Will Trump's Agenda Make It Through Congress?
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Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. President Trump is still in the midst of signing a slew, a flurry, a wave of executive orders, maybe a squall. Take your pick of weather-related nouns to describe Trump's numerous unilateral actions since taking office. Maybe even a snowstorm in New Orleans.

Trump may well be on track to break former President Biden's modern record of 42 executive orders in his first 100 days. The all-time record goes to FDR, who signed 93 in his first 100 days, and we'll see if Trump cracks that as well. The goal is, one, to change policy, particularly within the federal government, the executive branch, where the president has lots of authority.

The goal is also to say to Americans and supporters, I'm getting stuff done. I'm keeping my promises. Of course, any policies that only apply to federal government workers are limited in scope, and anything signed unilaterally can be undone unilaterally by a future administration. And many of these orders will be caught up in legal battles for years before, if ever, they go into effect.

That's not to minimize the impact, whichever way you see it, but the more durable changes that will be made during Trump's second term will rely on Congress, where Republicans have a trifecta, albeit a slim one. So today, we're going to focus on how Republicans in Congress are reacting to the start of Trump's second term and where their priorities lie. And here with me to do that is Rachel Bade, senior Washington correspondent at Politico and contributing political correspondent at

ABC News. Welcome back to the podcast and Happy New Year, Rachel. Hey there, Galen. Happy to be here. I am curious how some of these executive orders are going over in Congress, because as we discussed on the last podcast, some of these orders are popular. Some of them are not popular with the American public. And perhaps some

the most high-profile controversial one, is the pardoning of roughly 1,500 January 6th rioters. So on Monday night, Trump issued that pardon. On Tuesday morning, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said it had released roughly 200 people who were in custody in connection with January 6th. And Trump's action also ends the ongoing prosecutions of hundreds of other rioters. What are you hearing from members of Congress about these pardons?

Well, Galen, obviously Democrats are furious and you're hearing them talk about, you know, Trump pardoning people who actually attacked police officers and how bad of a look that is. But the concern up here also extends to Republicans. I mean, a lot of Republicans, yes, they thought that.

that the Justice Department had gone after, perhaps too aggressively, some of the January 6th rioters and protesters who were walking through the Capitol who never attacked a police officer or something like this.

But they sort of drew this line when it came to violence against law enforcement. And a lot of them sort of deferred to J.D. Vance on this. I mean, if you go back a couple of months ago, J.D. Vance was asked about this. And he said something along the lines of people who, you know, are violence against cops shouldn't be pardoned. And so a lot of Republicans leaned into that. People like Speaker Johnson and other lawmakers up here. And yet Trump comes in.

and just blanket pardons basically everyone. That obviously has not set well up here. But the thing about it is, and it's very telling early on and, you know, what the relationship like is going to be like between the Hill and the White House, a lot of Republicans are just falling in line. I mean, originally there was this really awkward tap dance when this happened.

Monday into Tuesday, where a lot of Republicans were like, oh, I haven't seen the executive order. And it reminded me back to Trump's first term. I didn't see the tweet. I didn't see the tweet. I didn't see the tweet. I don't I can't comment. Didn't see it. But they could only do that for so long. And now, you know, by midweek, they were having to answer. And basically, the lineup here from leadership and a lot of Republicans who even don't like this,

is, OK, Trump has the power to do this. Trump made a decision. We're going to look forward, not backwards. And they blame Biden. Like a lot of them are blaming Biden and all the people he pardoned at the last minute, too. So they're falling in line. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I should say we referred to some polling that was conducted before Trump ever took office on our Monday podcast. Since Trump took office, Reuters Ipsos found that these January 6th pardons are still very unpopular. Just 24% of the public agrees with the idea of pardoning all protesters convicted of crimes committed on January 6th.

And among Republicans, just 48% support those pardons. 34% don't, and another 18% weren't sure. So again, mirroring what you're saying about Republicans on the Hill, Republican voters themselves feel pretty split on this. And amongst a group of voters that is pretty much down to back a lot of what Trump says or does, they're not backing this.

Is there any sense that this will get in the way of working together on other things like our Republicans just moving on quickly? Are they saying, hey, maybe at the end of Trump's second term, we should look at whether the president's pardon power should be as, you know, absolute as it is?

