America's Talking - Episode 39: SCOTUS nominee has majority support but takes hard questions in Senate

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

SCOTUS nominee has majority support but takes hard questions in Senate. Polls: Voters blame Biden for inflation. Economists expect elevated inflation as projected U.S. GDP plummets. Airline CEOs ask Biden to lift mask mandate. 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.

These hearings have become really interesting because a few decades ago that some of these justices would pass a lot easier, but now things have become so political, even really qualified nominees get put through the ringer. Welcome to American Focus. I'm Cole McNeely, General Manager of America's Talking Network. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can listen to American Focus and all of our podcast at Americastalking.com. That's America's Talking.com. Now here's your host, Dan McAulb. Thank you, Cole, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. America in Focus is brought to you by America's Talking Network, the podcast hub, where you can find news, civil conversations, and all of the Center Square's great podcasts.

Go to AmericasTalking.com. Once again, that's America's Talking.com. Joining me today, as always is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square, Casey, we're recording this on Friday, March 25th. Last night, the U.S. men's national team moved one step closer to qualifying for the 2022 World Cup by playing arch-rival Mexico to a thrilling zero-zero draw in Mexico City. The U.S. could secure its bid to the World Cup on Sunday when I host Panama in Orlando. Casey, are you as excited for Sunday's night's match as I am?

Sorry, I think I dose off there. You know, you know, I think that zero-zero-th thrilling match you pointed to is just one more reason. All these soccer fans need to convert to, you know, my, the national sport of my home state of Texas, which is, of course, football, the real football, where men are made, where legends are forged, where boys become leaders, Dan McAulam. Casey, you know, you're dating yourself. That argument is like 35, 40 years old. When are you going to come around to the most popular sport in the world? Yeah, when they stop having zero, zero games, maybe. Then I'll start coming around.

It's a lot of running, too. I mean, if you ever played soccer, which I bet you have it. Actually, I played high school and college soccer case. Really? It's so much running. It's so much running. You're just sprinting around the whole time. I could hit people.

Couldn't do it anymore. But I did, enjoyed it. and rooting on our U.S. men's national team. Sorry, you have no patriotism in you. Soccer is hardly American sport. There's no patriotism in American soccer. It's imported. Soccer is an imported sport.

Just got a big made in Europe stamp on it. But go ahead. Keep on. All right, Casey. Let's, why don't we move on to maybe something we can agree on? Yeah, I lost half our audience already. I'm here. This week, the Senate wrapped up confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brown Jackson.

Casey, if you've been following the news, of course, there were some very contentious moments during the confirmation hearings. Just tell us what you observed and what you thought about it. Yeah, this is an interesting. These hearings have become really interesting because, you know, a few decades ago that some of these justices, would pass a lot easier. But now things have become so political, so divided, so partisan, you know, even really qualified nominees get put through the ringer. They're looking for any kind of argument to, you know, pull people down.

We, of course, had the really controversial Cabinol hearings a few years back, which took that partisanship and controversy to a new level. I think the gloves are forever off when it comes to SCOTIS nominees after Cabinol. So, you know, I think we're still kind of living in that. post-Cavanaugh era, and we've seen some of that. You know, Jackson, so far, has been pretty popular among the Greek people. No big scandals. You know, we wrote about a poll that showed she had 58% approval among Americans.

Now, that was before the confirmation hearings began, so that could have, you know, risen or dropped as she faced some scrutiny. You know, there's a few kind of recurring arguments against her. One was her track record as a judge on child court. cases. And Senator Josh Hawley was really pushing this argument, which basically centered around several cases where people who were convicted of, you know, child pornography trafficking were given lighter sentences than they could have been really below the federal recommended level. Jackson pretty consistently, you know, gave more lenient sentences. And so that's been a big

point of discussion. She took some hard questions on that. And then another one, Dan and And maybe I'll put this question at you, actually, Dan. If you're a judge Jackson and you were asked this question, how would you respond? Dan, how would you define a woman? Talk about putting me on the spot. Well, I'd certainly provide an answer. Can you provide a day? That's the first question is she can you define a woman?

And she couldn't, she said no. She's not a biologist. I'm not a biologist. Are you a biologist, Dan? I'm not a biologist, but I think I could put together a rudimentary definition of a woman. Right, right. Yeah.

