Russia’s Gloomy ‘Elections’, U.S. Budget Divisions, Elton John-Bernie Taupin Awarded, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Russia holds its presidential elections, U.S. lawmakers face a new set of budget showdowns, and the Library of Congress awards Elton John and Bernie Taupin for musical achievement. It's March 14th, 2024, Pi Day, and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

Carla Anne Robbins:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, let's start with Russia. Tomorrow, Friday, Russians will vote in their multi-day, across eleven times zones—I always like pointing that out—presidential election. There is absolutely no suspense about who's going to win with Vladimir Putin controlling all the media, muzzling, exiling killing all of his opponents. I gather there's also an incredibly strong get-out-the-vote pressure campaign on government employees, members of the military, employees of stated-owned enterprises. That said, not all is quiet or happy in Russia. We've seen some anti-war protests and there were defiant demonstrations, really courageous people after the murder of Alexei Navalny last month. Is this going to be the coronation that Putin had hoped for?

MCMAHON:
I think that's one of the big items of suspense that we could look for in this case, as you said, Carla. No doubt at all, it's really about the level of support and a level of support at a time when also as you point out, all is not well in Russia despite many of the cards Putin holds and seemingly a strengthening hand, certainly on the Ukraine front and against his domestic opponents. But there's the specter now of Alexei Navalny coming up and still haunting him in terms of there's reports that Navalny had been organizing before his death sort of a flash mob performance against Putin on election day, what they're calling "Noon Against Putin." That's one thing to look for and that would be, in typical Navalny fashion, nationwide. We'll see the extent of whether that happens. 

And then, it's the turnout question. As a number of Russian watchers say, they need to see more than 75 percent turnout voting for the president, which means the elites, such as the regional leaders and other high-ranking Russians, need to get out the vote and show this strong vote of support. It's also, as you say, a multi-day affair in part because this is for the first time ever, certainly in this era of Russia, a wartime vote. This is a country at war even though Putin is not saying it, but they are holding votes in the "new territories" quote unquote of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. We're going to see how that transpires. There have been some Russians who have jumped sides and have been arming up to oppose the Russian official forces and trying to disrupt the vote among other things. We'll see if that happens, that could be a disruptive event for Putin. We're going to have to see whether the war in any fashion creeps into this campaign. 

It's a show vote. The candidates who are going to line up against Putin are said to be the smallest roster ever in the post-Soviet electoral landscape. It's three candidates, one from the Communist party, one from the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and one from the New People Party. They don't have any sort of chance at all. Two relatively modest candidates who were anti-war were quickly turned down under so-called technical reasons from running, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova. That was just one measure of Putin and the Kremlin's concern about any anti-war sentiment creeping into this. It's a controlled show election in which there are still a bit of uncertainty even now as Vladimir Putin waits to kind of take his next step forward, which many people anticipate would be some sort of post-election surge, whether it's a military campaign, whether it's a new mobilization campaign in Russia to further beef up the armed forces. We'll have to see, but it's why these elections are going to be watched, just like the recent ones we talked about in Iran were being watched and there was very low turnout there. This is a different kind of repressive state, but doesn't mean that they're going to be able to cook up high voting figures. We'll have to see.

Carla Anne Robbins:
How will we know what the turnout is and how will we know what the results are? There's so little independent media, so few people who are allowed to watch and report what's actually going on there.

MCMAHON:
Well, that's actually a really good point. There had been, in previous elections, which have been handily won by Putin, if you look at his track record since 2000, it's been steadily in the 70s: 71 percent in 2004 to 76.7 percent in 2018. The media, the remaining independent media or independent sources of basic news, have been heavily repressed further and put on watch by the Kremlin. We don't know whether it is total scripting coming out of the Kremlin, whether you're going to see sort of communist era reporting of 99 percent votes in favor or whether they're going to go that far, whether they want to have the whiff of credibility and try to indicate something different. That will be very interesting to see because the media outlets, even though as crafty as many independent-minded Russians are, and certainly as active as the Russians outside the country are, it's going to be hard to see how they can circumvent the state-controlled sources.