Look, Republicans for the next four years are not going to do anything to advance some sort of proposal that restricts Trump in some way. It's just it's just not going to happen. But I do think that the January 6th pardons, if it was just that, I think Republicans up here on the Hill would just sort of be like, OK, one off. Trump said he was going to do this. By the way, he said he was going to do this. And so even though it's not popular with the public, I would be shocked if a lot of the public was shocked on this.

But the thing about the past couple of days is it's not just the January 6th pardons. Trump has done a lot of things to sort of poke House Republicans, Senate Republicans in the eye up here, ignoring advice that they have given him publicly and privately. And that has made some Republicans go, huh.

What's he doing? You know, is he burning political capital right now on things that are not going to get his agenda through? And by the way, he needs that political capital up here because of the slim margin in the House. And like, I'm happy to go through some of those. But the other big one was TikTok. Huge, huge. His decision to, you know, say he's not going to enforce this whole TikTok ban for 75 days, basically give the company more time to divest.

There were Republicans up here on the Hill who have been saying for months that TikTok is a huge national security issue. They're spying on Americans. They're putting poison in the brains of our youth.

They were on record as recently as this weekend. Speaker Johnson was on, I think, Meet the Press talking about this. Tom Cotton, the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, put out a statement Sunday morning basically reaffirming that they need to stand against TikTok and like draw a line, not giving this company more time, saying they've had 270 days to sell to a different company or an American or something like this. And they haven't done it. And yet Trump has not listened to them at all on this.

So this is another bit of political capital where we're just seeing like

You know, these Republicans are trying to ask him to do certain things. He's just not listening. He's doing whatever he wants. And in some ways, you know, with any other president, that would cause a problem with relationships like this. In theory, like in a relationship, things go both ways. Right. You give a little I get a little that, you know, there's a give and take there. But this is Donald Trump. And it's just another example where loyalty in his mind really goes one way. He's going to do what he wants on certain things. And he's showing that he's doing that. But.

But he expects the Hill to be unified behind them. And by the way, one other thing, Galen, he had leadership to the White House earlier this week, and he was complaining that Democrats always stick together, Republicans always fracture. You guys need to be unified. We need to stick together. We're going to get the agenda through. And yet,

Republicans feel, they're not going to say this on the record, that he's the bull in the china shop right now. He's the one that's sort of mucking things up and not really enforcing unity because he's fracturing from them. It's a really interesting dynamic, and it shows us what the next four years is going to be like. To that end, there's plenty of stuff that...

that Trump campaigned on that he could work with Congress on that is popular today with the American public. So, for example, detaining immigrants accused of crimes above water, building a wall at the southern border above water, even declaring a national emergency at the southern border, also broadly popular, efforts aimed at reducing costs, very popular. But also, Trump is focusing on some somewhat random things, like

What he said himself is sort of the manifest destiny theme of his second term, which is, you know, trying to retake control of the Panama Canal, trying to annex Greenland, make Canada a 51st state. Obviously, Canada didn't come up in his inaugural address, but some of these other ideas did, and they're not popular. In fact...

Expanding U.S. territory support for that is very, very slim amongst the American public. The most popular of all of these ideas is retaking control of the Panama Canal.

And still support for that is sub 30 percent. Right. Not popular stuff. What do Republicans in Congress say when you ask them about, like, should we go to war with Panama to take the canal back? So this is a really fascinating dynamic up here on Capitol Hill, because, you know, a lot of people, when he originally started talking about this sort of rolled their eyes. This is Trump being Trump. He's not serious. But he's

hill republicans are so eager to curry favor with this president that you have a swath of republicans who have co-sponsored legislation up here to do exactly what he's talking about and specifically one group in particular moderate house republicans um there's a bill on the panama canal there's a bill on greenland and a third thing i can't remember what it is at the top of my head but like it can't be making canada a 51st state has that been entered into i'm gonna

to the other side of this because there's another group who have been more blatantly honest with him about this. But first, a lot of this is being led by moderate House Republicans who are trying to get in his ear early. There's a group...

the Main Street coalition leaders, basically, who have sponsored these bills, have talked, you know, on the record publicly about how they think these are great ideas. But then you have another crop of members, conservatives, House Freedom Caucus, they've actually pushed back on some of this stuff with Trump privately, specifically the Canada idea. Obviously, there's a concern that if you bring it to Canada... Really bold, really bold. Well, but here's...

like nobody tells him no right like except like this group was like listen if we do this democrats are going to have you know more votes this could be a problem well logically yes um but like this just again speaks to the dynamic on capitol hill where everybody's just trying to like curry favor with trump and like get on his good side butter him up a little bit and so you have people who are like yeah this is a great idea it's just it's really interesting yeah

But their goals are not exactly aligned. Trump, I mean, unless he decides he wants to be mayor of Palm Beach or governor of Florida, will never run for election again.

