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U.K. Votes To Leave EU; U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Immigration Plan

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A busy week in U.S. politics was overtaken yesterday by the vote of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. And both major party presidential candidates responded in different ways. That story, along with the crucial Supreme Court decision, brought the issues of immigration to the floor. NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving joins us now from the studios of St. Louis Public Radio. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.

RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.

SIMON: Do you see, as some people have already, any implications for U.S. politics or policies in the vote in Britain?

ELVING: Absolutely. Let's say, for starters, that it doesn't affect us anywhere near as much as it affects, for example, the United Kingdom, which may not be united much longer - might very well break up over this. And it affects the European Union, which is going to have other countries - some of the larger countries in Western Europe - considering their own exit from the EU, including France. So these are upheavals, tremendous tumult and turmoil, for those countries.

In the United States, the effects would be somewhat more indirect. But that does not mean that they will be minor. Consider that yesterday the Dow Jones Average lost 600 points. All the major stock indexes were down three or four points. That's just the beginning of what is expected to be an indirect, but nonetheless quite palpable, economic effect on the United States. These are some of our biggest trading partners. And as they go through a period of distress, it's going to blow back on us in a number of ways.

SIMON: What are some of the political implications?

ELVING: Well, you know, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both responded to this pretty quickly. And it showed us a lot about the stark contrast between those two individuals. Hillary Clinton issued what might have been a calm, careful, diplomatic communique respecting the decision but talking about how it might affect American working families.

Donald Trump came to the mics and said, you know, he thought it was great that they were taking their country back again, obviously echoing his own campaign slogan of make America great again and saying that it might just be good for the Brits to have their currency dropped to a 30-year low in its value because it will make their products cheaper and will bring more tourists into the country. And then he talked a little bit about how some...

SIMON: To his golf course, I believe he specifically said.

ELVING: Some of those tourists might want to play golf in Scotland. And he happened to be talking about his own golf course there in Scotland and spoke about the virtues of that attraction.

SIMON: The U.S. Supreme Court, of course, had a decision this week which blocked the Obama administration's plans for immigration programs. Does that decision, and for that matter, do the results in the United Kingdom suggest something about the potency of immigration as a political issue?

ELVING: There is no question that what drove this EU exit for the Brits was immigration. That was the issue that added the passion to what is a decades-long debate about what's the best economic policy for Great Britain. We have the same situation in this country. We have very old - decades-old economic debates about a number of policy issues. But what's adding the passion, particularly for Donald Trump's supporters, is clearly the immigration issue.

In response to this, we have the Supreme Court deciding - or, in fact, not deciding because, as you know, we're shorthanded. We only have eight justices. They came up with a 4-4 vote. And they did not have a decision with regard to a lower court's order saying that the president could not defer the deportation of these families that he's been trying to protect. And we're talking about 4 - 5 million people here.

SIMON: And I don't want the week to end before noting that John Lewis, congressman from Georgia, a hero of the civil rights movement, sat down on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand a vote on gun control. He didn't get it, but scores of House Democrats joined him, hour after hour. Will this and, to be sure, the shootings in Orlando make gun control a defining issue for the campaign in 2016?

ELVING: John Lewis and the House Democrats say that they're coming back on July 5, the day after the Independence Day holiday, to renew this protest in the House. And we saw the previous week in the United States Senate a number of Democratic senators holding the floor for 15 hours basically trying to demand some sort of vote on really relatively moderate gun control measures that have some Republican support.

We did see a series of votes on that in the Senate. None has been successful thus far. In the House, it's much more of a protest movement. They do sense that something is moving in the country. The spirit is changing on this issue. And maybe it won't be a defining issue of 2016. But it's going to be an issue, and it's going to be an issue going forward.

SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much for being with us.

ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.