Eye on Congress

CQ on Congress looks ahead at the fall congressional session with CQ Roll Call reporters Katherine Tully-McManus and Niels Lesniewski. Spoiler alert: The prospects for major legislation aren't bright. Then, Scot Schraufnagel, the chair of the political science department at Northern Illinois University and an expert on congressional productivity, explains why this Congress isn't doing much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Update Note: After this podcast was recorded and posted, the House Judiciary Committee announced that it was postponing its markup to the week of Sept. 9 due to Hurricane Dorian, which is expected to hit Florida. Five of the panel members represent districts in the state. The House Judiciary Committee is expected returning early from Congress's summer break next week to mark up gun-safety legislation. Will any House bills pressure Senate Republicans to respond to recent mass shootings? At a time when a majority of the country supports enhanced background checks and other measures to curb gun violence, House Democrats hope so. CQ Roll Call reporter Lindsey McPherson explains what to expect. And Clark Merrefield of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy discusses the research on the effectiveness of the state "red flag" laws that President Trump has endorsed.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Iowa plays a big role in presidential politics because of its first-in-the-nation caucuses. Even by that standard, though, the Iowa State Fair, which ended last weekend, felt busier than usual as candidates for offices from the presidency on down flooded the event. Jason Dick, host of the Political Theater podcast, attended the fair, and the team at CQ on Congress decided to hand the mic over to him this week to hear about his experience firsthand. Dick talked to David Redlawsk, a political psychologist who spent his entire sabbatical in Iowa, about why this is all happening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the face of gridlock in Congress, investors, pension funds, and some states are pushing public companies to do more to diversify their boards, combat climate change, stamp out sexual harassment and give workers a voice. CQ Roll Call's Laura Weiss talks about what happened at Google's annual shareholder meeting where board members were confronted with protests and calls for change. “This is well beyond a cultural crisis, it’s an identity crisis,” a representative of an investor group that submitted a proposal to give employees a voice to Google’s parent company told Weiss. “They need those employees. That’s their asset.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Public pressure on lawmakers is growing across the country to reduce gun violence, but Congress may only be able to pass incremental legislation, explains CQ Roll Call’s legal affairs writer Todd Ruger. In the second segment of this podcast, we explore how Congress and a South Carolina center are trying to address the loss of land and wealth, particularly among African Americans, in what is commonly referred to as Heirs Property. Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation in South Carolina discusses how thousands of acres of land, from the south to Appalachia, may be in dispute because of the lack of legal records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democrats were nearly unanimous in voting to end the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high cost health insurance plans that was the principal mechanism in the Affordable Care Act aimed at reducing health care costs. Josh Gordon, policy director for the Concord Coalition, a group that seeks to restrain budget deficits, says that's regrettable. And CQ Roll Call health care reporter Mary Ellen McIntire explains why Democrats are willing to weaken the financing of the 2010 law.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poor allocation of airwaves and the absence of a domestic telecom supplier could delay U.S. mobile carriers from deploying 5G as effectively as some other countries and thus cede leadership to China, says CQ Roll Call's senior technology reporter Gopal Ratnam. He explains how the U.S. is hoping to respond and why the trade war between Washington and Beijing may be complicating those efforts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House passed a bill this month that would order the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate whether the Defense Department weaponized ticks. Stanford University science writer Kris Newby, in a new book called "Bitten," hints that such experiments may have led to Lyme disease's rapid spread. Newby says that congressional inquiry into the matter "is exactly what I wanted to happen.'' And CQ Roll Call defense writer John Donnelly explains what Congress has asked the Pentagon to do and why many experts doubt it caused the public health crisis.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump administration says it will round up undocumented immigrants who have missed a court date in an effort to deter others migrants from seeking refuge in the United States. But raids could exacerbate family separations, report CQ Roll Call’s Tanvi Misra and Jinitzail Hernandez, who just returned from visiting one of the largest migrant detention centers in Homestead, Fla., where the government is holding 2,000 teenage immigrants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of CQ on Congress, former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler explains what each side of the U.S.-China trade talks is looking to gain. Then trade economist Christine McDaniel walks us through how some U.S. companies are coping with the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. And CQ Roll Call's trade reporter Mark Bocchetti discusses the process that allows U.S. companies to seek exclusions from the tariffs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 GOP-held states with growing immigrant populations, Texas, Florida and Arizona, are more likely to gain House seats following the 2020 Census, as well as additional federal funding, if a citizenship question remains off, as the Supreme Court ordered on June 27. CQ reporter Michael Macagnone and Bryce Dietrich, a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, discuss why Republican lawmakers continue to back President Donald Trump's plan to add it.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The departure of acting Defense Department Secretary Patrick Shanahan raises questions about who is advising President Donald Trump, who pulled back a planned military strike on Iran this week, says CQ defense reporter Andrew Clevenger. And Chris Lu, who served as Barack Obama's liaison to his Cabinet, says Trump's apparent preference for churn among his agency heads gives him more power to direct policy on his own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

House Democrats' effort to rescind Trump administration anti-abortion policies threatens to hold up government spending bills. CQ Roll Call reporter Sandhya Raman details the debate and surveys how lawmakers are using abortion politics, both in Washington and the states, to rile their voters ahead of next year's election.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus says President Trump's climate change denial risks an apocalyptic future that will stress the U.S. military. Ben Hulac, author of a forthcoming CQ magazine cover story on how climate change is affecting the Arctic, explains why that could create conflict between world powers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his first public statement after his two-year probe, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who resigned this week, said that he had never considered charging President Donald Trump with a crime as he investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. That's emboldened some in Congress who say representatives must read Mueller's report, which found evidence Trump may have obstructed the special counsel’s investigation. CQ Legal Affairs reporter Todd Ruger discusses what it means. In the next segment, CQ defense reporter Patrick Kelley talks about a potential split between the United States and Turkey over that country's plan to buy a Russian air defense system.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee that would lead an impeachment inquiry, says he believes President Donald Trump has committed high crimes, both in obstructing Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller's investigation and in refusing to cooperate with congressional investigators. CQ Roll Call senior politics reporter Simone Pathé talks about her interviews this week with Democrats from competitive House districts. They told her they are more open to beginning impeachment proceedings because of Trump's refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell criticizes President Trump's strategy to oust Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and touts a broad-based, multi-national diplomatic campaign as an alternative. And CQ Roll Call's foreign policy reporter Rachel Oswald explains why Republicans in Congress are keeping military action on the table, both when it comes to Venezuela, and in Iran, which has lately caused alarm by reportedly arming its boats in the Persian Gulf with missiles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The continuing damage to businesses and farmers from the trade stand off between China and the U.S. is a sign that Congress needs to reinsert itself into the trade policy-making process again, argues Clark Packard, a trade policy counsel at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank. He warns that boosting tariffs on Chinese imports "has the potential to spiral out of control.'' And CQ's Ellyn Ferguson explains where legislation currently pending in Congress stands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democratic presidential candidates and most House Democrats want to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2024, a proposal David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute says makes sense. But CQ Roll Call’s Lindsey McPherson explains why some Democrats representing rural areas are holding up the bill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Miller talks about his new CQ Magazine cover story on the Republicans' decision, thus far, to ignore policy proposals in their 2020 planning. Miller found this worries some lawmakers, like Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, who'd like to see the party offer new ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices