U.S. Politics, Oregon Drug Law, Iran Elections

It's been a busy week in U.S. politics, so don't go away, we've got all the important

updates.

Supreme Court.

politics and preview the one coming up.

Ron, thanks for being with us.

By Monday, he has ended the week without that prospect and says the U.S. is going to drop

aid to hungry people there.

What does it say about U.S. influence in the current conflict?

We can try to bring the warring parties together, and we have, but both sides still seem determined

to achieve something they want by force of arms.

Talks are expected to resume on Monday in Cairo, and Ramadan begins a week after that.

There's hope, but we also have the fallout from what happened this week when a crowd

came to meet an aid convoy.

Accounts differ, but at some point, Israeli soldiers started shooting.

There are reports of more than 100 dead and hundreds wounded or injured.

The U.N. Secretary General is calling for an independent investigation.

former president, he's immune from prosecution.

What are the implications?

With this added delay, the case may not be resolved before November, and that would leave

an unprecedented question hanging over the election.

That's why special counsel Jack Smith asked the high court to take the case last year,

assuming that the justices would want to have the last word sooner or later.

But the court said no, then.

The Circuit Court of Appeals should rule first, they said.

Now the appeals court has ruled, unanimously, and resoundingly rejecting Trump's claim

of immunity.

The Supremes could just let that ruling stand, but instead, they're going to hear the case

themselves, seven weeks from now, and rule on it sometime after that.

Maybe by June.

Ron, what do you make of the fact that, according to Gallup, the number one campaign issue for

2024 is not the economy, inflation, crime, racism, the war in Ukraine, abortion rights,

or the budget deficit.

It's immigration.

That's a lot.

That suggests the economy must be doing better, inflation must be coming down, and all those

other issues are just a little less salient at the moment, because immigration seems to

be a worsening problem, or certainly a more prominent one in the news.

It's also the issue generating the most visual sense of crisis.

So we are all seeing lots of video depicting a difficult situation as out of control.

deal on immigration enforcement?

The Senate has in fact reached just such a deal, thanks to a 50-50 bipartisan group of

senators who worked on it for weeks, months, really, this winter.

It embodies compromise, and yet it could create the toughest border regime in generations.

But of course, actually doing something about the border would take the edge off the issue

politically this year.

So Trump has made it clear he's against it, and Republicans in both the House and Senate

have now blocked further consideration.

be remembered for?

But he himself says his greatest accomplishment was keeping President Obama from filling a

vacancy on the Supreme Court in 2016.

McConnell would not even allow hearings on that nominee.

That not only allowed Trump to fill that seat, it also allowed him to campaign on filling

that seat, and it gave religious conservatives a reason to vote for him.

The three justices he was able to appoint as a result have since overturned Roe v. Wade

and half a century of abortion rights.

These 15 states voting on Tuesday will do what the early voting states did, pile up

delegates for Biden and for Trump.

The only real suspense concerns what Trump's last challenger, Nikki Haley, will do next.

Dirk, thanks for being with us.

I mean, the reason you and I are talking about it is because of one specific piece that would

make possessing small amounts of drugs a crime punishable by up to six months in jail.

That is a stark difference from the law Oregon has operated under since 2021, when drug possession

became a violation similar to a traffic ticket.

But you know, this is not merely Oregon reverting back to the old days.

The Democrats who wrote this bill insist they're putting forward a sort of kinder, gentler

approach to criminal justice.

The bill offers drug users the option of avoiding a conviction if they agree to seek treatment.

And even when people are put in jail under the bill, they could be released in order

to participate in drug treatment.

The other major thing the bill would do is expand access to addiction services for drug

users in Oregon, which I think many people see as the most important piece.

Already, right now, there's an overhaul.

What happened?

You know, the first is that the system envisioned under that ballot measure you mentioned has

been very slow to emerge.

This was based on the idea that addiction should be addressed with health care rather

than police and jails.

But Oregon stumbled when it came to creating the treatment services that were necessary

for that to happen.