There are other sources, as we've talked about before, Carla, outside-funded sources, U.S.-funded sources like Radio Liberty, or the BBC or Deutsche Welle, some outside media that have Russian language distribution networks that are quite extensive that could indicate some differences and could report on things like a potential Navalny flash mob for example. I think that's going to be an area that's going to be fascinating to watch as well. How will the Kremlin control the dissemination of basic info? It's worth noting they are not inviting the OSCE to come as observers, which it has done so in the past. They really want to be able to really stage-manage this and control the message and then get on with things.

Carla Anne Robbins:
This is so incredibly important. We really don't know what the majority of Russians think. There's very little independent polling, but there is this, what everyone calls an independent, this Levada Center that does do polling and their polls consistently give really high-backing Putin, 70 percent or more, which would be consistent with the votes that they've reported in the past for him. Even the polling that we've seen on Ukraine shows, people are more ambivalent, supporting the war, whatever, it's not a war effort, but also people wanting to...They oppose giving back occupied land, but they also support negotiations or opposed to a draft or mobilization. But it looks like he probably doesn't even have to steal the election. On the other hand, they control so much of the media or he controls pretty much everything in the media, it's not surprising that people would come out with this view. It's sort of hard to tell what Russians really think, and we'd certainly know the vote won't show them, but it's not as clear-cut as this total dictatorship, autocracy story that we might think, isn't it?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and this is something our colleague Tom Graham has pointed out in an election scene setter he wrote for CFR.org, which is that given the state of Russia right now, and let's again look at two years worth of war. How many Russians have fled the country, how much of an incredible crackdown there's been on remaining independent sources of information, and this relentless spin from the Kremlin about what this war is about, even sort of less so much on the de-nazification of Ukraine and more on the West is against us in trying to weaken Russia. Levada is said to be the only sort of quasi-credible source of this kind of polling that's left in Russia. If you take it on face value, it's possible that that could be the case. Also, as Tom points out in a piece for CFR.org, the Russian economy has been able to muddle along despite the heavy sanctions including against the overweening energy sector, which is really remains so much of the source of Russian wealth. They've been able to kind of muddle along, especially in some of the major influence-making centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

It doesn't mean there aren't deep dysfunctions, including the military by a number of accounts, but let's just say there's a cowed population but also possibly a persuaded population that's thinking let's just make do with what we have. Then you have the real disaffection or those who are greater disaffection are people who have left the country and Navalny's widow has been outspoken, Yulia Navalnaya, but she's outside the country. She's making her case from abroad. Also to show a measure of the concern even about that you had this reported, this brutal beating of a Navalny aide who was based in Lithuania this week. Somebody attacked him with hammers and really quite awful. Again, showing the extent of concern I think, if we extrapolate how such an attack might've happened, showing the extent of concern to the Kremlin that they keep control of the narrative of how this election can play out. But to your question, Carla, it is interesting to note there is a potential Russian sentiment that let's get on with the war and win it and then maybe normalize our lives.

Carla Anne Robbins:
As if one could consider anything that goes on in Russia to be normal given the brutality of the government.

MCMAHON:
For those looking for more insight into Putinism and Russia's leadership, I would highly recommend some new reporting in Foreign Affairs, foreignaffairs.com, as well as a paper from our colleagues, Liana Fix and Maria Snegovaya about a succession plan for Putin. It has some fascinating scenarios that it plays out.

Well, Carla, let's bring it back here to Washington, DC where the different kind of battles are playing out. These are the battles over the fiscal budget. Now we've had a partial clearing of the budget of the current year's budget, and now there is another potential partial shutdown looming. The half of 2024 spending is still unresolved, the new deadline is March 22nd. What are the president and Congress negotiating in the meantime and how much does the 2025 budget even figure in all this?

Carla Anne Robbins:
Well, we know they're not negotiating Biden's new budget request, which the president released and was immediately declared DOA before it came out. Remember the old days when they gave us those big books that...They sent the messengers, they showed up, we were all going through them, the different accounts and all that? It's all online now, but...