It's like there was a, there's a video with all this Leah Thompson scandal when there's a controversy and someone was saying, ask that same question, well, are you a biologist? And then the woman said, well, I'm not a veterinarian, but I know what a dog is. You know, it's like, you know, this whole biologist is kind of a silly argument because people have known what women are for a long time. Now, in some sense, it is kind of a gotcha question a little bit to Jackson's credit. there's so much controversy over, you know, gender and these, you know, transgender athletes and this, you know, transgender bathrooms. So there is a little element of which you kind of putting

the judge on the spot. At the same time, I think a lot of, it does spark a lot of controversy because, you know, you would think that a Supreme Court justice would be willing and bold enough to answer that question forthrightly. Yeah, you know, unfortunately in today's society, things have just, as you said, gotten so politicized that even, you know, even a basic question about gender can't be answered. But I guess it comes back to what does this all mean for her chances of getting her nomination approved by the Senate? Yeah, I mean, I'm only speculating. I think right now, unless something big changes, she will be confirmed. The big factors there, one, she didn't have, besides,

the woman question. She didn't have any crazy scandals. And, you know, besides, was she, is she a drink, or does she like beer? She loved, not as much as Brett Kavanaugh. I don't think anyone can ever match Brett Kavanaugh's love

of beer, but, you know, except you. Except you. Oh, right, there it is. Man, I set you up. I just, I set him up. You knock about. And the, the other thing, though, is that this is, I don't know, this is right or wrong, but the fact is Jackson is replacing a Democrat appointed judge. And so usually when you are replacing a judge, you know, a Democrat is appointing a judge to

replace a judge that was appointed by a Democrat, there's a lot of us fighting. People kind of say, well, you're just kind of replacing your person. The really contentious ones are when a, you know, judge of the opposite party is trying to appoint someone to replace someone else like we saw with Amy, you know, Amy Coney Barrett example like that. So because of that, to replacing a Democrat appointed judge, I think this is going to get through. But, you know, we won't really know for sure until those votes are cast. Right. And of course, the Senate is between Republicans and Democrats, it's essentially a 50, 50 ties. So they will meet all Democrats and the independents who caucus with Democrats to support the nomination. I agree with you. I don't see her not being

confirmed. And then we didn't write about this at the center square.com, but then you've also got the secrecy around the illness to Judge Clarence Thomas. At the same time, he's feeling some, or he's getting criticism over texts that his wife sent out during the January 6th protests over the 20-20 election at the White House, Supreme Court hasn't been very transparent about what's going on there. But there has been speculation that he might have to step down or something like that. That's just speculation. We don't know anything when it comes to that.

But one of the chances there's going to be another vacancy in the next, let's just even say, couple years of Biden's presidency. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a real possibility. And it brings into question all this history of Merrick Garland, where Merrick Garland was appointed, but it was an election year. And Senate Republicans used that as like a justification to prevent voting for him, which was really controversial, but they were able to just hold their ground on it. Actually, it's funny, you know, the one thing, you know, Republicans in Congress are

often accused of being kind of wishy-washy. But the one thing they're good at is when they just have to do nothing. So if they had to vote against a nominee, like, oh, you know, it might be bad. But when it's just we're not going to vote, they're actually pretty good at doing nothing when they need to for political purposes. But, you know, so Mary Garland was, was not voted on, was not confirmed because the election year thing. But then it came around where roles were reversed and Republicans were more than happy to, you know, vote and confirm one of their justices in an election year. So these election year or near elections, if it happened this year, it would be really controversial because, one, a Democrat would be replacing this Republican appointed justice.

And two, you would immediately hear all these calls. Like, we need to wait at least to the midterms because, you know, let the voters decide, let the voters decide. And the Democrats were really upset because Republicans didn't let the voters decide last. time. It just depends on when and if it happened and God forbid, you know, we're Clarence Thomas and his family are in our prayers. We want everyone to, you know, get well, of course. But I don't know. It just depends on when it happened. If it happened in a midterm year, if it happened in the 2024 before the presidential election, you will probably have never seen the kind of digging in

that Republicans will do to do anything they can to make it until election day to stop that justice from getting confronted. But let's be honest, though, had the roles been reversed and the Democrats controlled the Senate in an election year with a Republican president, they would have done the same exact. Absolutely. And like I said, the post-Brette-Cavanaugh world, and there's no benefit of the doubt given to the other party anymore. I mean, from Republicans point of view, they feel like Democrats really played dirty with Brett Kavanaugh, that they made up all these allegations that simply weren't true for political reasons. And so ever since then, there's no good. will or good faith to go around when it comes to Supreme Court nominees. All right.

Why don't we move on? One of our, I don't know if I use the word favorite, but everybody continues to be concerned about rising inflation. New report this week said, is projecting that the U.S. GDP is going to plummet because, in part, because of elevated inflation. Tell us about what's going on with this GDP. projection and inflation. Yeah, you're right, Dan.

I think this is really part of what makes us at the center square different, covering the taxpayer angle, covering the, you know, the angle of how it's going to impact the finances of everyday Americans, not just being so wrapped up in all the inside baseball and what's happening in D.C., but also considering how this is going to impact people. And, you know, there's a survey, one of the leading surveys where they ask hundreds of economists and experts. on these kind of issues, what do they think is going to happen in the next year? And what they found is really not good.