But all of the people we're talking about here probably will. And many of them will be in an election year in just 11 months. And so they're thinking about, you know, how they and Republicans get things done, remain popular amongst voters or become popular with voters. Trump, for his part, is like,

this is the last hurrah, you know? This is it, right? This is it. He has two years where he likely will maintain a majority and can get stuff done through the legislature, but he's also, in some sense, a lame duck president from the get-go. So how is that dynamic playing out? Like, do you hear concerns about the voters? You know, what does the public think about public opinion on this stuff? Or is it more like, we're two years out from an election, this is the time to just get stuff done? Yeah.

Yeah, I would say it's actually more the latter. I think right now, you know, Republicans feel like they have about a year, maybe a little less to sort of focus on focus on like passing as much as they can. And I think a lot of them think, you know, what they're going to do is popular. I mean, you talked about immigration, extending the tax cuts that Trump passed, you know, several years ago. This is stuff that they feel like, you know, if they get it done, it's going to help, you know, back home.

We're not getting into the details yet. And frankly, that is because we don't know what the details are going to be yet. But, you know, a lot of this stuff, if they're going to try to offset like some tax provisions that cost $8 trillion, which that's actually like probably going to happen, right? Like they're going to spend like between $5 and $8 trillion on these tax provisions, right? And most of it's not going to be.

paid for. But if they even try to pay for some of it, we're talking about reducing benefits for people, things that are going to affect Republicans' constituents back home. That's when it's going to get tricky and people are going to start thinking about their reelections. There is a disagreement in how people are looking at the next couple of years in the House already. I have talked to Republicans who say the House majority is gone.

And we need to, by the way, they don't say this on the record, but they'll say it privately. The House majority is gone. We need to lean in as far as we can because this is it. As you just said, last shot, you know, Trump's term limited after this. Like, we're going to lose the House. Let's do this. But then there are other Republicans who think they can't think like that. And they think,

You know, Trump has really expanded his reach in places like New York and New Jersey and California. And they think, you know, we really should be catering to those constituencies to try to keep the House and even grow the majority. So I can already see a conflict coming on that. We could already see a debate over the state and local tax deduction cap coming down the pike. I want to talk about some of those decisions that Republicans are going to have to make legislative decisions. But first, a break.

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President Trump needs Congress if he's going to accomplish major parts of his agenda. That includes funding for things like border security, energy policy, a big one, tax cuts. But Congress also has to deal with raising the debt ceiling and funding the government, which the government could shut down as soon as March.

Obviously, those debates have not gone particularly smoothly in recent months. So what do congressional Republicans think their roadmap is for the next several weeks or months? What's the order of operations here in terms of what gets addressed first?

Galen, it depends on who you talk to. I mean, the problem up here and one of the things I have found most striking about the past few weeks and the dynamics on the Hill is that the Senate is on a totally different wavelength than the House. You know, if you go back to 2017 when we had Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, if you go back to 2021 when you had Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi.

Those leadership teams, they were in lockstep on exactly what they were going to do with their budgets, what were going to be the first bills they wanted to pass, what was the strategy. And they were marching forward and had even passed a budget by this time during those years.

John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson are on totally different wavelengths. They want to do, you know, John Thune wants to do two bills. He wants to do, you know, a quick border win for Trump. Send him a bunch of money to crack down on the border and do border enforcement, that sort of thing, and then tackle tax later in the year. Mike Johnson, looking at his slim majority, is like, no, no, no, no, no. If we actually want to pass...

a tax bill that's going to pass, I got to have that like that little bit of sugar in the border to put that in the tax bill to get my conservatives to vote for it. So he wants to do something much later in the year. They have not resolved this. They have begged Trump to resolve it for them. Trump has said, I want one quote, big, beautiful bill. But he's also said, I don't really care. You guys decide. And so he's not cracking the whip and not making these guys get on the same team. That's the first thing. But you brought up something that I think is going to be incredibly painful for the Hill.

We already see it. And that is like the debt ceiling and spending right now. Donald Trump before Christmas had been privately telling Speaker Johnson he wants him to clear the slate, get do a deal with Democrats before Christmas on the debt limit. He doesn't want to deal with it because he thinks Democrats will use it.

like basically hold a hammer over his head to try to get something from him to raise debt ceiling, which is true, by the way. And yet Speaker Johnson sort of didn't do this until like the last minute. It failed spectacularly here. Trump was so mad at him that I reported at the time that he was considering ousting him as speaker and going with someone else.

But Trump knows this is going to be a problem and he knows the base is going to hate it. MAGA is going to hate it. And yet it has to get done and it has to get done soon. The government runs out of money in March. So they're going to have to do a deal with Democrats because you need Democratic votes in the Senate to get a regular funding deal through. And they have to raise the debt ceiling. And so that, again, is a lot of money. And we're not talking about cuts because Democrats are not going to be

you know, supporting any sort of cuts here. And they're trying to sort of figure out a way to make this like the least painful for Republicans. But it is going to happen basically really quickly in March. And that's going to be in the middle of conversations and negotiations about the Republican tax bill. It's going to infuriate and piss off a lot of conservatives, which is going to make passing the tax bill even harder. It's a mess, Galen. It's a total mess for them. And it's just a question of how bad this is going to be for them politically.

I mean, you know these people and their motives as well as anybody. Where are the pressure points? Like, how does this get resolved? It seems like Republicans are currently looking at disaster aid as a potential way to try to get something done.

You know, we had these wildfires in California. The reality is they're going to need more money in California to rebuild. And typically with disaster aid, you know, it's done on a bipartisan basis up here and it's attached to some sort of, you know, bigger spending bill. There's this idea that apparently Trump loves to try to attach a debt ceiling increase with the disaster aid and try to sort of dare Democrats to vote no. Democrats have already come out and said, we're not going to support that. But

I think there's a difference from saying that and actually voting against it on the floor, because then there's a narrative that, you know, Republicans can use against Democrats. Like,

we want to raise the debt ceiling and we're trying to do bipartisan disaster rate. Why are you voting no? Because you want leverage for something else in the future with the debt ceiling. Like the politics will get tricky fast. The latest idea I heard earlier this week is to try to just keep piling things into one big bill and hope that you can get democratic support. So not just disaster rate and debt ceiling, but also, you know, a bipartisan government funding bill to fund the government from March, you know, through the end of the fiscal year and October. Add that,

and then add some sort of border money plus up, which they hope will win over some Republicans. It won't win over conservatives, I can tell you that. But then we have seen Democrats in recent weeks, they actually want to vote for something on the border in immigration. They just passed a

Republican bill that didn't go anywhere in the Senate last Congress. A lot of them supported it. This time around, it's going to be the first bill that Donald Trump signs into law is a crackdown on undocumented immigrants who are accused of committing crimes. The Lake and Riley Act. The Lake and Riley Act, exactly. And that's a big victory for Republicans. But the thinking is...

If you add some border money to this, it makes it harder for Democrats to vote against it because a lot of Democrats, again, they want to show that they've heard the people on Election Day when it comes to immigration. They're trying to sort of, you know, show more sympathies toward the immigration, the border issue. So that seems like a lot to put all these things in one bill. And to do it by March. And to do it by March. Oh, my gosh. That's like a few weeks away. I just...

It's going to be really interesting. To your point about democratic interest in supporting more hawkish immigration measures, or at least increasing funding for border security and perhaps protecting

reform. A dozen Democratic senators sent a letter to Republican leader John Thune in the Senate saying that they're open to a bipartisan approach to immigration reform, basically saying, don't just use reconciliation, as folks will remember from the beginning of Biden's presidency, if not other situations.

reconciliation is a procedure that the Senate can use to avoid the 60 vote threshold needed to pass most legislation. And it can generally only be used on things that affect the budget.

How much of an appetite is there amongst Republicans to try to work with Democrats to reach 60 votes on some immigration package? Perhaps the advantage for Republicans who care a lot about the immigration issue there is that there are reforms that can be done to like asylum laws that probably wouldn't make it through the reconciliation process because they're not really budgetary fiscal issues. Yeah, I definitely I know there's interest.

Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican, close to Trump, pretty close. He's a former House member who has a good relationship with Trump. He, I know, has spent the past month doing this little shuttle diplomacy with Democrats, trying to find out what they could support in an immigration bill, and then, I believe, reporting back to Trump on this.

I think it gets challenging when you start talking about a bipartisan, you know, border immigration bill. A lot of Democrats will not support that without, for instance, you know, a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.

Which is like the bare minimum price that Democrats have had in the past for something like this. However, the politics have shifted now. So, you know, maybe they don't make those sorts of demands. Maybe they are fine with just, you know, a border crackdown that doesn't include like a long term. I mean, forget about the discussion about pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. I mean, listen, like.

right now, it's like, how many immigrants are you going to deport? And how are you going to do it? Like, that is the conversation. So I would be shocked, you know, if we saw some sort of bigger bipartisan bill, you know, where they're because they're going to have to get into that debate. And like, frankly, I know that some Democrats are interested in just a border crackdown without a larger sort of pathway to citizenship for folks. But a lot of Democrats, it's going to be really hard for them to leave that. So I'm

I'm skeptical. It's not impossible. And I mean, there are certainly, I would say, a half dozen Democrats who I could see voting with Republicans on some of this. But it's going to be hard. Speaking of Democrats and what they're willing to support, I have maybe a

a more basic question here, which is who's leading the Democrats currently in terms of their opposition? And maybe there isn't an answer, which is sort of the subtext to my question. You know, Nancy Pelosi is no longer in leadership. Obviously, Democrats don't control the White House anymore. It's not clear who the heir apparent is when it comes to presidential politics, because the most obvious person, Kamala Harris, just just ran and lost.

There's lots of ambitious people, but they're mostly involved in state-level politics because they're governors. You know, I'm talking here about Gavin Newsom or Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer. The list goes on. So when it comes to Democrats in Washington, who's, you know, obviously there's Hakeem Jeffries and there's still Chuck Schumer, but...

Who's responsible for charting the vision? Who's responsible for whipping people for or against? How is this playing out? It's not playing out well. I mean, there's a lot of frustration amongst Democrats, especially in the House, about the lack of guidance they feel like they're getting from the top.

Jeffries is new to this, right? I think Pelosi has sort of stayed close to him and given advice. I would be shocked if she's not doing that right now, but she's definitely not involved as much as she used to be, right? You know, he's having to sort of chart out a course. And by the way, the problem with the Democrats is that they don't all agree on what the conclusion is from the election. What do they take away from it? Like, I would say most of them agree.

you know, agree that the party needs to move for their right. They need to sort of take the immigration, the border issue more seriously. But then you have people like AOC or Bernie Sanders who say we lost the election because we weren't leaning into progressive policies enough, which is the exact opposite sort of takeaway that a lot of other Democrats have. So that's the challenge here. And, you know, I'm also looking at this with nominations too, like this whole question about who's leading, who's leading the democratic resistance or whatever, right?

You can also ask that question on the nomination side, because, you know, I kept hearing from Republicans in December and early January that they thought Democrats were going to put up this big campaign.

fight on nominations that they were going to bring in Pete Hegseth's accusers for press conferences. And by the way, a lot of Republicans kind of wanted them to do that because they don't love these nominees. But like Democrats really haven't. They've kind of just like, I don't want to say rolled over, but they kind of have like, you know, they of course, they're grilling these people in hearings, but they're not doing a lot to sort of

put up, you know, resistance to Trump's nominees. They are slow-walking them, so it's going to take a long time for Trump to get his cabinet, his full cabinet. But, like, beyond that, we haven't seen a very aggressive resistance to Trump. And that's being led by Schumer, obviously. And I think Schumer has a stronger sort of grasp on his caucus than Hakeem does on the House. It's a big problem up here. There's not—

you know, there's not one person who is saying like, I'm directing the choir here and this is the strategy. And without that,

you know, people, Democrats are fighting. And perhaps that's only natural after a big election loss. And part of what happens in any party is people fight, people have different theories of the case, and then eventually one faction wins. And so we'll continue to track that as it plays out. Obviously, one of the first major battles in that larger fight is who is going to chair the DNC. And that's playing out as we speak. I

I do want to get to the confirmations, which you mentioned. We have been tracking the odds of some of these different nominees getting confirmed on Polymarket. At the

At this very moment, Pete Hegseth's odds of winning confirmation are 95% on PolyMarket. Kash Patel, as director of the FBI, is 91%. RFK Jr., as the head of HHS, is 85%. And Tulsi Gabbard, getting approved as director of national intelligence, is 65%.