MCMAHON:
The quietest $7.5 trillion you'll ever see, I think.

Carla Anne Robbins:
But this process is really just an incredibly disturbing example of Washington's political dysfunction. Last Friday, five months and seven days after the start of the fiscal year, Congress finally approved half of the fiscal year 2024 budget covering Veterans Affairs, Agricultural, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Justice. Biden then released his FY 2025 budget request more the month after the statutory first Monday in February date. That, as you said, leaves the other half of last year's budget unfinished, including a pretty important bunch of departments: DOD, State and Foreign Operations, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services. If those budgets are not approved by March 22nd, which is by no means guaranteed, we could be facing another possible shutdown. 

There's the predictable wrangling over spending on Homeland Security budget and the Republicans want to spend more on border patrol and detention facilities and there is some talk we may have to settle for continuing resolution. They may not be able to resolve that one. Other people are saying, "No, no, we got to do this whole mini omnibus thing on this." We'll see, watch that space. Punchbowl, which does an absolutely terrific job of covering the Hill, reported this morning that there's also nasty battle unfolding over the foreign operations budget and restrictions on humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza and whether to suspend or permanently ban money running through the UN agency UNRWA. All of this needs to be resolved by the weekend to meet the House's seventy-two-hour review rule, so this is really bearing down on us quickly. Then there's the other budget problem, and that's the supplemental funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza, and that's being held hostage by the House leadership. 

Bottom line here, this is really no way to run a government, especially this a really the wrong time to be playing budget games with national security when we're trying to support Ukraine, deter Russia from going any further, and address our own really fundamental weaknesses made clear by the Ukraine war, including the need to produce a lot more munitions and build up the defense industrial base, which has really been neglected since the end of the Cold War. This is chaos on parade.

MCMAHON:
There used to be very strong champions, and there have been, especially at this type of budgeting juncture, in both parties for defense budgeting. Just like, "This is sacrosanct, we've got to move forward, let's get this done in timely way." Are those voices just muted, Carla? Are they just kind of competing against so many other voices in this weird environment right now? Or are there maneuvers that can be done that can resolve some of this still? We saw some money found for Ukraine, for example, earlier this week, some $300 million, but this is obviously a lot more money at stake and a major appropriation we're talking about. Anything we should be looking for that's a little out of the ordinary?

Carla Anne Robbins:
Interestingly of the March 22nd budgets that are still pending, there doesn't appear to be any fighting over the defense budget, and there have been in the past on things like abortion and all that, that as far as we can tell in the reporting, there doesn't appear to be a big fight over the defense budget right now. In the past, you might've thought that funding Ukraine and fighting Russia would've been carrying fundamental national security concerns, but Republicans who were big defense spenders, a lot of them don't seem to want to be spending it on this war or pretty much any war right now. There's an interesting mixture of being, "I'm a defense spending hawk, I just am not a hawk." That doesn't seem to be carrying all that much.

Some $3 billion of the stalled $95 billion supplemental request is supposed to go to buying more artillery shells and to keep the factories churning them out. That's defense industrial-based money. There's also money in the supplemental, which itself is opposed. The House, if they could just get it to the floor in the House, Republicans and Democrats would vote for it, but the House leadership won't. There's $5 billion in the supplemental to cover money for the Army's current cost of deploying their forces in Eastern Europe. You would think that there would be support for that, but that's not going through. The sort of traditional alliances, whether it's for the defense budget that has to go through for 2024 or for the supplemental just doesn't seem to be there and doesn't seem to shake it loose. It's not the thing holding up the March 22nd, but it's certainly not going to push through the supplemental or this as far as I can tell.

MCMAHON:
Maybe if they can tie it up with their concern over TikTok, we could get some progress since that seemed to be quite a bipartisan effort.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Interesting, yeah. A topic for another day.

