The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 7.3 DISGUSTING! Judge James Troiano Should Be Ashamed & Kept Away From Power...

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Wednesday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show and let's just jump into it. The first thing we're gonna talk about today is a story I'm obviously only including so I can get that sexy, sexy thumbnail. We're talking census news. It's obviously not a sexy story, but it is important. Yesterday we saw the Trump administration dropping its plans to add a citizenship question to the United States Census. A plan that had been very controversial to many. And for some quick background here, the US Constitution mandates that every 10 years, the federal government has to count

Starting point is 00:00:26 every person living in the US. And that means every person, whether they are a citizen, a resident, or here illegally. And for the upcoming census in 2020, the Trump administration wanted to add a question that would ask, is this person a citizen of the United States? And it seems like a simple enough question,

Starting point is 00:00:40 but it was insanely contentious. In fact, it was so contentious that it eventually went to the Supreme Court. And experts have said it was the most debated Trump administration initiative to reach the Supreme Court since the travel ban. And as it turns out, apparently the highest court thought so too.

Starting point is 00:00:51 And I say that because actually just last Thursday, the justices blocked adding the question to the census, saying that the reason the government wanted the information was contrived. Now a note here, the court didn't just strike this down entirely. They basically said that the Trump administration had to come up with a better reason to add the question.

Starting point is 00:01:06 Well, the Trump administration was running out of the thing that is most important in life, time. For the individual or group, it is a resource that is constantly depleted. And the Trump administration was running out of time to print the 1.5 billion census forms before 2020, having previously said that they needed a definitive answer by the end of June.

Starting point is 00:01:21 So then July rolled around, the pressure was really on, still technically possible, but now with this decision, the administration has basically decided they do not have enough time to come up with another reason for this case, and so they dropped it. All right, so that's what's happening, but you may be wondering, well, why is this a big deal? Right, why do people on the left care?

Starting point is 00:01:35 Why do people on the right care? Why should you care? Well, the Trump administration argued that adding this question was necessary to get an idea of how many people were eligible to vote so they could better enforce the Voting Rights Act, which protects the voting rights of minorities. But critics of the question argued that including it

Starting point is 00:01:47 would deter both legal and illegal immigrants from participating in the census, which would definitely skew the data. Obviously having bad data is not a good thing, but that is also especially true when it comes to the census because the stakes are a lot higher. And that's because that data is used for two key purposes.

Starting point is 00:02:00 The first purpose is, well, the main reason for the census. It's to count the population of the states to determine how many seats each one gets in the House of Representatives So important for Congress But also because the number of seats also sets how many votes each state gets in the electoral college a system that was of course Pivotal to Trump being elected and the second purpose is the data that is used to decide how much federal funding each state gets again Based on how many people live there those funds amount to about $900 billion total, and states need that money to go towards things

Starting point is 00:02:25 like public schools, Medicaid, law enforcement, highway repairs, and much, much more. There's also a really big political argument here, which is that if immigrants are deterred from participating in the census and not counted properly, states that have higher non-citizen populations would lose both federal funding and seats in the House, with experts saying this could cause a massive shift

Starting point is 00:02:41 in political power from states and cities where more non-citizens tend to live to states with more rural areas And there's a debate over why or why not that should happen You people arguing that places like California are being over counted because people who should not be in this country are there that's giving the state More power in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College than they should have but you people on the other side saying well No, those people genuinely live there. They should be counted right there and they're in public schools They use the same roads.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Although they may not be citizens, you have people who still feed into the same system. Right, well, not technically a citizen, they can have jobs, pay taxes. I mean, one of the examples, ooh, I knew I could get a thumbnail. One of the big names that got kind of thrust into situations like this

Starting point is 00:03:17 was actually YouTube's own David Dobrik. I remember back in 2017, we talked about David Dobrik announcing that he was actually a DACA kid. He put out that now famous tweet, "'I paid $400 thousand dollars in taxes last year and all I got was a free trip back to Slovakia Hashtag defend DACA. And obviously his success makes him an outlier But the general idea is that you'd be scaring people away who feed in to the system

Starting point is 00:03:37 But might not be counted because of fear that they might be treated a certain way And of course of note, this isn't just something that people online are debating about Right when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, approved putting the question on the census in 2017, more than two dozen states, cities, and organizations challenged the decision in court. And there, they argued that the Trump administration

Starting point is 00:03:54 was not being truthful about their reason for adding the question, saying that it had nothing to do with voting rights, but it was actually just part of a Republican strategy to shift political boundaries to their advantage. Because also of note here, states would use the new census data to redraw their district lines in 2021.

Starting point is 00:04:07 And the federal judges who oversaw all three lawsuits ruled in favor of that argument that Ross was not telling the truth about the reason the Trump administration wanted to add the question. And that's partly because of some evidence that was discovered during the trial. And that evidence was reportedly found on hard drives

Starting point is 00:04:19 in the house of a Republican strategist by the name of Thomas Hoffler, who had pushed the administration to add the question before he died last summer. Those hard drives contained a report that he had written back in 2015 that said that adding the citizenship question would give Republicans a significant advantage

Starting point is 00:04:32 in the redrawing of district lines. Also, another deciding factor for the federal judges was the effectiveness of asking the question. Researchers at the Bureau even recommended using records from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, arguing that they would be more accurate and less expensive than adding the citizenship question.