They surveyed 234 economic experts and released that this week and found that inflation is, you know, the majority expects inflation to be a big problem and to remain elevated through the end of 2023. More than three out of four panelists say that it'll be, you know, remain elevated through the end of 23. So not just through the end of this year, through the end of next year. Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, they say it could go down, but it's still going to remain above what it should be.

So, you know, we'll see. Gas prices are a big part of that. So, and then as you reference, the Federal Reserve released new GDP projections. GDP is, you know, gross domestic product. It is the most kind of top line, very popular measure of the size of the U.S. economy. And they projected a pretty serious drop and how much is expected to grow. So in December, they said the GDP would grow 4%, which is pretty good. You know, not great, but decent.

And they just revised that to say 2.8%, which is kind of sad because you think GDP is not keeping pace with inflation, right? I mean, so even the growth that we're seeing in some ways is undercut by the very inflation, that economists are so worried about. And new polling, and this has been consistent, but new polling that came out this week indicates that voters, a majority of voters, they blame President Biden for inflation. Tell us about this one. Yeah, you're right about that.

So there's been a few polls. This is not just a one-off poll, but the Emerson College, you know, they released a poll for this month and found that 83% of voters say they are experiencing some hardship due to higher prices on just like regular everyday items. 40% say significant hardship. So the vast majority of Americans are feeling the pain. This isn't just something that, you know, you hear about the news. Real people are, this is really affecting their lives in a negative way. and Rasmussen reports released a, you know, a poll that showed that 64% of likely U.S. voters say that Biden's, the Biden administration's policies have increased inflation.

So the vast majority of Americans say they're hurt by it and a smaller majority say that they think Biden at least contributed to it. And so I think people kind of know this instinctively. Some of this stuff is complicated, but they know that, you know, if the government spends too much, that that's going to raise inflation. And they know that the government has been on a spending spree in recent years and even more so in the last, you know, 12 months since President Biden took office. I guess 13, 14 months since he took office. So Americans are, the interesting thing is just to see just how many 83% are feeling real pain. You can imagine those other 17, those 83% are the 83% who don't make two or 300, at least $300,000 or $300,000 a year. right. So that's pretty much everyone who has what you consider an average pay,

you know, an average family income who's just trying to fill up their gas tank, pay their, you know, pay their mortgage and get their kids to school. Right. And of course, as we've talked about, as we just talked about in the last segment, experts, economists believe that this inflated inflation is going to continue through not just this year, But next year, and we do have the midterms in November of this year. So whether it's his responsibility or not, voters, taxpayers often blame the sitting president for things like this. And certainly at least some of the blame needs to go to President Biden and his policies. but now there's a new plan that you're going to be that you're working on today Casey's story you're working on today

that congressional Democrats want to give Americans a hundred or more dollars a month and direct payments to to make up for the gas price increases what can you tell us about this yeah Dan you know you know what would solve this problem we're having economically is another monthly government handout. That is just with the doctor order. I mean, that is, it's like your blood sugar is low and eating five snicker bars. It's like, well, I don't know if that's the way to handle it. But you're right.

So this proposal is not passing a law. It's not having voted on anything. So just to make clear to our listeners, you shouldn't expect these checks next week or anything. but this is something that could happen. It's being proposed. It's being pushed. It's this $100 a month, and that number could change payments for some Americans to get further gas bills. And so you do see this pattern.

This may be surprising. If you're kind of a right-leaning listener, you might be aghast at this. But when you read and listen to a lot of the Democrats talk about, this is how they view these things. You pass government programs, and you don't really have to. worry about the consequences of those programs, negative consequences, because you can just create another program that will help with that. And it will lead to ever-increasing control, nationalization of different industries. I think the long-term play for a lot of this more progressive Democrats would just have federal gas pumps. I mean, so to them, this isn't a problem at all. It's just

the government, if the government could just get enough control over different parts of the economy, then they could make, get equitable and fair for Americans. And whenever they see these kind of high prices, they don't really think, oh, well, you know, maybe we spent too much money. They think, see, the system is fundamentally unjust. We need a new system. And so I think there's really a disconnect on how both parties view this. And a lot of Republicans will say, you know, see the government spending is out of control. We need to rein this in. You know, this inflation is and domestic energy policies are ridiculous. And so we need to get these gas prices under control.

And to a lot of the really progressive Democrats, they'll say, hey, we don't want oil and gas regardless. You know, it's good that prices are going up because people will stop driving, which will help with climate change. By the way, you know, we need to have all these things federalized and be government programs anyway. So, you know, we talk about these issues every week, but I do occasionally try to highlight that.