I'm curious how you, on the inside, view the public's understanding of the likelihood of these folks getting confirmed. I think it's pretty good. I think I would have put...

cash ahead of Pete Hegseth in terms of getting confirmed at the FBI. I think he's going to be fine. I do think Hegseth gets through. The only question I really have with Hegseth is whether J.D. Vance is going to have to come in and break the vote, because if it is a 50-50 split... Right, he can lose three Republicans. Correct. And right now, I think, you know, if I was a betting person, I would guess, you know,

Murkowski, maybe Collins. And I don't think McConnell's going to vote against Texas. I mean, I have like this is totally me speculating, but I guess I would be surprised. But even if he does, like I said, I think he's going to get through because they can lose three. And I do just want to say here to sort of reemphasize what you were saying about the difference in what this would have looked like in the first Trump term.

versus now, right? Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017. And earlier this week, his former sister-in-law said in an affidavit that Hegseth abused his second wife. And there are other reasons that Democrats might oppose his confirmation, including that he said that women should not be allowed in combat roles. He's defended service members who were accused of war crimes, and he's pledged to rid the Department of Defense from what he calls woke generals and social justice saboteurs.

this is the exact kind of person that you would see a big show made opposing them eight years ago. Yeah, no, totally. I, yes. And like a lot of Republicans privately feel differently than what they're saying, you know, publicly on him. Well, that's no different from eight years ago. Good point. Good point there. But,

But going back to something I had said, you know, just a few minutes ago, like a lot of Republicans were telling me in December that they weren't sure Hegseth would be OK because they thought Democrats were going to put up a big fight and that somebody would come forward. And once you have a face to a name, a face to an allegation, that that's a game changer.

And so the fact that Democrats didn't do that, I think a lot of Republicans were like, we're just going to get in line because they wanted to put the blame on Dems for telling Trump, oh, this guy can't get through. But now they just they're not doing that. And they're falling in line. And you're absolutely right. I mean, to see people like Joni Ernst, who's a combat veteran, female combat veteran, you know, sexual assault advocate.

She is a survivor of sexual assault herself. In the past, she has voted against folks in the military who have similar allegations against them, even though most of her party supported those promotions. She has voted against them. So to see her fall in line, once that happened, it was like, OK, this is over. But I think that the one to watch right now really is Tulsi Gabbard because she's

You know, a lot of Republicans, they've never been fans of her. I mean, I think in a lot of these private meetings, they say that she's not really answering answering questions. She has been very critical of the intelligence community in the past. She's flip flopped on a lot of our positions. She met with Assad when he was gassing his own people like and showed sympathies toward him.

So they don't like her, but they were willing for a long time to sort of give her the benefit of the doubt. I remember talking to one Senate Republican in the who's close in the sort of Intel, the Intel community. And this person said to me, the position she's going to lead is like not really a real position. Like the real people need to be at the CIA. And like, you know, we've got we've got people in jobs that matter. This is just like a figurehead position. So whatever. We'll swallow it. But it does seem like something changed recently.

recently on that. Part of me wonders if Trump burning a lot of political capital with TikTok, ignoring the TikTok ban and doing some of this other stuff he did earlier this week has made people say, now, wait a minute. Like, as one person said to me, we're already eating one sandwich. Why should we eat more sandwiches for Donald Trump? And so I kind of wonder if like

Like him burning that political capital has made people rethink their vote. However, I will believe it when I see it of all these Senate Republicans coming out and saying they're going to oppose her. Right now, we don't have people saying they're going to oppose her. We just have like private grumblings about people not wanting to support her. So we'll just have to see. But, you know, Trump has made a point to tell senators, I'm told, that he wants her to get through and he's putting that pressure on them privately. So, you know, we'll see if they if they can stand up to that.

Well, as with many things, only time will tell how many sandwiches get made and eaten in Washington in the coming months. But I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for joining me today, Rachel. Happy to do it. Thanks for having me.

My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tretavian. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at FiveThirtyEight.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.

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