America's Talking - Episode 31: U.S. Supreme Court to consider legality of affirmative action in colleges

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

U.S. Supreme Court to consider legality of affirmative action in colleges. Battle lines drawn, speculation circulates over Breyer replacement. Courts push back against COVID mandates as Americans' support for such measures dwindles. Taxpayers could experience major refund delays this year from backlogged IRS. Americans' pessimism on inflation hits record high. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus, powered by thecentresquare.com. I'm Cole McNeely. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecentresquare.com. And later, executive editor of the center square, Dan McAulip, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week. Coming up right after this on American Focus, powered by thecenter square.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecenter square.com,

the country's fastest growing, nonprofit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer's sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecenter square.com. That's thecentersquare.com, the center square.com. The majority of Americans think the rise in inflation last year will only get worse in 2022. Gallup released polling data Wednesday showing that 79% of surveyed Americans predict

inflation will go up, with 50% saying it will, quote, go up a lot. Those are the most pessimistic numbers on inflation ever recorded by Gallup, the pollster said. Americans are split on economic growth, though, with, 40% saying it will increase and 39% saying it will decrease. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, it's Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, Cole, and welcome back to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service.

Joining me again today, as he does every week, is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, we're recording this on Friday, January 28th. A major winter storm is heading for the East Coast. Are you in the pathway, Casey? I'm right on the edge, and I guess it could bring DC to a halt, although it seems like politically that is already happening with some gridlock around here. But yeah, we'll hopefully be making some snowmen pretty soon. Wish our listeners on the East Coast the best. Stay safe. This week. weekend, but we've got some things to talk about, Casey. There was some major news involving the U.S. Supreme Court this week. What can you tell us about it? Yeah, our listeners may have heard

that Justice Breyer announced his retirement this week, which for a lot of obvious reasons is a big shakeup in Washington. It really changes the conversation. President Joe Biden has been kind of beleaguered by inflation numbers, poor economic data, by some major Supreme Court losses by challenges to his COVID mandates, by rising tensions in Ukraine. But I think this is an issue that he'd probably rather be talking about, which is replacing a Democrat appointed justice in Breyer. And so the other interesting twist in this is that Biden has pledged, you know, multiple times on the campaign trail to nominate a black female justice. You know, he said that he wants to

what he said, this is a quote, number one, I'm committed that if I'm elected president and have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts, I'll appoint the first black woman to the courts. It's required that they have representation.

It's long overdue. So that kind of sets the stage. It narrows down, obviously, the people that could be nominated. Some people have been thrown out to fit those parameters. Or D.C. Circuit Judge,

Kintaji Brown Jackson, there's a California Supreme Court justice. There's a South Carolina District Judge, J. Michelle Child. So, you know, there is a short list, as there always is, but also as it is always the case. No one really knows until the president makes that announcement. But we'll see where it goes. And before we get in on, get a deeper into who President Biden may nominate, there's been plenty of reporting out there that Justice Stephen Breyer, who is the oldest member of the court, one of three Democratic president-appointed justices on the court.

There's nine members of the court. Six were appointed by Republican presidents, three, including Justice Breyer by Democratic presidents, that liberals, Democrats, were pushing Breyer to retire in a well ahead of this year's midterm elections because the Senate, the U.S. Senate, of course, has to confirm the president's nominee for the court. And there's a positive, the Senate now is 50-50, actually 50-48, 50-Republicans, 48 Democrats, but two independents caucus with the Democrats. So it's a 50-50 split with a vice-president a Democrat, Kamala Harris, holding the tie-breaking vote. There was concerned that the Senate could flip to Republican control. And Democrats really,

wanted Breyer to retire so Biden could appoint a liberal to the court. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, well, the first thing I can tell you is all about this pressureing to retire. You know, Dan, if anybody showed us what people are capable of at 83, it's you. And so I don't think it's appropriate at all that people will be pressured to retire at 83. You know, you've demonstrated that the efficiency and work ethic of the mid-80s, it's possible. So I appreciate all that from you and the dead silence to my joke. So well, yeah.

