I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, December 23rd.

With me now, New York Times correspondent covering campaigns, elections, and political power,

Lisa Lairer. If that last name sounds familiar, I'll say it only sounds familiar. It's spelled differently from another Lairer you may

hear in this segment, and there is no relation as far as I know. Lisa Lera writes the on politics

email newsletter for the Times, among her other duties. Thanks for coming on,

Lisa. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on with another lair. Somewhere,

though, generations ago, your family started spelling your name wrong by dropping the age.

I won't tell my grandparents your assessment here.

I will let that go.

Mostly we're going to talk about your recent article called Joe from Scranton

didn't win back the working class.

But let's start on the news.

The COVID relief bill passed by very large veto-proof majorities in both houses,

but now there is also some bipartisan

grumbling from Ted Cruz, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and from President Trump. What's this backlash about?

Yeah, that was quite the surprise, although perhaps given the year we've had and the administration,

we've all just spent the past four years watching, perhaps it wasn't all that much of a surprise.

But these negotiations have been going on for nearly nine months.

Republicans and Democrats have been wrangling back and forth.

They finally thought they had reached a deal.

They passed it through the House and the

Senate with veto-proof majorities. And the president's team went out and praised the package. This is so

...