Politics chat: more tariffs, mail-in voting order, Kushner-Jeffries meeting

Real economic sanctions on Canada and economic threats to countries trading with Iran may work against Republicans in the midterm elections.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST: President Trump promised an economic D-Day for Iran, but more eyes are on the American economy as inflation remains sticky, and the administration takes actions that further complicate the picture. We welcome an economist to the program in a moment. But first, some of those curious moves from the White House. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara. MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning. RASCOE: Voters are focused on affordability. The midterms are around the corner, and President Trump is embarking on a full-on trade war with Canada. LIASSON: Yes. And he has some people asking, why does he keep doing things that make it harder for his party to win the midterms? You know, he put these 50% tariffs on Canada. Canada retaliated in kind. And those tariffs, which are taxes on imports, hurt people in swing states like Michigan. They hurt people in states like Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maine, who do a lot of trade with Canada. They also have a lot of competitive races in those states. And Republicans are not happy about this. They say it doesn't make any sense to raise taxes on imported goods when you're in an election year, especially when voters are so angry about affordability. We saw that in the NPR swing voter focus groups where Trump's 2024 voters, many of them believed him when he said he'd bring prices down on Day 1, and they're disappointed. RASCOE: And that economic D-Day, in the literal war with Iran, how did that land? LIASSON: Well, Donald Trump has put new sanctions on Iran and on countries that do business with Iran. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration is willing to go after Iran's biggest oil partner, which is China - oil buyer. And in the past, Trump has backed off of sanctions against China 'cause China has so much leverage over the U.S. economy. But this past week, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the sanctions against what he called Iran's enablers, he said they're not going to go into effect immediately, so this is right now more of a warning and a threat. RASCOE: On another topic, there's lots of confusion at the moment about voting by mail after the Supreme Court weighed in this past Monday. LIASSON: That's right. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case. They just said that the people who are suing, state governments, haven't been hurt yet, so it's too early for them to sue. So for now, the Trump administration can go ahead with its efforts to curtail mail-in voting. And Trump issued an order that tells the federal government to create lists of approved voters. In other words, they're called state citizens list. If you're not on the list, you don't get to have a mail-in ballot. Trump, for a very long time, has believed that mail-in voting hurts Republicans candidates more than Democrats, and it's prone to cheating and corruption, even though he himself votes by mail - he just did in the Florida primary. Many Republican voters vote by mail. RASCOE: So where are we now and what kind of effect would this executive order have on the midterms? LIASSON: Well, we don't know exactly. It could decrease the number of people who vote by mail. There's a big debate about whether that would help Republicans or Democrats. The other thing it could do is lead to a lack of faith in free and fair elections because it's so confusing. That would make it easier, for instance, for Trump to contest the results of elections he doesn't like. And this has been a constant with Trump ever since his very first primary in Iowa in 2016, where he claimed that Ted Cruz stole the caucuses. RASCOE: And we'll wrap on the news of a meeting between presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. There's been a lot of talk about this. LIASSON: That's right. This has caused a lot of heartburn on the part of Mike Johnson and Republican House leaders because it seemed to suggest that the White House was already making plans to work with a Democratic-majority House. If the Democrats do win a majority in November, Jeffries would become the speaker, the first African American speaker in history. But it also caused a lot of heartburn on the Democratic side because left-wing Democrats don't like the idea of Jeffries sitting down with Kushner or any member of the Trump administration. But the whole thing reminds us that, no matter who wins this election, there's probably still going to be divided government of some sort, and that means that both sides are going to have to work together if they want to do very basic things like keeping the government open. RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much. LIASSON: You're welcome. Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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