Republican Statehouses Are Flexing Their Muscles To Rein In Cities
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2023
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Kelsey Snell, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.
The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Alicia Friend from Orange County, California. Earlier today, I was catching up on the podcast |
| 0:04.3 | of my earbuds ran out of batteries. I started playing the podcast through my phone's beakers instead. |
| 0:08.8 | My 13-year-old Australian shepherd named Galileo heard the voices, thought there were intruders, |
| 0:13.5 | and started barking. It took me a while to convince him that our house wasn't being invaded by the NPR |
| 0:19.0 | Politics Podcast Hosts. This podcast was recorded at... |
| 0:22.6 | 109 PM on Thursday, May 4th of 2023. |
| 0:27.7 | Things may have changed by the time you're listening, but Galileo will probably still be sound asleep, |
| 0:32.0 | because protecting the house from the wonderful NPR Politics Podcast Hosts is hard work. |
| 0:42.1 | I want to meet Galileo. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I must |
| 0:47.2 | m'challa that I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Smellie, cover politics. |
| 0:50.4 | And I'm dear Drew Walsh, I cover Congress. And today on the show, we are going to zero in on a trend |
| 0:55.2 | that is happening across the country in state legislatures. Lawmakers have been debating bills |
| 0:59.6 | that would strip local officials of their authority, taking away power from mayors and city council |
| 1:05.1 | members to make decisions about certain policies. And instead putting that local authority into the |
| 1:10.3 | hands of the state. And Kelsey, I know you have been doing a lot of reporting on this, so I want to |
| 1:14.4 | start with you. Give us a frame of where you're actually seeing these discussions play out. |
| 1:19.6 | As I was talking to the folks at the National League of Cities, which is a broader national group |
| 1:24.3 | that represents a lot of states and local governments, they said that they are seeing more than |
| 1:28.5 | 600 of these bills active in legislatures in the country right now. In this session, that is |
| 1:35.2 | a lot and a big uptick. They said that it used to be that these things would play out over all |
| 1:40.4 | 50 states, but they're seeing it in a narrower group of states this year, particularly when it comes |
| 1:46.1 | to culture wars issues. They said a lot of bills around rent control, housing, public safety, |
... |
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