America's Talking - Episode 79: Supreme Court Allows Pandemic-Related Border Security Policy to Stand & 2022 Year in Review

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss the top news stories out of the nation’s capital in the year 2022. Supreme Court allows pandemic-related border security policy to stand for now. Southwest Airlines says it's doing 33% of scheduled flights in wake of federal probe. New ‘Twitter files’ allege Biden administration worked with Twitter to control COVID conversation. 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.

Hello everyone and welcome to the America in Focus podcast powered by the Center Square. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing great, Dan. How are you? Doing well.

Because of the New Year's holiday coming up, we are recording the podcast a day early this week. It is Thursday, December 29th. Casey, we're about to close the books on 2022 between 40-year high inflation, all-time high gas prices in June, the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and state responses to that, continued record illegal immigration at the southern border, the midterm elections, and so many other stories I could name, it's been a pretty busy year. Any stories in particular that you've covered that stand out? Wow, you're right. It seems like every new cycle since 2015. I think that that was like a watershed year when Trump announced his presidency. Every new cycle since then has just been at a breakneck pace. And this year has been no different. I think my favorite thing has been some of the more investigative work we've done at the center square.com. I've written a lot this year about a pretty controversial topic, which is critical race theory. And I tried to play it, you know, pretty down the middle, but just point out this. something as controversial as CRT is being funded at pretty significant levels by the federal

government, by the tax dollars of the people listening to this podcast right now. So an example would be a story from February this year where we found out we were the first, and really the only to report this, which is that the Department of Education was giving millions of dollars to a Florida-based education program that was training teachers in critical race theory, right? And this was back, I think back in February there was a little bit more in the conversation. There was more talk about, you know, the scandals at school boards and all those kinds of things. And one of the big arguments was that, hey, this is like not really a thing that's

affecting kids. This is something that's taught at an academic level for, for, you know, PhD students. But what we found in our reporting is that actually teachers who are going to teach kids were being trained in this. And not only that, it was being funded by a taxpayer. So that's one of my favorite stories from the year, just following the money, trying to cover the taxpayer perspective, as we always do. I remember that. That was a really good reporting on your part. Several other investigative stories you did this year, but between your investigative pieces,

Casey, and those big news stories that I mentioned up top, Scotus and Roe v. Wade, inflation, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you're reporting on all of those topics. None of those were your top performing story. of 2022. I think you know what your top 20, top story of 2022 was from a traffic standpoint. You remember what that story was? Well, I only judge my stories based on how you view them, Dan, not based on traffic, as you know, but I think I could guess, but go ahead and tell me. I think I know which one it is. It really wouldn't have been a news story without the person saying, who said it,

the president of the United States. He's a newsmaker. He sent essentially during a speech. During a speech in July, he made a verbal gaffe when he said he had cancer. And that's not the media world and the Biden's handlers, his spokespeople, into a bit of a frenzy, having to clarify that President Biden in the past had cancer, but that he was recovered from cancer. but you were one of the first to report that alive while the press conference was still going on and that story just went viral on the center square.com.

Yeah, and we did not make something out of that that it wasn't. I mean, I think some news outlets didn't report it. I think they weren't actually watching the speech in real time like we were. But in the story, I made clear, you know, hey, Biden has a history of saying things that aren't true. But this is what he said. And we didn't make, we didn't add to it. We didn't like, it wasn't like his. words were jumbled and we kind of interpreted it a wrong way. He said he had cancer. And so we said,

well, Biden says he has cancer. But by the way, Biden, there's a good chance Biden misspoke because lately that's pretty common for him. But yeah, I mean, that blew through the traffic roof for sure. Well, so all the other work that you did, none of that really mattered. Oh, right. So this was all a buildup to discourage me about my heart hitting all my investigative stories combined can't combine to one Biden gaff that's how you're trying to finish this year off I just think it yeah whatever I think it's funny yeah that's a yes okay got it not not that not that Biden having cancer which he did not does not is funny just that it was a gaff story that the folks flock to anyway there's actually some news to talk about this week oh thank

goodness. What's that? Thank goodness. One of the stories of the week of the holiday season has been just this complete crisis at Southwest Airlines, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded, canceling thousands and thousands of flights. What's going on? Yeah, I think a lot of people have been wondering that for several days. I mean, I actually always fly Southwest. And this is the one holiday that we did not travel.