There's just kind of two different ideological, ideological camps. And that's why you get so much division is people can't really come to an agreement because they view the future and what the future should look like so differently. And so, I mean, these gas prices are a big problem. I mean, I don't know, Dan, I'd love to hear what you just even anecdotally, I feel like you're experiencing with the gas prices in Illinois. But I know here they're really high. And I know my friends and people are, you know, sometimes joking about it,

sometimes not so joking. but people are feeling it. Yeah, there's no doubt that people are feeling it. Here in Illinois, there's a wealthy businessman who has put up a lot of his own money this past week, this week. He bought or he gave out a million dollars in gas cards at specific locations in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs. Each individual could get $50. So I think that's evidence enough that, yeah, everyday people, the middle class, lower income families, and it's not just gas, but that's a significant

part of it. Food prices are up. Home heaning bills are through the roof here in Illinois. So there's no doubt it's having an impact on folks back home. Yeah, I think all these higher costs, everything makes travel. I think we're going to talk about, you know, air travel here in a second. but anything that you can just anything you can think of impacted by gas prices because it was either transported to you or you're going to it so either way you're going to get hit with these gas prices and everybody can't afford a Tesla just yet except unless you're on that Dan Michaela managing editor salary you are regular listeners probably don't all have Tesla's so yeah please know it's out of my price range no doubt about it at this point um all right Casey we have time for just one more story you referenced um Air travel, public transit travel, there is still a mask mandate in effect. If you go into an airport, take a flight somewhere, if you go on public transportation, whether it be an inner city train system or bus system, you still have to wear a mask. Mass have pretty much been, mass mandates have been pretty much eliminated across the country

everywhere, maybe some schools, school districts still have some mask mandates in place. But now the airline industry saying, hey, come on, it's time to move on from these mask mandates. What's going on here? Yeah, it's just kind of a funny thing where, you know, if you take the bus to the airport, you don't have to wear a mask on the bus usually. But then when you get off and you go in the airport, you have to put a mask on, and you wear one on the plane. And then as soon as you and all your passengers walk out of the airport and your

next destination, you take your masks off and share caps together. So because so many other mask mandates, as you referenced around the country, even in the strictest states, have been lifted. There's been a lot of pressure on the TSA to lift their own mask mandate. They announced recently that they would keep the mandated place through April 18th, which is kind of controversial because the CDC had just said that the majority of Americans don't need to wear masks. So there's been some pushback on that. Senator Rampal introduced a measure to repeal what the TSA announced through the Congressional Review Act, or known as a CRA. The CRA allows Congress to repeal some executive branch regulations, usually within 60 days.

So he evoked that power. It did get through the Senate, actually, has not, you know, made. any further, but, you know, Biden doesn't even need to go through all that. He can just, on his own, lift this mandate. And as you said, there was a letter that was sent by a lot of companies you recognize. I'll just read them, read them off the letter. But the Alaska Air Group, American Airlines, Atlas Airways, Delta Airlines, FedEx Express, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Holdings, and UPS Airlines. So a lot, you know, all this isn't just some small, ink outfits. These are big players. These are big airlines, American airlines that are telling the

Biden administration, hey, it's time to let go with the mask mandates. You know, people hate them. And also, there's kind of a financial aspect on this, which is that because of masks, these airlines have stopped selling alcohol on planes, which I know you've just been devastated. It's tough for you, right? Yeah, I've reached you to it on purpose because I knew it was coming. But the, they stopped selling alcohol on planes because people are getting so upset about having to wear a mask. And a lot of people are getting kicked off planes and putting on no fly list. And I mean, I'm sure, have you seen any of these videos, Dan, where people are getting, you know, in big fights on the airlines and.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And of course, you're making, you know, airline employees who aren't law enforcement. You're making them enforce these. mandates. They don't have, you know, training in doing this. It's not, it's, it's, it shouldn't be a part of their jobs, but they're put on the spot. Yeah, exactly. You know, these people, the way that goes is they often kind of overreact. And that just gets people more upset. They don't know how to just kind of remain calm. So it's, it ended up just a bit of big, a lot of chaos. And so,

these airlines are ready to go back to normal. If I, if you were running an airline, you'd probably feel pretty unfairly targeted if pretty much every other industry restaurants nothing had mask mandates except for your industry um so either masks mandates are going to be a thing or they shouldn't but i think the argument here is the government federal government shouldn't get to pick uh winners and losers when it comes to these mandates and just just to be clear or whatever we're we're talking about the airline industry wants to get rid of the the mandates if you if you if you want to wear a mask on a plane, that could still be your personal choice. If you feel safer wearing a mask, then by all means, wear a mask.

But we're talking about the mask mandates that everybody is required to wear a mask right now. Anyway, Casey, that is all the time we have this week. For our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at Americastalking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. We'll talk to you next week.