Oh, yes, yes. So I think, you know, there's something to this whole argument, though, getting serious from it. There was one, there was a lot of rumors speculating that Breyer wasn't quite ready to announce his retirement and that it was leaked somehow. White House is leaking things to benefit themselves. It's like not something that the Biden administration invented. that's, you know, by any means, that's been happening for a long time. But I think that they know that they need a long ramp up. You know, we've written at the center square.com about a lot of polling that has showed that Democrats, unless something changes, are expected to get walloped in the

midterms. I mean, you know, with Republicans taking big gains in majorities in the Senate and the House, you know, how, the question right now is how big will those majorities be? So if, you know, with the level of a partisanship that we're experiencing right now, you know, Democrats even were just a couple votes away from getting rid of the filibuster, which is kind of unheard of. So with that level of partisanship gridlock, it's not beyond the pale at all to say that,

you know, if November comes around, Democrats lose their Senate majority, especially if they lose it big time, that they're going to be enough Republicans who will just hunker down, delay, and not get a justice. Now, that would be,

that would also be unprecedented to make, you know, a three-year wait for a Supreme Court justice. So it would be really interesting if they would really hold out that long. But the way for Democrats to avoid that headache is to, you know, get somebody nominated now, go through the process, and get the vote done with plenty of time before November where things will get really a lot more complicated. Right. And with the court essentially a six, six, three, conservative, liberal split, some would say five, three, and one with Chief Justice John Roberts being more of a centrist, even though he was appointed by President Bush, that months ago, President Biden even hinted at potentially, at least liberals were pushing him to do

this, stacking the court. There's nothing that says the court has to be nine members. So he even created a panel to study whether or not they should add justices to the nine member court. So Biden could nominate and appoint even more liberals to court to give it more balance. Republicans, of course, pushed hard against that, and it looks like nothing's going to come of that. But there's definitely been a push on the Democratic. side on particularly the far left to get more liberals on the court. So I would expect, you know, we talked about Biden saying he's committed to appointing a black woman to the court because there's never been a black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court that not only is he going

to appoint a black woman or nominate a black woman, he's going to nominate a leftist, a very left-leaning black woman to the court. Right. And you referenced the nine justices. What we get that from is Congress. The U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress to decide how many justices there are on the court. Since I think 1869, there's been nine justices. So there is a lot of precedent for this and it is established by Congress. But if Republicans were to do something, like I said earlier, which is try to wait three years for a new Republican administration, I think that would really put the pressure on by Congress. Biden and other Democrats to do something like what you're talking about, which is expand the court, add more justices, you know, destroy the filibuster at any means possible, do what you have to do to put liberal justices on the court. So it is kind of risky when you talk about Republicans trying to play hardball when it comes to the Supreme Court because Democrats have their own options. And as you said, Biden is intent on appointing or nominating some left.

wing justices, especially because right now Republican appointed or nominated justices have the majority on the court. And the major criticism of Biden's approach is why not, why have a race and sex criteria, why not pick, why not nominate the best potential candidate regardless of race or gender? Yeah. And I mean, the other thing is, Why not, even if it's in your mind to nominate a black woman to the court, why now when you nominate this black woman, everyone's going to kind of know that you were looking for a black woman and chose a black woman. And so this is, you know, why would you so publicly announce your intentions on the race agenda?

Why not just nominate a black woman without all the fanfare? And then people will say, wow, a black woman is nominated in court. That's great. you know she must have been really qualified and the best choice but now it's like because he's led and pushed so heavy on how it must be black woman it just kind of to me I think I think I mean I've seen the commentary online it's just been that it kind of taints it a little bit in the motivations but it is historic I understand why he's doing it and I think you know it'll it'll just provide more ammunition against any Republican to oppose it pretty much anything Republicans oppose Democrats now

Democrats find a way to call it racist. When they opposed the voting rights bill, they were compared to segregationists. So I can only imagine if they oppose the first black female Supreme Court justice, what they'll be called. And we'll know who his nominee is in about a month, maybe even sooner. And then there'll be plenty more for us to discuss at that point. Why don't we move on, Casey? more vaccine mandate news this week. What's going on there?

