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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, May 4th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that just learned it has something in common with first lady Melania Trump via President Donald Trump speaking in Florida on Friday. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] And she hates when I dance, too, at the end, too. She hates when I dance to what’s sometimes referred to as the gay national anthem, you know that. She hates it. 

Jane Coaston: I also hate when he dances to YMCA by the village people, which is not the gay national anthem. As we’ve discussed, the gay National Anthem is Dancing on My Own by Robyn. [music break] On today’s show, the war on Iran that wasn’t a war but became a war is currently not a war, according to the Trump administration. And grab a glass, we’re pouring one out for Spirit airlines. But let’s start with voting. Republicans spent their weekend defending last week’s Supreme Court decision that struck down a Louisiana congressional map. It’s a decision that, in effect, could entirely defang the power of the Voting Rights Act, which ensures that states cannot redistrict non-white voters out of political power. But on Fox News Sunday, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott told host Maria Bartiromo that the decision was actually great for Americans because it’ll help us hire members of Congress more fairly. 

[clip of Governor Greg Abbott] The Supreme Court just applied a principle that most Americans already understood, and that is, for example, in a hiring decision in the United States, everybody knows an employer cannot engage in racial discrimination. Now the Court is just making clear that that same hiring decision when voters hire who their member of Congress is going to be, that cannot be racial discrimination, the fact of the matter is for decades, the Democrats have been using racial discrimination to draw these crazily drawn lines. 

Jane Coaston: Discrimination against minority voters, on the other hand, is apparently fine, provided you don’t make that discrimination too explicit. The Supreme Court decision is big news, but there are tons of ways that the Trump administration and the GOP are trying to make it harder for you to vote. Take the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, or TGDC. It’s supposed to be a non-partisan federal committee that determines the standards for voting equipment used in elections across the country. Those standards are known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, and they’re intended to keep our elections safe and secure. Something I thought Donald Trump was very worried about. But back in April, a group of election officials sounded the alarm. The Trump administration has been blocking new appointees to the TGDC and won’t say why. Without those experts in place, we could see voting machines that are more likely to get breached by hackers or just plain don’t work. And that’s a big, big concern with midterm elections just a few months away. And with the Trump White House looking to quote, “take over how Americans vote.” So to explain what’s going on with our nation’s voting apparatus, I spoke to Jacob Knutson. He’s a reporter at Democracy Docket. We talked before the Supreme Court announced its decision in Louisiana versus Callais. Jacob Knutson, welcome to What a Day. 

Jacob Knutson: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: You write about some serious problems with a committee I had never heard of before, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee. Before we get into the issues, what is this committee supposed to do for American democracy? 

Jacob Knutson: Yeah, so it’s a somewhat, well, I would say it’s a very obscure– 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, it’s real obscure, Jacob. 

Jacob Knutson: It’s a very obscure and technical committee, but it’s incredibly important to American democracy. It’s made up of experts on you know the nuts and bolts of democracy, these experts who include you know election officials, engineers, disability advocates. They help the US Election Assistance Commission come up with the standards and guidance uh to certify voting systems used in all US elections. 

Jane Coaston: What struck me was that in your article in Democracy Docket, you showed that experts who would normally get on this committee, the experts you were just talking about, are being blocked. What’s happening and who is blocking them? 

Jacob Knutson: I went to EAC meetings in Chicago, where election officials across the country learned that the Trump administration was suddenly blocking all pending appointments to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, this committee we’re talking about, um without explanation. They have been left completely in the dark about about these blocks, and it shocked many of the officials there. One of them next to me described the blocks as fucking crazy. So anyway, it was so shocking because this really has never happened in the committee’s two decade history. Um, these rejections also come at a time when the EAC is attempting to implement parts of Trump’s anti-voting executive order, which demanded changes to voting machine standards. 

Jane Coaston: Just to clarify, is this blocking of experts happening across the board so it’s no one is being appointed, or are they only permitting experts from states or institutions Trump likes? 

