions in this case, i.e. the chief executive, the president. So now this, I understand. But what I am struggling with is how that same executive has in effect taken us to war a bunch of times without the congressional process. What is empowered our presidents to take us to Vietnam, to Afghanistan, et cetera.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:11:44] This was a debate that has not stopped more or less since 1787. So throughout the course of American history, America has used its military to different ways. So you have the declaration of war. And Congress has declared war 11 times against 10 countries during five separate conflicts since 1789. And those those five separate conflicts are the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War one and World War Two. Declarations of war, I think carry with it like a terrible scale, right? Like a war vote is something big and it's imposing, and it's the idea of marshaling resources of one nation state against the resources of another nation state. Kind of a clash of the Titans sort of deal. But for the vast majority of the times that America has used its military, it's been through a simple authorization. Today, we call these things authorizations for the use of military

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:36] Force, otherwise known as an AUMF, which is what well, essentially Congress has given the president the ability to say we are going to use these forces in this way.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:12:46] The term AUMF is kind of a product of the modern era. I think it kind of came into use during the Gulf War in 1991, but this is the interesting thing. Congress has never declared war without also including an authorization for the use of force, but it has authorized force many, many times without formally declaring war.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:05] The technical term AUMF did not come into use until 2001, when President Bush wanted to have the authorization to use military force against terrorists following September 11th. Since World War Two, presidents have been using their role as commander in chief to justify taking military action without the rigmarole of declaring war.

Archival Sound: [00:13:26] Finally, if Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ICE, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists for over a year. I have ordered our military to take thousands of airstrikes against ISIL targets. I think it's time for Congress to vote to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed to this fight.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:50] But like Albin said, this method of engaging in warfare was happening before the official term came into law.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:13:57] On one level, the nature of war has changed since 1787. Back then, it was a lot of state versus state actors. Since then, America has, you know, gone to war or engaged in conflicts with non-state actors. You know, the rise of these international obligations that the United States now has to meet with the United Nations or NATO. The world is far more interconnected than the founders could have ever have imagined. Back in the 18th century, when Congress declared war, it set in motion a whole bunch of these different provisions in international law about belligerency and about neutrality. And now it is. The United Nations kind of manages that.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:36] So the world changed and Congress let the declaration of war stand down in favor of presidential military force.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:14:45] But I think the biggest change has to do with the rise of nuclear warfare. It requires quick decision making. A ballistic missile is not going to wait for Congress to get together, to vote to draft legislation and to vote on that legislation. In addition to that, you know, America has never really demobilized. After World War Two, we went from World War Two straight into the Cold War.

Archival Sound: [00:15:07] We'll know when it comes. We hope it never comes, but we must get ready.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:15:10] And now it has military installments across the globe.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:13] And besides interconnectivity, what else happened?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:17] After World War Two, the U.S. had developed this reputation as a global leader and enforcer of democracy, and this was used as justification for sending military troops into places that were, for example, threatened by dictators. Dictatorships are antithetical to the ethos of the United States.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:15:34] But in going to war, taking unilateral action as a president without the support of Congress or without an authorization, it can be dangerous. It can be tricky.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:43] So Truman, for example, ordered military action in South Korea to defend it from invasion by North Korea, which was being aided by Russia. Now, Truman justified this by saying that it was part of our agreement with the United Nations, and therefore it was his right as president to command those forces.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:16:00] That was a terrible war. That was a bloody war. And by the end of it, you know, people were calling it Truman's war.

Archival Sound: [00:16:05] I cannot find it in me to exalt in this hour whether it is a time for prayer that we may succeed in our difficult endeavor to turn this armistice to the advantage of mankind.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:16:20] And so without the support of Congress, the president will then take on the responsibility for it completely. But in going through an authorization or through a declaration, the president can then kind of share that responsibility with the legislative branch.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:34] This really speaks to the power of presidential precedent, right? Because then during the Vietnam War, Johnson increased the number of forces in Vietnam, despite the war being largely unpopular among the people and Congress. And then Nixon ordered secret invasions and bombings in Cambodia without telling Congress. It just feels like we've moved so far away from what the framers intended. That war should be a major symbolic action that requires the buy-in of the people and careful consideration by Congress.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:08] Well, Congress did try to tamp down on the president's military power with the War Powers Act of 1973.

Archival Sound: [00:17:15] The War Powers Act was an act of congressional desperation. It grew out of the agony of the Vietnam War out of a series of unchecked presidential commitments of troops and treasure to a cause that failed.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:26] This act required the president to alert Congress at least 48 hours before a military action. And then the president had 60 days to get retroactive or continued authorization from Congress.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:39] And if a president could do something in under 60 days, they don't need permission of Congress, essentially.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:44] And in 2001, President Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force. That's the AUMF into law quote to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons. He determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:24] Which, to clarify, was a law passed by Congress. Yes. So basically, the president is allowed to take military action if it is for the purposes of preventing terrorism.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:35] And note the fact that as opposed to the specificity of a declaration of war, the AUMF does not name a specific enemy. It's just anybody essentially related to those terrorist attacks. With the rise in the use of emergency powers. You can check out our recent episode on that. A lot of the things that a president used to need a congressional declaration of war to do, like controlling transportation lines and deploying troops can now be done if the president declares a state of emergency.

Albin Kowalewski: [00:19:09] As soon as you give the president the source of powers to commit the military overseas without necessarily having to consult Congress, or even if you know the president doesn't consult Congress initially, but then goes and asks Congress to retroactively authorize that decision. It's incredibly difficult for Congress to get those powers back again.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:26] I think about the fact that a guest once told me that whatever official executive orders that president does, it's easy to overturn by the following administration and acts of Congress are a lot more difficult to unwind. But with military action, it's something that president after president took advantage of. And then finally, Congress passed this act that cemented those powers in a way. And my question is. In essence, has declaring war become obsolete?

Albin Kowalewski: [00:19:59] It's a great question whether or not we've moved past the point in which we will no longer declare war. I guess it's to be determined.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:12] This episode was written and produced by Christina Phillips with help from me, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. Our team includes Jacqui Fulton. Our executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie. Music in this episode by Chris Zabriskie Broke for Free, Krakatoa, Maarten Schellekens, Poddington Bear and Cza. And while we try to pack every episode full of as many facts as we can, there's so much left on the cutting room floor. Luckily, we have a place to put it our newsletter Extra Credit, which you can subscribe to at our website. Civics101podcast.org Civic's one to one is a production of Nhpr.org New Hampshire Public Radio.

Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.