Starting point is 00:04:47 With the Census Bureau itself even saying that adding the citizenship question could lower response rates for immigrants and people of color. Which I mean, on that note, census undercounts of minority groups are already a historic problem. But even adding on top of that, one government estimate concluded that around 6.5 million people might not be counted if the citizenship question had been added to the census form. But on the other side of this, the Trump administration has argued that asking the question would allow them to get more accurate citizenship data, which they would offset any potential harms from lowering the response rate among minority groups and non-citizens. But ultimately that is where we are with this story now. Although I do want to note that some experts believe that Trump may have actually been successful here. There's been a lot of news around this, a lot of time for fear to cultivate.

Starting point is 00:05:23 The Trump administration is obviously focused on this. And so we may actually see even lower reporting from historically underreported groups. But we won't know for sure until it actually happens, which, I mean, the census itself is set to start in January 2020, so be on the lookout, although who the hell knows what's happening? Well, we've seen that Justice Department officials

Starting point is 00:05:40 have confirmed to numerous media outlets that the question will not be on the census forms. This morning, Trump seemed to contradict that in a tweet saying, The news reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the citizenship question on the census is incorrect or, to state it differently, fake. We are absolutely moving forward as we must because of the importance of the answer to this question. As of right now it's not fully clear. Is he just saying we are still going to pursue this but it's not going to be in effect in 2020? Is this him saying that he's going to try

Starting point is 00:06:06 and railroad this as fast as possible? Or is this just a public play to keep the concern there for groups that are worried about this question? On that confusing note, I pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts around all of this? The question should be there, it should not be there. Why, why not? Let me know what you're thinking

Starting point is 00:06:20 in those comments down below. Then very briefly, we should talk about Boeing being in the news. Boeing, a company that made $101.1 billion last year, and whose 737 MAX 8 planes have been grounded worldwide, this after two of them crashed in a relatively short amount of time, killing 346 people, have announced that they are pledging $100 million to those affected by the crashes.

Starting point is 00:06:40 The families and communities, their chief executive saying in a statement, We at Boeing are sorry for the tragic loss of lives in both of these accidents, and these lives lost will continue to weigh heavily on our hearts and on our minds for years to come. The families and loved ones of those on board have our deepest sympathies, and we hope this initial outreach can help bring them comfort. And the money will reportedly be used to quote, support education, hardship, and living expenses for impacted families, community programs, and economic development in impacted communities. With Boeing reportedly saying that it would work with local governments and non-profit organizations to distribute the funds.

Starting point is 00:07:09 So there's that. I'm personally very cynical about all of this. I wonder, given the way that they're giving away the money, if this is gonna count as kind of like a tax write-off? I also think that it's important to note that they're announcing all of this while they're also facing lawsuits where people are suing them for millions of dollars. While also at the same time being investigated by authorities. You got interviews of former Boeing employees talking about a culture of cost cutting, a culture of profitability over reporting plane defects to upper management.

Starting point is 00:07:33 And so ultimately I think that's why for me it feels like this is just kind of PR. Right, seemingly an acknowledgement of responsibility, but it feels like it's being done in a way to just mitigate the damage so that they can continue as a business moving forward. I don't know, maybe I'm just being too cynical about it and of course I'd love to know your thoughts on this.

Starting point is 00:07:47 And then let's talk about this story coming out of New Jersey about a family court judge who opted to not try a 16 year old accused of sexual assault as an adult. And reportedly the reason he came to this decision was because the boy came from a good family and did well on college entry tests. Now the case happened in 2017

Starting point is 00:08:02 and the judge, James Troiano, claimed that the accused should not be tried as an adult back in 2018. But an appellate ruling against the judge was made public in June and it is now being picked up by outlets like the New York Times. So this of course has had a lot of people saying, well what the hell is this story? And so let's start with what this case is about. The 16 year old male who court documents refer to as GMC was at a party with around 30 people. There were areas of the basement at the party that were blocked off and GMC ended up taking a girl the documents refer to as Mary who was also 16 to one of those people. There were areas of the basement at the party that were blocked off, and GMC ended up taking a girl the documents referred to as Mary,

Starting point is 00:08:26 who was also 16, to one of those areas. Both of them had been drinking, and Mary was visibly drunk, with documents saying that she was slurring her speech and stumbling. The document then says, "'A group of boys sprayed Febreze on Mary's bottom "'and slapped it with such force "'that the following day she had hand marks on her buttocks.'"