Jacob Knutson: So it’s a little unclear at this point, if the blocks have been completely uh, you know, across the board blanket or if they’ve been selective. The election officials in Chicago were told that they were blanket. Some of the organizations that are supposed to have representation on this on this committee that I reached out to, they haven’t received confirmation on whether their appointees have been blocked or confirmed. You know, one of the officials who were blocked. Her name is Mandy Vigil. She is a New Mexico state election official. Um. She was blocked, um and she happens to be a Democrat. So it appears to be politically motivated so. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, that doesn’t look good. Um. But let’s get into the consequences of all of this, starting relatively short term. What could this mean for, say, the midterms we’re going to see in November, or looking a little further out for the 2028 presidential election? If these experts aren’t appointed, does that mean the committee just doesn’t exist? Like, what does this all mean? 

Jacob Knutson: Yeah, so the committee still has a working quorum by like a hair, um so it’s still able to function and still able to offer the EAC expertise on voting machine standards. In the short term, it’s an extraordinary violation of procedure that the federal government hasn’t explained to its state partners. For the long term, this could lead to the adoption of bad policy. Um. By design, developing new voting system standards is a very slow and deliberative process because you know even minor changes can have cascading effects uh that impacts voters with specific needs. So like a good example is the US Access Board is a federal agency that advocates on behalf of people with disabilities. By law, it is supposed to have two representatives on the committee, and it currently has zero formal representatives. And that’s really concerning when we’re talking about voting. 

Jane Coaston: Right. You mentioned that the states don’t have to take the EAC’s advice, but that they generally do. Is this the first time that something like this has happened? Has it pretty much like a nonpartisan, bipartisan effort for the last 20 years or so? 

Jacob Knutson: So as far as I can tell, this has never, ever happened before. And it’s a little it’s it’s really unclear at this point who exactly is making the final decisions on the rejections. Officials in Chicago last week said they came from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is a part of the Commerce Department. But it appears that these approvals were pending before the Commerce Department’s office of the White House liaison. Which is, you know, a direct connection between the Commerce Department and White House. 

Jane Coaston: So that gets me to President Trump, a president who claimed that rigged voting machines are to blame for his losing back in 2020, and now he’s interrupting the process of updating and improving said machines. In your view, is this a move of a president, who’s like crazy clever, or a move that’s really counterproductive to a scheme to somehow help Trump and his party? 

Jacob Knutson: I think it’s really counterproductive and I think it also reflects that he really doesn’t understand how these processes work. If you are gutting the committee that works on this stuff, um yeah, it’s very counter-tuitive if your aim is to change the voting machine standards. It’s a little more technical because the EAC can act even without the recommendation of the committee, but then the EAC will be acting potentially even against the recommendations of this committee. That would be a very bad look. 

Jane Coaston: Jacob Knutson, thank you so much for joining me. 

Jacob Knutson: Thank you for having me and talking about very very obscure federal entities. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Jacob Knutson, reporter at Democracy Docket. We’ll link to his piece in the show notes. We absolutely want your vote of approval, and you can give it to us by subscribing, leaving a five-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watching us on YouTube, and sharing with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Jane Coaston: The war in Iran has now lasted more than 60 days. And after 60 days, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 states that the U.S. has to withdraw forces if Congress hasn’t, quote, “authorized hostilities.” Which is probably why Trump sent Congress a letter Friday saying that the 60-day clock stopped on April 7th. Because that’s when the, quote, “Ceasefire began.” And he doesn’t need their approval after all. So now, according to the Trump administration, we are now not actually at war with Iran. Here’s Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaking with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] Is the United States at war with Iran? 

[clip of Todd Blanche] No, what President Trump said this weekend is absolutely true. My job as the acting attorney general is to make sure that the president, that we all are doing the right thing legally, and we absolutely are. 