We did not fly for Christmas. and I'm very grateful we did it. But I'll put it this way. Southwest earlier this week said that they had canceled on Monday 70% of the flights at peak holiday travel season. Other days the number was maybe 60% or 50%, but there was a kind of perfect storm in some senses literally. But there was a big polar vortex which came through. Of course, people were aware of that. Many of our listeners probably had to deal with that.

I think in Buffalo, New York, they had like four feet of snow. know. I mean, you saw some pretty incredible things. On top of that, though, you know, Southwest says they had some staffing issues. I've seen some employee accounts dispute that, but it seems like the big problem was the computer system at Southwest just had a meltdown. And at a time when they were having to rebook just, you know, thousands of flight itineraries, they were having to do it oftentimes manually because the computer system just wasn't able to operate at the full clip they needed, especially with this extra stuff. So people were stranded. I mean, we're talking days in airports.

I personally have a friend who had to wait in line who was flying home on Christmas Eve. They waited in line at three hours at the ticket counter to rebook their flight only to be told almost immediately that there was no flights available for like four days. You know, so from that location to their destination. That's great. So they just didn't go home for Christmas. And the idea of waiting three hours in a line just to be told you can leave in four days, you know, it's crazy to me. So I think a lot of people's Christmases were ruined. Southwest has really apologized publicly and said that they're going to reimburse people,

or reimburse a lot of people, now the degree to which that happens and the parameters for those who, you know, to get that and how much money, that's all. We'll kind of figure out how above board that all is. But no doubt a lot of people had a pretty unhappy Christmas. I'm sure. I feel for all those travelers who were stranded, you know, couldn't get to their destinations before Christmas or couldn't get home after Christmas. Southwest issued a statement today saying they expect to be back to normal in time for this weekend. They expect minimal

disruptions. I guess we'll see. You got to wonder how this week is going to affect Southwest long term. Didn't this happen last year? The same similar thing? Not just with Southwest. Last year it was everybody. Right. We were still in COVID, there were walkouts by airline staff. There was bad weather. All that combined led to not anything near what Southwest was at this week, but it led to a lot of airline cancellations last year. Yeah, did you know anyone who was impacted by this or did it hit you? It did not hit me, thankfully. My in-laws flew in from Texas with my daughter. My daughter goes to school to college in Texas, and they flew in. They planned to flying together. Their flight was delayed by about two hours, but they thankfully made it here. Of course, they made it in here when it was snowing and like 40 mile per hour winds, but they made it and they made it back. So all's good there. Glad to hear that. Glad to hear it. Another big story this week, Casey, that's a lot. you wrote about the new Twitter files dump from Elon Musk, the new owner and CEO of Twitter. This one had to do with Twitter's censoring of anything really, anyone who was pushing back

against COVID-19 mandates and vaccines and whatnot. Tell us about this one. Yeah, I mean, you know, you often make fun of me a little bit, tease me because I like to pat myself and the center square.com on the back. But I think, This is one of those stories where our coverage, again, I'll do it again here. I think we are covering it where a lot of mainstream outlets are not. And we can go into some of the reasons for why that is. But a lot of mainstream media outlets have ignored this story in a pretty significant way. But the background is it billionaire and Tesla owner Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, as is no secret to anyone.

And he's released, done this basically steady stream of document dumps, releasing information of what's been going on behind. the scenes at Twitter for several years. I mean, the company, like other social media companies, has been embroiled in a lot of scandals. There is a lot of questions over how they influence the 2020 presidential elections by basically shadow banning or entirely restricting the Hunter Biden story, a story that was largely vindicated after the fact. And there's more investigations into those allegations now. But it was banned and called misinformation right before the election. And then later, it seems like that probably wasn't the case after all. So there's been a lot of controversy, a lot of scandals around social media companies. Twitter has been top of the list on that.