MCMAHON:
A topic for another day, yes.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Just finally, Bob, you mentioned this money for Ukraine. I think that's just really a sign of how desperate the situation is, both in Washington and certainly transcendently in Ukraine. This past week, the Pentagon announced it was sending $300 million worth of weapons to Ukraine. This is the first commitment since the end of December when the money ran out. That's going to include air defense, interceptors, artillery rounds, armor systems, and ATACMS, these longer range missiles of the Ukrainians have been begging for an older version. Where did they get it? They once again shook the sofa cushions and Army accountants found them from savings from contracts that they said came in under bid. This is really a crazy way to run the government and really a crazy way to support people who were struggling for their lives.

MCMAHON:
We should note, we were just talking about what Putin's vulnerability might be amidst his expected reelection, his overwhelming reelection. He's certainly in a better position as he looks at what's playing out in the United States right now. It must give him a lot of solace in seeing this chaos that's playing out right now.

Carla Anne Robbins:
It's shameful.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, you did hear correct when I kicked off the podcast when I said Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and I know you know why.

Carla Anne Robbins:
B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets. Just had to do that.

MCMAHON:
I could get going in the whole Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, but I'll restrain myself. But the Library of Congress is also active these days in a much more positive way, and it's presenting its annual Gershwin Prize for popular song to said Elton John and Bernie Taupin. In addition to "Benny and the Jets," "Rocketman," my personal favorite, and many other hits, they are seen as the brain trust in significant songwriting, certainly of the last half century or so.

The little known fact is that the Library of Congress also gives several awards to honor achievements across arts and literature, both in the U.S. and abroad. Elton John and Bernie Taupin are Brits. What does this mean to receive an award from the Library of Congress?

Carla Anne Robbins:
The Library of Congress is really truly a national treasure for researchers and on an incredible array of topics. I just found out that the Los Angeles-based American Film Institute chose the library as the place to preserve thousands of classic films, and you know how much we both love film, from the first half of the twentieth century. These films were disintegrating because they were shot on really volatile nitrate stock. This is an incredible place to do research and an incredible place to find. They've got Margaret Mead's films there, the research film. There's just incredible number of things there.

MCMAHON:
The anthropologist, yeah.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Yes. The library also awards a host of cultural prizes, and this one is named after George and Ira Gershwin. They're brothers and composers who wrote classic musicals like Funny Face and Showgirl, and along with the DuBose Heyward, the opera Porgy and Bess. The library describes the Gershwin Prize as, "The nation's highest for influence, impact, and achievement in the field of popular song." If you look at the past honorees, Joni Mitchell, I'm not going to go through the whole list, but Lionel Richie, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, I think it's a pretty legitimate claim. 

Sir Elton and Bernie Taupin have been riding together for over fifty years and we all have our favorites. As you know, "Benny and the Jets" is mine. I think it's a well-deserved award, and according to the Library Congress, the two hold the record for the biggest-selling physical single of all time for Candle in the Wind 1997, which sold more than 33 million copies. This is the reissue which they did for Princess Diana when she was killed being chased by paparazzi. The original song was written for Marilyn Monroe but was repurposed. For music and humanitarian impact, Elton John has also received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, the Légion d'Honneur from France, the National Humanities Medal from President Biden, and now this.

We also looked at our researchers, thank you looked at all the other awards that the library gives. I'm not going to go through all of them, but the poet laureate consultant in poetry serves as the nation's official poet to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reaching and writing of poetry. The current poet laureate is Ada Limón, a Mexican American poet, and the first Latina recipient of the prize. They have a podcast from The Catbird Seat, which features recordings for poets reading and discussing their work.

They've got the John Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanities, and the latest prize holder for that is George Chauncey, who studies LGBTQ+ history in the United States. They have a prize, the Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for film, which recognizes documentary film and applications are still open through May 1st with them, and that the grand prize is $200,000. There's also the Next Generation Angels Awards, which recognizes six middle and high school student filmmakers who then receive mentorship from the Ken Burns finalists and Burns himself, which sounds really way cool. There are a lot of very cool prizes out there, and the library is definitely something.

