It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.
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Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
3 POLITICAL MORSELS TO SHARE AT THANKSGIVING
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent
Friends, congratulations.
We have made it through another wild ride of an election. As many of us happily take time off from work (and perhaps from the news cycle), it is a good moment to digest that we’re in historic times.
The past year has been another full-course meal of consequential political events.
Today, we thought we’d serve up a few specific morsels amid that unfolding history — ones that could spark good conversations ([link removed]) this holiday week:
The “Four Corners” will be all women.
The next Congress will bring a historic change to four of the most powerful seats in Washington: the chairs and ranking members who run the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. For the first time in U.S. history, all positions will be held by women.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is slated to be Senate appropriations chair; Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, will be the top Republican. On the House side, the appropriations chair will be Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas; the top Democrat will be Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. Together, they’re known as the “Four Corners,” the key leaders who guide how nearly 2 trillion in taxpayer dollars is spent each year.
Their positions are powerful in every Congress. But in times of divided government ([link removed]) , determining funding levels can become a particularly consequential job Congress performs.
The color of the Senate is warmer.
In a long-awaited renovation, the architect of the Capitol has been carefully scraping, fixing and repainting cracking, damaged and otherwise aging walls immediately around the Senate. It is now paying off.
The green wall (left) as seen in a Senate corridor. A renovation tunnel (right) in the Senate. Photos by Lisa Desjardins/PBS NewsHour
The paint outside the Senate has moved from a 19th-century hospital green (truly) to warmer and lighter colors — dominated by a shade akin to butternut squash. Per sources involved, the names of the colors are “Capilano Bridge ([link removed]) ” and “Aztec Yellow ([link removed]) .” Why are we highlighting this? You cannot underestimate the symbolic effect of the Capitol building itself on lawmakers. The signs of wear around the Senate had long been obvious.
The fate of the "Thing.”
Among the much smaller transition questions hovering ahead of the 118th Congress is this: What will become of North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr’s car, a vintage model known as the "Thing”?
Volkswagen manufactured the vehicle known by some as “Type 181” in the late 1960s and ‘70s, calling it the “Thing” in America. If you have never seen one, it is an off-road number that has earned adoring derision as “slow, old, unsafe… and amazing ([link removed]) .” (We highly recommend that video as a conversation starter.)
Burr has driven one of these to and from votes for decades, at points brazenly showing off its cracked windshield and the holes in the floor. Covering the Republican’s own 1974 model of the VW Thing was a rite of ([link removed]) passage ([link removed]) for journalists.
Burr has kept it running, repairing the bumper-sticker-covered vehicle himself in 2016 ([link removed]) . But as the retiring senator prepares for his final weeks in office, the car’s fate is not yet clear. (Nor where it is currently garaged.)
With that, we wish you and all those you love a happy Thanksgiving, whatever the conversation.
We could not be more grateful for you and for all of our readers — truly no one has better.
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: A historical perspective ([link removed]) on former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
* One Big Question: Trump denied his election loss in 2020 and faces a series of escalating criminal investigations. Is he what’s best for the Republican Party? Two Republicans discuss ([link removed]) the former president’s role in the future.
* A Closer Look: Thanksgiving table conversations can get tense. Here’s how to prepare. ([link removed])
* Perspectives: NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report discuss ([link removed]) the early 2024 campaign messaging from GOP leaders.
WITHOUT FEATHER ADO, A SHORT HISTORY OF THE TURKEY PARDON
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Watch the segment in the player above.
By Kyle Midura, @KyleMidura ([link removed])
Politics Producer
Turkey isn’t on the White House menu this Thanksgiving, at least not a particular lucky pair — or should we say plucky pair.
On Monday, President Joe Biden granted a presidential pardon to two turkeys named Chocolate and Chip, who will be kept off the dinner table.
In keeping with the annual White House tradition, Biden spared the birds while delivering a heaping side of dad jokes ([link removed]) .
“The votes are in; they’ve been counted and verified,” Biden said before a crowd gathered on the South Lawn. “There’s no ballot-stuffing. There’s no fowl play.”
He continued: “The only red wave this season’s gonna be if German shepherd Commander knocks over the cranberry sauce on our table.”
But how did the turkey pardon get started? Well, that question has ruffled some feathers.
Former President Bill Clinton once said that Harry Truman was the first president to pardon a turkey. Actually, that’s as false as Tofurky ([link removed]) .
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#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Kyle Midura, @KyleMidura ([link removed])
Politics Producer
Back in 1782, the bald eagle became the nation’s official bird when the design selected for the Great Seal of the United States featured the bird prominently.
But Ben Franklin was not a fan of the original eagle design, later writing in a letter ([link removed]) to his daughter that the eagle looked more like a turkey. Franklin then called the turkey “a much more respectable Bird.” He conceded the turkey is “a little vain and silly,” but a “Bird of Courage.”
It took nearly a century and a half before states began selecting their own official birds.
Our question: This year’s national turkeys — Chocolate and Chip — hail from North Carolina. What is the official bird of the Tarheel State, and what year was it selected?
Send your answers to
[email protected] (mailto:
[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shoutout next week.
Last week, we asked: Republican leader Kevin McCarthy first received a single vote on the House floor to be the speaker in January 2015. Who was the sole congressmember who voted for McCarthy?
The answer: Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y. You can peep the congressional record here ([link removed]) .
Congratulations to our winners: David C. Rickard and Donna Pitzler!
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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