Starting point is 00:08:40 Mary and GMC had intercourse in the darkened room. GMC filmed himself penetrating Mary from behind on his cell phone, displaying her bare torso and her buttocks. Mary and GMC had intercourse in the darkened room. GMC filmed himself penetrating Mary from behind on his cell phone, displaying her bare torso and her head hanging down. He forwarded the clip to several friends, only ones that had showed Mary's head hitting repeatedly against the wall. In the days following the incident,

Starting point is 00:08:55 GMC sent the following text to his friends, "'When your first time having sex was rape.'" GMC's friends then told Mary's friends that she was ill, as after the incident she was on the floor vomiting. And the next morning Mary told her mother that she was afraid something may have happened to her at the party because of the marks left on her and she noticed that her clothes were torn. And over time she learned about the video that GMC recorded. At this point Mary just wanted the video to be deleted so she could put the whole situation behind her. But when she tried to talk to GMC about it, he denied recording the video and said that people were lying to her, which then prompted her mother to contact the authorities.

Starting point is 00:09:24 Investigators reportedly urged GMC to delete the video, which he and his friends did, and then Mary and her family pursued criminal charges, with a prosecutor saying they had probable cause to charge for aggravated sexual assault, invasion of privacy, and endangering the welfare of a child. And when the prosecutor was seeking to elevate the charges against GMC to adult criminal court, they wrote in a waiver, GMC's conduct as it relates to the charged offenses was both sophisticated and predatory. Filming a cell phone video while committing the assault was a deliberate act of debasement. And in the months that followed, he lied to Mary

Starting point is 00:09:51 while simultaneously disseminating the video and unabashedly sharing the nature of his conduct therein. This was neither a childish misinterpretation of the situation, nor was it a misunderstanding. GMC's behavior was calculated and cruel. However, Judge Troiano issued a denying waiver, saying that he thought that this was not a quote, traditional case of rape,

Starting point is 00:10:09 which he described as something like quote, two or more generally males involved, either at gunpoint or weapon, clearly manhandling a person. He also said he found it unclear if Mary was really so drunk that she was unaware of what was going on. And as far as the text messages GMC sent,

Starting point is 00:10:22 the judge said he thought it looked like quote, just a 16 year old kid saying stupid crap to his friends.'" With Judge Triano also going on to say, "'This young man comes from a good family "'who put him into an excellent school "'where he was doing extremely well. "'He is clearly a candidate for not just college, "'but probably for a good college.

Starting point is 00:10:38 "'His scores for college entry were very high.'" He also later added that Mary and her family need to consider what effects this would have on GMC's life So there was that and then of course there was the appeal from June and that appeal said that it seemed that judge Triano did Not fully assess the case and said that it quote sounded as if he had conducted a bench trial on the charges rather than neutrally Reviewed the state's application and adding that the juvenile came from a good family and had good test scores We assume would not condemn the juveniles who do not come from good families and do not have good test scores from withstanding waiver applications." Right, so essentially saying, what does it matter what GMC's parents do for a living, or who they are as people, or what GMC got on a science test, when what you're talking about are rape accusations?

Starting point is 00:11:17 You know, ultimately with this appeal, the case can now move out of family court and GMC can be tried as an adult. So there's that part of the story, And then of course there are the reactions. Once this document was made public, it was picked up by news outlets. Many were upset with the comments that Judge Triano had made. With people saying that he's disgraceful, he has no business being a judge.

Starting point is 00:11:34 Which actually on that note, he often isn't. According to reports, he's 70 years old. He's actually been retired for several years, but sometimes he's asked to fill vacancies. Also of note, he is not the only family court judge in New Jersey who's been criticized for the decisions in sexual assault cases. Judge Marcia Silva was involved with an incredibly similar case. There she denied a waiver for a 16 year old boy to be charged as an adult after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 12 year old

Starting point is 00:11:54 girl, with Judge Silva reportedly having said that the offense is not an especially heinous or cruel offense and adding, beyond losing her virginity, the state did not claim that the victim suffered any further injuries, either physical, mental, or emotional. But in this case as well, the appellate court was able to overturn her decision and criticize her handling of the case. Something we've seen people online wanting others to remember. People noting, Marcia Silva is up for reelection in 2021,

Starting point is 00:12:16 Middlesex County, New Jersey. Vote her out. But hey, ultimately that's a situation as it is now. As far as my reaction, I personally think that it is a ridiculous situation that you have a judge, Troiano, saying, "'Oh, well, he's from a good family, good grades, "'gotta look out for the kid.'

Starting point is 00:12:31 What about his alleged victim? Accusations of a rape and cruel humiliation after the fact? Does the status of her parents matter? Do her grades matter? Do you have a judge grading on a privilege curve?" I mean, what kind of thinking is that? But hey, that's the story. That's my personal takeaway from it.

Starting point is 00:12:46 And whether you agree or disagree, I would love to hear from you in those comments down below. And that's where I'm going to end today's show. Of course, as always, thank you so much for watching. If you're new here and I did my job well, you want more of these daily dives into the news, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Definitely hit that bell to turn on notifications.

Starting point is 00:13:00 Also, if you're not 100% filled in, maybe you missed yesterday's Philip DeFranco show, you wanna catch up, or you want to watch any and all of today's Today in Awesome, click or tap right there. But with that said, of course, as always, my name is Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 7.3 DISGUSTING! Judge James Troiano Should Be Ashamed & Kept Away From Power...

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