We have to do a plug because it's CFR-related here and looks really important. There's a literacy award which honors organizations that inventively increase literacy in the U.S. and abroad since 2013. It's funded in part by David M. Rubenstein, who's chairman of the CFR's board of directors. It has awarded over $3 million to 180 organizations across thirty-nine countries. Obviously literacy is something near and dear to both of us.

MCMAHON:
Well, I'm glad you chose this topic, Carla, for all sorts of reasons, but it's a reminder of that sometimes intangible term, soft power, that the U.S. possesses and still does. It gets repeated a bit too often these days, the term, "In these polarized times," but I will say it. In these polarized times, it is great that we have the U.S. Library of Congress and I think for all Americans, and they should really treasure it because it is curating our national story. It's a good story in many respects to tell.

I recall coming back, I lived abroad for most of the 1990s, and I would make a beeline for the Smithsonian whenever I'd come back and go to their gift shops for various gifts for people and things. There would be a whole section on things curated by Library of Congress, music and other things, and it was just great. It was a real source of pride. But for all the other reasons you mentioned, it's very important to have this organization doing what it's doing. This is just a great, fresh example of it, casting its gaze to non-Americans to show their value. I think it shows the role, in a way, in which the U.S. can be this really positive force, just like in a very different way, the last week's Academy Awards were. That you had countries all over the world tuning in to see whether their entries won, and there were a lot of international entries that did. It's very meaningful. I think this is just a good moment to pause and just take note of that. Bravo, Library of Congress.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Sir Elton and Bernie Taupin are going to get their award at an all-star concert in DC on Wednesday, March 20th and will be aired live on April 8th on PBS.

MCMAHON:
PBS, other national treasure, in my opinion.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Yes.

Well, Bob, it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday on Wednesday at cfr_org's Instagram story. This week, Bob, our audience selected, "Haitian Prime Minister Henry Resigns." Is this a hopeful sign for Haiti or just a further step into chaos?

MCMAHON:
I fear the latter, Carla, but we're going to have to follow this very closely as we're speaking because this is one of those fluid developments that could change even between now and when this podcast drops later on Thursday. But as it stands now, there are still some sorting out on whether a transitional body is going to agree to a plan for governance that will succeed Prime Minister Henry, who's currently in Puerto Rico, I believe. He's not been back in the country since he left on a trip to Kenya to secure a police deployment that will be serving in a sort of a peacekeeping capacity. Gang members who control something like 80 percent of the capital of Port-au-Prince and some other parts of the country used that as an opportunity to create a daring prison break and also seize other important parts of the country, including attacking the airport. 

They say they're focused on the ouster of Prime Minister Henry, and he seems to be moving on. But the fractious nature of Haiti and the really chaotic situation that continues to unfold means this is going to be really tough to sort out in terms of putting in place a transitional body that a critical mass of Haitian groups can agree on. Without that, you're not going to get a deployment of Kenyans or any other force foreseeably to try to bring some peace to the capitol and the country. We've said before, this is a failed state. It's a incredibly difficult situation for many people. Many Haitians of any means have tried to flee already.

One of the developments that's playing out, showing a little bit of the grim planning going on, is that the Biden administration has reported to be discussing Guantanamo Bay to process possible an influx of Haitian migrants. You've had Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saying the state will be sending hundreds of law enforcement officers patrol its southern coast to intercept what he called illegal vessels that may be carrying Haitians fleeing the country. There's that aspect, but in Haiti itself, it's finding a way to bring together Haitians who can come up with a plan towards providing stability first and foremost, and then some sort of a credible roadmap for elections. Elections are this fraught issue. Henry would never agree to hold them. He took over after the assassination in 2021 of Jovenel Moïse, the last president, and that has been a sore point. But in and of themselves, elections are not going to solve Haiti's problems. 

