SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Hopes to extend the ceasefire and open the Strait of Hormuz this weekend faded after President Trump left a two-hour Situation Room meeting yesterday without the, quote-unquote, "final determination" he promised on the way in. We have a look at how Americans are dealing with gas prices pushed up by the war in a moment. First, the week in politics with NPR senior contributor Ron Elving. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: And let's begin with this off-use phrase of the era. A federal judge says - judge said this week that President Trump's name must come off the Kennedy Center because Congress didn't put it there. And two federal judges weighed in, one indirectly, on the President's so-called anti-weaponization fund. Explain, please.
ELVING: Well, the Kennedy Center issue is pretty straightforward. Congress named the cultural center 60 years ago, and the judge said only Congress can change the name. As of this moment, Trump seems ready to accept that decision. But he is likely to fight the other two this week regarding that special fund you mentioned, set up by settling his lawsuit against the federal government. That fund provides nearly $1.8 billion to compensate people who claim they were pursued by the administration of President Joe Biden for their roles in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This includes the rioters who breached the Capitol and sent the members of Congress fleeing in fear.
And now one judge in Virginia froze those payments, saying she needed more time to sort out the claims. But another judge has challenged the entire process - the idea that Trump could sue as a private citizen and then cut a deal with his own Justice Department, rewarding his allies with taxpayer money.
SIMON: DHS Secretary Mullin would like to cut customs staffing at international airports in so-called sanctuary cities. Department of Justice says that would include New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle and more. What are the implications?
ELVING: Immigration hawks have long been critical of big cities that try to protect their residents from federal enforcement actions. Trump has been critical of the sanctuary policies as well. Yet this new salvo from Mullin - that's the former Oklahoma senator who now heads DHS - has brought howls of protest from the travel and the tourism industries as well as from the cities and states involved.
SIMON: Former Attorney General Pam Bondi testified behind closed doors in the ongoing congressional investigations into Jeffrey Epstein's misdeeds and associates. Ron, what stood out for you?
ELVING: First of all, her testimony was not taken under oath, but it was taken behind closed doors. Those are remarkable facts, given the gravity of the matter. Moreover, she refused to discuss Trump's role in the handling of the files. And then she said the issue had all been delegated to her deputy, Todd Blanche - the Todd Blanche who's now acting as Bondi's replacement, the Todd Blanche who made that deal on the $1.8 billion fund we were just talking about.
SIMON: And who heads the DOJ that's looking into civil cases that E. Jean Carroll won against President Trump in 2023 and 2024. What do you see in this news?
ELVING: It appears to be another example of Trump's fixation on settling scores, a grinding away at old grudges, searching for personal payback. And as a recurring theme, it's akin to the pursuit of personal glorification that we've seen in the Kennedy Center renaming, the billion-dollar ballroom he wants, the new arch he wants, the $250 bill he wants with his picture on it.
SIMON: President Trump went to a medical center at Walter Reed this week, his third trip in the last 13 months. And we learned this week that in Jill Biden's upcoming memoir, she worried that Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance in the last campaign was due to a stroke. Should we be concerned about those close to presidents concealing any possible decline in their fitness for office?
ELVING: Absolutely. Look, we know such concealment has happened before, and we should have been concerned about it for a very long time. President Woodrow Wilson's wife covered for him for much of his second term after he'd had a debilitating stroke. That was more than a century ago, but there have been other cases since. We learned about Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's after he'd left office. This is all the more relevant in our era of 80-year-olds in the Oval Office. Jill Biden tells us now she was wondering about what was wrong with her husband in that 2024 debate. Of course, we are told the president is fine. We are always being told the president is fine. This week we were told he checked out, quote, "perfectly." But we've come to regard those assurances as anything but reassuring.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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