And so this new set of Twitter files that came out on Monday really dealt more with COVID and how the conversation around COVID was handled by these social media companies. And what they found was, and what these Twitter files allege, of course, the Biden administration has pushed back on this. But what it says is that Biden administration worked closely with Twitter to control the conversation around COVID. And the Biden administration really pushed to have accounts shut down that were skeptical of the vaccine in particular. And the Twitter really worked with these companies. We're worked with the Biden administration on this. So, you know, this is more evidence backing of some of the collusion between the Biden administration and these social media companies.

Some of what was maybe called conspiracy theory or people would say, you know, you're blowing this out of proportion. But the more and more data comes out, the more and more seems like, what seemed obvious is being vindicated by more and more evidence. And you're right. The mainstream media has seemed to disappear for the most part on this story. Anything that can be criticized of Elon Musk, they'll jump right on. But when you look at this information that they were essentially shadow banning on their, the site, the mainstream media, just it's not a news story, I guess they don't think. I don't, I don't know what's going on there. Well, I think, go ahead. Well, go ahead. I mean, I think,

you know, I know a lot of journalists here in D.C. and they all have these kind of narratives in their head. And they have, you know, a few issues they really care about and they have narratives of how things are and how things should go. And when news breaks, it doesn't fit into their preconceived narratives, often they just don't cover it or they cover it in a way that makes it fit into their narrative that they are trying to, they're trying to push. They just see all the news through a lens of the way they think the country is going,

the way the country should go, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And there's so many DC journalists, Elon Musk is now a bad guy for, you know, many different reasons. And they think that tech companies and the Biden administration are mostly good. And even if they did this,

I think most of the DC journalists I know would say that they did it for good reason. And so they're just going to kind of let it slide. They think the COVID censorship was good and maybe it shouldn't happen, but hey, they wanted to save lives or whatever. And so they're just going to kind of let the slide. It was the holidays. We'll just let the story go. Yeah, just like during the height of COVID, when there were plenty of detractors of the mitigation efforts that were put in place, the shutdowns, the remote learning mandated remote learning at schools.

And then later on, the vaccines and the vaccine mandates, mainstream media largely just talked to one side of that issue. and didn't talk to the detractors or didn't give them anywhere near as much space in newspapers or on websites or play on TV or radio. So it's an interesting, interesting dynamic. Are we expecting more Twitter files, dumps? Definitely. I think more details are coming. I think there's going to be more and more of this coming out. And it's really spurring and egging on congressional investigations into this. So the House Oversight Committee has already said they're going to be looking into Twitter.

of the Biden administration's role in censorship. You know, we've talked a lot about this and reported on it at the center square.com, but the Department of Homeland Security, if you remember, Dan, they had a whole portal where they could report things to Facebook that they wanted censored. So this isn't just like, you know, one rogue FBI agent or something. This was a across federal law enforcement working with multiple social media companies. So the investigations are coming. You know, some of these house investigations, though, can be kind of,

week. And what can they really do? I don't know. So it's something that it's keeping this story alive. And if a Republican president does get an office in a couple of years, then they would have the power to maybe really do something substantive. But until then, it's just kind of unveiling what happened. Lawmakers are staying on top of it. We'll see where it goes from there. Thank you. Let's move on though. Casey, another really big story this week with the ongoing crisis at the U.S. southern border with Mexico, millions of illegal border crossings last fiscal year alone, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and weighed in on a Biden administration plan to end what's called Title 42, which is a Trump era health authority or health care policy that

essentially allowed border agents to quickly expel migrants who entered the country illegally for fear of them spreading COVID-19. The Biden administration planned to end Title 42 enforcement last week. A number of states sued. The Supreme Court stepped in and said, hold on, not so fast. You can't end Title 42 yet. So it puts put a pause on the end of Title 42 enforcement, at least until a February hearing, what's going on here. Yeah, I mean, I think you said a lot of it, but it's the court in February is going to hear this.

