Congress, content creators, and Can't Let It Go
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's another fight on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to get four more spending bills passed before the end of the month. We talk about what's at stake and how both parties are navigating the high cost of health care.
Then, a look at how the Trump administration is using social media content to sway public opinion & influence governance, and what our panelists can't stop thinking about this week.
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional reporter Sam Gringlas, White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and political reporters Stephen Fowler & Jude Joffe-Block.
This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. |
| 0:11.5 | On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:18.4 | Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast for Friday. January 16th, 2026. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:26.1 | I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And we are taping this podcast at 1239 p.m. It is Friday. So we are going to try to make some sense of another crazy week in Washington. |
| 0:39.5 | Sam, I want to start with you. Congress has a deadline, another deadline at the end of the month, |
| 0:43.8 | to get some various spending bills passed. I feel like the government shutdown was just yesterday, |
| 0:50.0 | so how in the world are we back here again? Okay, so to end the shutdown, what Congress did is they passed three spending packages, and they |
| 0:58.1 | need to do 12. |
| 0:59.1 | The rest were just basically extended at current funding levels until this other deadline, |
| 1:04.2 | which is coming up on January 30th. |
| 1:06.2 | And now at this point, Congress has passed half of those appropriations packages, and two more |
| 1:11.9 | of them are really close. |
| 1:13.7 | But the four that are left are really tricky, including health and human services, defense, |
| 1:20.7 | and homeland security. |
| 1:21.8 | It sounds a little bit like me in college waiting till the end to do the hardest stuff. |
| 1:26.2 | Yeah, you're fascinated. |
| 1:27.2 | What are the sticking points? Okay. So these buckets that are still on the to-do list, |
| 1:31.3 | they actually make up a majority of discretionary spending, so the stakes are really high. |
| 1:35.9 | And appropriators say that they are on track except for the Homeland Security package. And this one |
| 1:42.4 | is proving to be pretty thorny because some Democrats are calling |
| 1:46.6 | for it to include provisions that would rein in immigration and customs enforcement amid all these |
| 1:52.7 | really forceful ice crackdowns that we're seeing around the country. But I got to say there is not |
... |
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