Right. So if you've been following us at the center square.com, you've seen we've done a lot of reporting on the vaccine mandates. You've broken some news, as we've said before, there's several mandates. And really, the last few weeks have been big weeks for the courts pushing back on these mandates. And I'll just say, before I get into the court ruling,

that we have seen American public opinion for these mandates really dwindle since Biden took office. I think there's a few reasons for that. One, probably being that it turns out the vaccine is not nearly as effective at preventing infection as it was first pitched to Americans. Of course, it does still have benefits and reduces your risk of death and hospitalization. But there was a time you probably remember, Dan, where you were told, if you get the vaccine, you have nothing to worry about. And now it turns out if you get the vaccine, you could still get sick. You could still be hospitalized even. It just reduces your percentage chance of being seriously sick.

So all that's say, you know, one extent. Yeah, go ahead. The Omicron variant really has amplified that because the Omicron variant almost seems to be, from an infection standpoint, immune from these vaccines. Now, what you said about the vaccines helping. reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19. Certainly that seems to be the case. But there's been significant numbers of breakthrough cases,

particularly when it comes to the Omicron variant. And of course, there's likely to be more variants and who knows how the vaccines are going to respond to any new variants. It's true. And the other side of this is that there's really been an erosion of trust among the public and the health officials, because of these, you know, kind of changing narratives a little bit. You know, you were told that the vaccine is going to just get the vaccine and you'll be fine.

It turns out it's more complicated than that. You know, we were told to our masks and, you know, I wear a mask and everything, but it turns out the cloth masks don't really do much for you anymore. And so it just turns out that a lot of the orders that were given early on in the pandemic, there's, it's more complicated. The data doesn't always bear out exactly what was said. And so there has been an erosion of public trust. that's part of the reason why, you know, the polling shows that Americans have less trust for

organizations like the CDC and, like, President Biden. So, you know, for example, Quinapeak released a poll this month. It found that 39% of those surveyed approve of Biden's work on the pandemic while 55% disapprove. Now, that is very interesting because when Biden took office, those numbers were almost reversed. And if you look at the polling, you know, Republicans generally are trusted on the economy, which is a big issue in the last election, but Biden was trusted far more than Trump on the pandemic. And it's a big part of the reason he was elected.

He had much higher, you know, level of trust. And when it came to the pandemic, people thought that he would do a much better job than Trump. And it's a major reason that he beat him if you just look, you know, if you just read between the lines on the polling. But now a lot of that trust is a row. and he's got he's underwater on those approval numbers. So I think that's worth pointing out.

And then when you look at the court rulings, I mean, there have been several that have really shifted the political landscape on these mandates. One local example is, you know, a New York judge throughout the governor there, the mask mandate this week, which blocked, you know, the Democratic governor had a mask mandate for certain businesses. And that was thrown out. You know, that came right after. This is a heavy blue New York state.

Exactly, exactly, which has been really one of the most aggressive states along with California in these mandates. And this was a mask mandate, not even a vaccine mandate, which made it even more interesting. But, you know, all these cases always get appealed. So there's always kind of a follow up to these things. But we saw a similar thing in Texas where, you know, a Texas judge basically granted an injunction to block the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for, federal employees and contractors. So, you know, this is a couple. Of course, I think our listeners would be familiar with the recent Supreme Court cases that,

or a case that blocked, you know, the private sector vaccine mandate. So just I think the real core of this story is that Americans are losing confidence in these mandates and the president's ability to handle the virus as the courts are kind of systematically striking down a lot of these. mandates that are dealing with the pandemic. And it doesn't seem like the fight over to all these mandates is going to end anytime soon. So we'll keep following your reporting at thecenter square.com. That's a great idea.