And so I think there was kind of this perception maybe that the Supreme Court had totally decided this. issue and sided with Trump. And that's not the case. It's a, it's a temporary victory for the Trump, you know, Trump folks, those who have Trump views on immigration, those on the right. So, but this is still very much up in the air issue. It's just a temporary victory for them for the next, you know, next few months. And so, of course, the Supreme Court has been unafraid to, to wade into some of these pretty tense issues. Of course, you mentioned the overturn of Roe v. Wade. which was a historic decision. We've seen them take some rule in favor of conservatives on religious liberty issues recently.

So they've taken on a lot of big things. Even one justice talked about overturning Obergefell. So I don't think that's really likely in the short term. But, you know, this court has taken on big issues. And of course, as we know, the southern border crisis is one of the most gridlocked issues. I mean, we've had some good reporting at the Cynastroletcom about some of the illegal immigration. numbers that were at the southern border in fiscal year or the end this year in fiscal 2020. So this is, you know, over 800,000 people were apprehended or got away from law enforcement

after legally entering Arizona alone, for example, just Arizona had getting close to a million people. I mean, we saw 300,000 the same in California and getting close to 2 million in Texas, right? So we, you know, one state alone getting two million people. I mean, that's bigger than almost every city in Texas. And going back to mainstream media, highly critical of Governor Greg Abbott's, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's example, for example, his busing migrants to so-called sanctuary cities in the north, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, highly critical of that. And the mayors of those communities were receiving them highly, highly critical of Governor Abbott's essentially. plan to remove some of these migrants from his state, the border communities in his state.

But when you look at the raw numbers, you said that almost two million apprehensions in Texas alone. And these northern mayors say they can't handle the thousand to a few thousand that are being bused to their cities. Right. I mean, Abbott did take a lot of flack for that. I think he was cheered by a lot in his base. So I'm not sure how that all shake out for him politically. I think I understand why people are kind of critical of his decision to bus migrants to certain places. But if you look at it from his perspective, he's an emergency mode. I mean, I think from his perspective, this is a cry for help, a cry for attention on this issue because you can't have two million people coming to your country every year and not address it and not

have the infrastructure in place to deal with it. Border Patrol is totally overrun. They can't process these people. There's no paperwork. They don't have the resources for it. Even the people that they do catch, they just release them back in the country usually. And they're supposed to show back up for a court date. They almost never do show up for that court date. The data on that is pretty clear. So the system is totally broken.

And the border states, there's a handful, a few border states who have to deal with all the consequences of that. And the vast majority of states don't really think too much about it. And it's not a major top five political issue for them the way it is in Arizona and Texas. And even in California. time. So it is becoming more of a nationwide issue because of things like what Abbott is doing. And then, of course, fentanyl, which we've talked about on this podcast. I mean, fentanyl overdoses have really soared. It's a really tragic thing. Fentinol has got basically snuck into a lot of different drugs and have people, people just overdosing on it left and right because they don't, you know, they don't have

any dosages for it. They're very sensitive to it. It is a very dangerous drug. So overdoses around the country have soared because of because of the illegal immigration. But other than But no, it's really kind of a regional issue that is finally now getting some more national attention because of the Supreme Court, because of this Title 42 ruling. And what I think does make it worthy of the Supreme Court taking up is there is a bit of a constitutional crisis here in my mind because there's clear laws on the books that Congress has passed regarding immigration. And Democratic executives, both mayors, governors and of course the president in this case are often. just refusing to enforce the law or purposefully not enforcing the law that was passed by Congress. And so if you look at it as a strict separation of powers, you know, the president's job is to, the executive branch's job is to enforce the laws passed by Congress, not to change the laws

or to change policies to fit more of a political agenda. Now, both Republicans and Democrats always do that. They always do change policies and change highly enforced things to fit their political views. but it's in a pretty drastic way when it comes to immigration is probably the most drastic example of how that's enforcement is different based on political views. And so now it's finally going to Supreme Court. So we'll see if they just rule on Title 42 or if they kind of more broadly expand on this topic. But I'm definitely going to be watching it. One interesting facet of that story that we didn't touch on.