The second thing is that decriminalization really coincided with a growing fentanyl crisis

that's led to a surge of overdose deaths here.

It's created public disorder, things like open drug use on the streets of Portland.

That has convinced, I think, many people that things aren't working.

And some of the state's richest people have begun backing a ballot measure to end decriminalization.

That I think put a lot of pressure on lawmakers to act, since many of them thought that measure

would be harmful.

You know, this has been a very hard-fought debate here, and I think an extremely tough

call for many Democrats in particular.

One senator said yesterday, there are hard votes, harder votes, and then there was this

vote.

But lawmakers wound up supporting it anyway.

Republicans have wanted to end decriminalization for years now.

They argue criminal consequences are necessary to fight addiction.

Democrats have been far more wary, as I say, but in the end, I think they were moved by

the threat of that ballot measure.

And meanwhile, advocacy groups and some drug treatment providers have been very adamant

that this decision is a mistake for Oregon.

They believe the state is retreating back to a failed war on drugs, and they can credibly

point to numbers that suggest it will be felt disproportionately by people of color.

She doesn't like to show her cards when it comes to bills.

She hasn't done that entirely at this point, but she has, as you say, said she's open to

signing it.

I think she's widely expected to sign it.

Assuming that happens, there are big questions about how this new law will mean going forward,

what it means.

Criminal consequences would kick in in September.

The state estimates show that they are likely to funnel more than 1,000 people into the

criminal justice system every year.

That is certain to create issues in Oregon, which has a pretty severe public defender

shortage.

And I don't think it will just be the courts.

This is a brand new system that would be implemented here.

I think everyone expects it could get a little rocky.

Peter, thanks for being with us.

Turnout, however, seems quite low.

Iran has long argued that its regular staging of elections is itself a sign that it is in

fact a democracy, an argument long dismissed by Western officials and other critics.

Here's how Oran's English-language press TV channel framed the election before polls opened.

advantages in the international arena.

The leader of Iran's Islamic revolution has also emphasized that people's participation

in the voting will make friends of the nation happy and will disappoint the ill-wishers.

Calls to boycott the vote, they began to surface well before Election Day.

And many Iranians apparently decided to heed those calls.

And the results being described as possibly a record low turnout.

We're waiting for the final figures.

And this continues a trend of declining voter participation in past few years.

Even as recently as 2017, President Hassan Rouhani was on the ballot then.

Some 70% of eligible voters reportedly turned out.

That's how most Iranian elections used to be staged.

High turnout was normal.

Not so much these days.

Rouhani, by the way, was among those candidates blocked from running for the Assembly of Experts

this time.

And this vote was held after a rocky period.

This was the first election since the death in 2022 of a young Kurdish Iranian woman,

22-year-old Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran's morality police, as she'd been picked

up for allegedly wearing her Islamic headscarf improperly.

Her death sparked massive anti-government protests in what was deemed the biggest public

challenge to the government since the Islamic Revolution back in 1979.

Now this time, ahead of this election, top officials, including the Supreme Leader, including

the President, tried to exhort the electorate to turn out in large numbers, apparently with

little effect.

Now, the parliament's really not that big a deal.

It's not a heavyweight player in politics in Iran.

But the vote is a sign that the country's leaders want to do what it takes to keep the

country on a hardline conservative course.

That was probably never in doubt.

But it could also have an impact on future leadership of the Islamic Republic.

And that is coming back to this Assembly of Experts, one of those uniquely Iranian bodies.

Ayatollah Khamenei's term as Supreme Leader runs until 2032, at which point he will be

92 years old.

So it's entirely possible that these clerics being elected to the Assembly now, they will

be the ones who select Khamenei's successor or Iran's next Supreme Leader.

Thanks so much for being with us.

I'm Aisha Roscoe.

Clyde.

Our technical director is Carly Strange.

And we've also had engineering support from Nisha Hynes and Phil Edfors.

Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer.

And Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor.

Is it too late to save it?

fun on these weekends, you can always tune to the show we call Weekend Edition.

You'll find it on NPR, of course.

And you'll find both me and Scott.

They put up with me.