More news on inflation. What can you tell us about this, Casey? Inflation. It's not good. That's what you need to know. No, it's not good for our pocketbooks, that's for sure. It's not good for your 401K. If you own a small business that buys a lot of goods and tries to resell them, it's not good for you because you either take it a loss or your customers are upset about all the higher prices

or the large, you know, business, you know, the large corporation that is your competitor can afford to keep their prices lower while you have to raise your ears and they'll push you out of business. There's all kinds of implications on this. But, you know, another inflation measure came out today from the, you know, it's kind of a gauge from the Federal Reserve, which showed that inflation rose 4.9% from a year ago. That's the biggest gain from 1983. So that's a very large gain. Some of these inflation measures, they're not wrong, but they can vary depending on how they're done. And so, you know, you can't just take one inflation measure and say that's the definite, right? rise in inflation. You kind of have to aggregate them and see overall there's a major trend.

And so this is like that. This 4.9% increases is very significant. Obviously comparing it to the other data. It's the highest since 1983. So that's a really, you know, significant change. But it's not the only one. We've seen other numbers that have shown higher increases 6.9% from just consumer spending. So if you're just going to your local grocery store, you actually will probably see higher than 4.9% inflation, but when you take the economy as a whole, there seems, so there are factors and reasons for this. President Biden has really focused on the role of the supply chain and shifted all the blame there. And there is some blame to go for the supply chain and how it's affected from COVID and how there's just been delays that have led to higher prices.

But what he doesn't like to talk about and what experts regularly point to is the significant it rise in federal spending. You know, federal spending has been really through the roof. And this last year, it was, again, just at very, very high levels. And the way that that spending is basically paid for is by printing money. As our listeners probably know, that money is injected to the economy and leads to more inflation. And that's probably why you have this Gallup poll released this week. It showed that 79% of surveyed Americans predict inflation will go up this year with 50% saying it will go up a lot. And that's the, you know, Gallup said those are the most pessimistic numbers on inflation

ever recorded by that pollster. So I think Americans are very much aware of what's going on here and they know it's not good. Yeah, so we'll have to keep an eye on that, of course, as we talked about before, you've got the midterm elections this year, big election cycle for a non-presidential year. with every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives up, about a third of the U.S. Senate seats up, with President Biden's poll numbers tanking. How is that going to affect Americans at the voting booth? So if this inflation does continue throughout the course of the year,

the big question is how is that going to impact Americans' mood when they vote for their car? for spending in senators. All right, Casey, this week launched the beginning of tax filing season. We're hearing that there could be significant delays on the part of the IRS in processing these claims. In fact, there's still a huge backlog from last year's tax season. What do you know about this? Yes.

Since last year's tax filing season, the IRS has been very, very behind with millions of unprocessed returns. And coming into this new, you know, tax year, there's a lot of concerns that that is only going to compound. So, let's see. You know, one thing to know, though, is that the level of electronic filing has increased so much, you know, in the 80s, the IRS was only processing, like, you know, paper returns, and they slowly transitioned online.

And now 81% of returns are filed online. But even with that, you know, we still have, I think. major backlog. So the IRS had 6.2 million unprocessed individual returns in December. This is our latest data is December. They had 6.2 million unprocessed individual returns, 2.8 million unprocessed business returns, 2.4 million unprocessed amended individual returns, as well as 427,000 amended business returns. So, and then overall, you know, on addition to that, they have 4.7 million pieces of correspondence, people asking questions, sending follow-ups. And so if you're listening and you filed your taxes by mail, I'm sorry to tell you that your number 4.5 million 782,617 in line,

probably. There's a lot of other people who did the same thing. Hey, Casey, can you repeat that number exactly as you just said it? Yeah, you're going to have to become a subscriber actually to get the exact number. No, go to my Venmo me. No. Yeah. So the number of,

we're in the millions of returns that are behind. There's a few reasons for this, but the big thing to know is just that file your taxes early this year. If you can file them online, it's a much higher chance of you won't be delayed if you do that. But just to know that there are delays. And there's actually a bipartisan effort in Congress to kind of waive penalties right now because so many people are behind. Or there's been stories where people, you know, are getting fined by the IRS because the IRS hasn't processed their tax returns yet.

