Roundup: Kash Patel Confirmed As FBI Chief; China Sees Opportunity As USAID Gets Cut

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

Kash Patel was confirmed as the new FBI director yesterday despite questions about his qualifications. The vote was the narrowest in recent memory with two Republicans joining the Democrats in voting "no."

Then, Donald Trump is undertaking efforts to slash federal government spending, which includes international pro-democracy and human rights groups. Is China moving in to fill the vacuum the U.S. leaves behind?

This episode: political correspondents Ashley Lopez and Susan Davis, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, international correspondent Emily Feng, and senior editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.

The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from Bowling Branch. Change your sleep with
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0:20.8	Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. We're recording this at 12.25 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, February 21st, 2025. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.
0:32.0	I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
0:37.1	Cash Patel was confirmed as the new FBI director yesterday. Despite questions about his
0:42.8	qualifications, Ryan, this was a pretty tight vote, even though it seemed like his confirmation
0:48.4	was never really in doubt, right? No, it wasn't really in doubt. Republicans did, for the most part,
0:53.9	kind of unite and lockstep behind it. But this vote came out to 51 to 49. There are two Republican senators who voted against confirming Patel. That would be Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. And if you look at the three directors immediately before Patel, they all received at least 92 votes in favor. So that
1:13.8	gives you a sense of how controversial a nominee Patel is to lead the FBI, which to remind people
1:19.0	is a really big job. The FBI is responsible for investigating counterterrorism, bank robberies,
1:26.6	cybersecurity, all sorts of things across the spectrum.
1:30.1	And there's a lot of crime going on. And a lot of this comes down to the FBI to fight. So this is a very
1:34.3	big job. And there are a lot of people, whether they be Democrats and also former national
1:39.1	security officials who have concerns about Patel, about his qualifications, about his
1:43.5	experience, his temperament,
1:45.8	and whether he's really the right man for this job. Yeah. Can you talk to me more about what
1:49.8	concerns people had going into his confirmation? Well, there are a whole bunch of them.
1:56.5	There's the fact that he's a very close ally of President Trump. There are concerns about whether he can be
2:02.9	independent from the White House or whether he's somebody who's going to do exactly what
2:05.7	President Trump wants him to do. Traditionally, the FBI is independent. And it's something that has
2:11.6	been very important historically. There's also just the fact that he's made a lot of inflammatory
	...

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