Any sort of a government change that comes through elections this year, for example, would be the twentieth in the last sort of thirty-five years or so, just showing how much upheaval there is in the country. It has had any number of international bodies come in and try to run things including the UN, which ended its tenure a few years ago with a dark cloud over it, given the spread of cholera that was traced by some investigators to a UN facility that killed thousands of Haitians. The country has also dealt with earthquakes, devastating earthquakes, that have killed hundreds of thousands in the last ten to fifteen years. The governance problems on top of its own sort of tragic series of events has made this just a really difficult place to bring through such a situation. If you look to the places that have typically played a role, whether it's the Caribbean Regional Bloc CARICOM, or the UN Security Council, there are divisions on those bodies right now. I'm not sure who's going to step forward or what sort of coalition at this point can step forward and sort of sort out Haiti's affairs. But things have to happen quickly because it is a failed state in which things are deteriorating very quickly under this rule of gangs.

Carla Anne Robbins:
These negotiations are going on, I think in Jamaica, and they do have the skeleton of what they think this transitional government's supposed to look like with seven voting members drawn from political parties, the private sector, to a group of civil societies called the Montana Group, which I think is named after the Hotel Montana, which used to be one of the few nice places up the Hill. From what we're hearing is that not surprisingly, they can't agree on who sits in this transitional government. 

One of the biggest questions is whether you're going to let in any of the leaders of these gangs. They control 80 perecent of the city, and some of them seem to be including, this guy Barbecue, seem to be positioning themselves and say, "We got rid of Henry because we wouldn't let him back in and we got the guns and you got to give us a seat at the table." This is disastrous, the idea that you would let them in. On the other hand, are you going to have any peace without them in? The Kenyans, meanwhile, say they won't come until a transitional government is in place. It seems to me that there's not going to be a transitional government unless you got somebody to stand up against the gangs. I don't understand why the Kenyans just don't get their people on planes and arrive.

MCMAHON:
One possible scenario could be for that to happen, that further strengthening what the UN Security Council has agreed on in terms of in support of the deployment of the Kenyans in some way that would give them further confidence to be able to go there into this situation right now, which is really chaotic. There's already been some promises of funding for them and other, I think, logistical support. I think some bolstering of that might provide that, Carla. But yeah, that's the hard truth here and it's a little bit what can come first, but it seems like bringing law and order is going to help. There's been a great deal of doubt about whether 1,000 Kenyans can make any sort of difference. I've seen reports saying that they actually could make a difference in certain sectors, at least at the capital, where some of these gangs are teenagers toting around rifles and things and who could be fairly quickly intimidated. But by the same token, it would be intimidating to come into this scene as it's playing out right now.

The question you raised though is a good one. I don't know what the answer is in terms of the gangs. Are we at a stage now where they actually are stakeholders in some way and you bring them into some sort of a process or are they purposely kept outside and some sort of coalition is arrayed against them? I have not seen a lot of discussion on that yet, but that might be coming up to the plate.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Well, some of these people are under sanctions, some have been in jail in the United States, the people who purport to be the leaders of the teenagers with guns. These are not the sort of people I think we want to be doing business with and not the sort of people who the Haitians deserve to have running their country, but-

MCMAHON:
Some of the people who were sprung from jail were implicated in the assassination plot against President Moïse, so how is that going to be handled? How do you bring them to justice? How much are they in some way connected to gangs? It's a real mess.

Carla Anne Robbins:
That it is. I'm not an editorial writer anymore, but I think the Kenyans should get on planes and go there and try to...because one of the reasons why these gangs rose up and went particularly nuts is because in anticipation of the Kenyan police coming in the first place, they didn't think they could stand up against them. They're not ten-feet tall, these gangs, from what I can tell. I think that some order has to be brought or I don't think they're going to get any sort of political settlement in place there. I say this based on the fact of having worked in Haiti a very long time ago, so my expertise is very limited.

MCMAHON:
Well, that's our look at The World Next Week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. South Korea hosts the third Summit for Democracy. The White House hosts the annual St. Patrick's Day ceremony with U.S. President Biden and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. And Nowruz, or New Year, celebrations begin in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kurdish populations, and more.

Carla Anne Robbins:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected] and tell us your favorite Elton John song. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as the transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on the world next week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang and Sinet Adous with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to our intern Olivia Green for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Marcus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying, so long.

MCMAHON:
This is Bob McMahon saying, goodbye yellow brick road.