So one, you know, the right arm of the IRS is like, why haven't you filed your taxes? It's in the guy who's because the left arm of the IRS hasn't yet processed what's in their inbox, right? And so it's causing a lot of problems for Americans. And another thing to keep in mind, too, there have been some changes in tax law since last year. One of them being the child tax credit that was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden this year that gave essentially families with younger children in advance on their income tax returns. Well, I'm sure that helped many Americans in 2020. 21, they might be surprised when they file their taxes in 2022 that they're going to get smaller

returns if they're expecting returns because they were advanced that money through the child tax credit. Yeah, I mean, with a lot of government programs, especially federal handout programs, the devil's in the details, right? So yes, like you said, the IRS had to set up a monthly funds distribution system for, you know, tens of millions of Americans last year, which is a big reason that they are so delayed right now is because administratively, that was a huge lift and it was expensive and all that. But as you alluded to, there's really strings attached to some of that money, namely that, you know, if you're used to getting a big tax refund, it's like, well, you already got it last year. So I'm not sure that that's really clear to a lot of Americans that really their tax

refund was taken and broken up into little pieces and given to them over the over the year. And especially if you counted on that tax refund to be in the green on your refund, you could actually be in the red or to say it another way. If you normally only get like a $300 tax refund and you got several thousand extra last year, then you could end up owing on your taxes when maybe you wouldn't have before just because of the extra money was given to you and maybe your income changed in a certain way. So I don't think that will necessarily be the norm for people, but that is a scenario that could happen. So you're right.

There probably will be some Americans surprise when they get the returns if they get their returns this year. Casey, we have just a minute or two for one final story. we started the podcast off with the Supreme Court, and we're going to end with the Supreme Court, which this week decided to hear a major case on affirmative action in the college admissions process. What can you tell us about this? Yeah, just quickly, I'm sure a lot of our listeners know that colleges and universities around the country consider race as a factor in admissions, particularly known for this are the Ivy League schools. And this has been controversial. It's gone to the Supreme Court before. And really, there's two major lawsuits in recent years that have brought this again to the forefront. One was a lawsuit against Harvard and one was a lawsuit against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Those lawsuits were brought by group called Students for Fair Admissions. And so they sued those two educational higher higher ed institutions, basically alleging that Asian,

American students and white students were being discriminated against by the policies. It is true that basically Asian American students and white students are penalized in the admissions process. So they filed a lawsuit. And now those two lawsuits have been combined and they're going to the Supreme Court. So it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court will change the law or rule at discriminatory in an unfair way. this has been going on for well over a decade, and there has been some precedent supporting it,

but I don't know, I mean, one factor that wasn't really obvious at the time these policies were instituted, but is now obvious, is that Asian American students are penalized by these or experience, you know, a disadvantage because of these policies, which wasn't really widely known at the time that affirmative action was instituted. It's also worth pointing out that federal funding for schools is tied to this. So there are a few schools like my alma mater, Hillsville College, that does not participate. They basically argue that it is discriminatory to consider and count students based on their race and they refuse to discriminate against students. But because in part, because of that, they cannot, you know, the students can't use FAFSA.

They are limited in federal funds and things like that, you know, that they can't receive. So it does have serious implications for these institutions, especially those that have refused to participate. It probably will be a while, though. We probably won't have a ruling maybe until next year on this case, but it'll be an interesting one to watch. Yeah, well, and certainly we'll be following it at thecentersquare.com. But Casey, we have run out of time. Thank you for your insight as usual. This has been the America in Focus podcast.

We'll talk to you next week.