Jane Coaston: I like how he both answered the question, and also tried not to. On Sunday, Trump announced that an effort called Project Freedom will start today to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz. On Truth Social, he said he wanted to help, quote, “neutral and innocent countries,” so, quote, “they can freely and ably get on with their business.” New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro went to Maine to sit down with Tucker Carlson for a lengthy interview published over the weekend, and boy, did it go a lot of different directions. Navarro pressed Carlson on his relationship with President Trump, his friendly interview with white nationalist online guy Nick Fuentes, and his views on how the media, including him apparently, uses race as a distraction. It got strange. 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] You spend a day with Trump and sort of like you’re in this kind of dreamland. It’s like smoking hash or something. It’s interesting, very interesting. And there may be a supernatural component to it. I’m not a theologian, but I, it’s real. And anyone who’s been around him can tell you it’s real. Who do you think is more morally repulsive? Ted Cruz or Nick Fuentes?

[clip of Kristen Welker] Who do you think is more morally repulsive? 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a sitting U.S. Senator who has called for the killing of people who did nothing wrong, whole populations who advocated for this war. Nick Fuentes is like a kid. He’s like 26 or 7. He has no power except his words. Here you have a public official who we pay, who has actual power, who’s voting for things, who is making policy decisions. And those decisions would include, in fact, they are focused on the murder of people who did nothing wrong. And yet no one thinks it’s a big deal. Well, this is totally fine. Nick Fuentes said something naughty that I disagreed with. He made fun of things that I don’t think I would ever make fun of them. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] He’s a white nationalist who’s denied the Holocaust. 

Jane Coaston: I am personally very uncomfortable with Carlson’s view that Holocaust denial by a guy who once compared interracial marriage to a man having sex with a dog is simply naughty. 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] And then I noticed, and this is measurable, actually, by a Lexus search of New York Times stories, that the term racist, racism, white supremacy, those exploded in New York Times stories, and not just the New York Times, but the rest of the legacy media. And my interpretation of this fact is that the media was used to distract the population with racial conflict. 

[clip of Kristen Welker] But you were part of the media, Tucker. 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] Well, I’ve already said I have been part of many distractions. It took me a long time to recognize this. 

Jane Coaston: What did I learn from all of this? Personally, I do not think that I would feel as if I were in a, quote, “dreamland” if I spent all day with Donald Trump. Maybe I’m just built different. Spirit Airlines, America’s second-worst airline, according to the Department of Transportation, shut down on Saturday, in part due to the increase in oil prices as a result of Trump’s war in Iran. The Trump administration had floated a bailout of the airline, but that reportedly fell through despite Trump saying on Friday that discussions between Spirit and the White House were continuing. Thousands of flights were canceled over the weekend, leaving passengers stranded across the country. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that he knew the real culprit. 

[clip of Maria Bartiromo] The Treasury was supposed to be doing a deal to save this company. Can you tell us what happened? 

[clip of Scott Bessent] Uh, sure, Maria. So this is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration. Elizabeth Warren, who loves to write letters, sent sent a letter to the justice department, to the labor, to the transport department saying that they should oppose the merger with Spirit Airlines. Uh, JetBlue wanted to buy them for $3.8 billion dollars. If JetBlue had merged with Spirit, we would have all these jobs that were lost yesterday, we had 30 airport, 30 regional airports who have lost service. And I can tell you what happened here. It wasn’t treasury. It was commerce. It was trying to put something together. But the reason we were here was because the merger, the Biden administration opposed the merger. 

Jane Coaston: Maybe don’t send your most nervous administration official to try and explain why Donald Trump, the President of the United States, is not responsible for an airline he suggested bailing out, ultimately shutting down. And that’s the news. [music break] That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Trump’s approval is plummeting! And tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how according to a new Washington Post poll, Trump’s approval on inflation is 27% and his approval on the cost of living is just 23% like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. If you have an approval rating that’s low enough to stay on its parent’s health insurance plan, that’s not good. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Fohr, Erica Morrison, and Adriene Hill. Our team includes Hayley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]