I'll just want to mention it is that it was the Supreme Court ruled five to four this week to halt the Biden administration's plan to end Title 42 enforcement. But among the four dissenters, one, was conservative justice Neil Gorsuch. So it would be interesting to see when there's a hearing before the Supreme Court in February, you know, what kind of questions he asks of both sides on this. Time for one last story, Casey. President Biden signed an executive order giving federal employees what you would think would be, is a pretty decent pay bump, 4.6% increase.

Most years, most employees would be happy with a 4.6% pay increase. I know you're probably excluded from that. Right. Something above that. But most people would be happy with a 4.6% pay raise, but because of 40-year high inflation, it doesn't even keep up with the rising costs of things like food and other goods and services. Yeah, well, I mean, I am working these 80-hour weeks, so maybe that's why I'm a little bit.

Casey, I believe this is the first time you and I talked this week. Haven't you been off all week? Yeah, oh, yeah. That's right. Oh, yeah. Our listeners, Dan wanted me to write up a couple stories on Christmas morning. He woke me at 4 a.m. to try to put me to work. But I quickly-

I quickly contacted the Department of Labor, so there's going to be a follow-up of that. But anyway, yeah, as you said, Biden gave federal employees a major raise, you know, 4.6% pay increase. That's 4.1% just as a strict raise. And then half a percent has a cost of living adjustment. Now, if you just read the other mainstream media outlets, they didn't even cover this hardly. Or if they did, they wrote, wrote up that employees got a raise. But I just wanted to point out with this story that it doesn't even keep close to keeping pace with inflation. And this is very much it by its discretion, and how much this raise is.

Last year, it was 2.7% raise. And this year, he raised it up pretty significantly. And, you know, maybe federal employees are happy with that. Of course, it's better than 2.7% and definitely better than nothing. Of course, the taxpayer is getting a better deal that the raise doesn't keep pace with inflation. But I saw it as interesting that, one, the fact that Biden almost doubled, you know, not quite doubled, but almost got in that neighborhood of doubling the raise from last year is

really an acknowledgement of how bad inflation is. is. So that's that's one point. But then even with almost doubling it, it still didn't keep pace. So the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, latest consumer price index shows that prices, consumer prices have risen 7.1% in the previous 12 months. Other things like groceries have risen like 12%. Right. So inflation's not hurting you as long as you don't buy groceries, Dan, you're fine. So I guess as long as these federal employees don't buy groceries, they'll be good to go. So this is interesting. It's It's not keeping pace with inflation, but it is probably a welcome raise for a lot of employees. Casey, a light just went on as you were discussing this story.

I now realize that you took the approach that you did with this story covering the raise from the inflationary standpoint. Aren't you going to be perhaps maybe up for a raise early next year? Were you just trying to put that thought in my head? Hey, federal employees got 4.6 percent, but it doesn't even. Oh, I was really hoping you would remember that 12% grocery number, actually. That's the one I keep trying to bring up. Speaking of growth, briefly, you're working on a story for the weekend on the price of groceries, the price of food during this inflation, the last two years, his inflation has soared. Just give us a brief tease.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, this inflation, I'm writing about how food prices have risen in the last year, how it's, impacted Americans. And what hope or relief we can hope for in 2020. Spoiler alert, it doesn't look too good for 2023. Things might stop getting worse so quickly. But as far as going back to where they were or seeing a quick resolution, there's not a lot of hope for that. There are a few things that could happen. But right now it doesn't look likely. All right. That is all the time we have this week. Casey, happy new year to you. Happy New Year to all of our listeners for Casey Harper. Dan McKalib, we'll talk to you next week.