Today, Explained - Power, stripped

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

Wisconsin Republicans are scrambling to pass last-minute measures that would strip the incoming Democratic governor of a lot of his powers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tara Gulshan, you're a political reporter here at Vox. What is going on in Wisconsin right now? It sounds like sort of all hell might be breaking loose. So come January, the Republican-led state government is going to have to pass the baton to some newly elected Democratic leaders. And in these final weeks, they are doing everything they possibly can to curb the powers of the incoming Democratic class. What are they curbing exactly? What powers are they trying to curb? The Republican-led legislature is pushing forward with proposals that would essentially prevent the governor from having purview over some commissions and state agencies.

It would undermine the powers of the incoming Democratic attorney general to remove the state from legal cases. For example, the incoming attorney general has said that he wants to remove Wisconsin from the federal case against the Affordable Care Act. This would require legislative oversight over that. The name of the game is essentially moving the power from the executive branch in the state government to the legislative branch, which is Republican-controlled. Okay, so it sounds like, you know, changing how cabinet members are appointed, curbing the attorney general's authority.

Why these things in particular? It's a direct rebuke to the things that Democrats campaigned on and won on in November. Things like Tony Evers, the Democrat-elect for governor, came in and said that he wants to get rid of the state's job agency, the agency that was responsible for giving billions of dollars of tax breaks to that Taiwanese company Foxconn that we heard a lot about from Trump that Democrats have been really upset about. So that's an agency that the Democrat does not see a need for, but it would give Republicans oversight over what the Democrat could do with that agency. Same goes with policies around health care in the state. Obviously, the attorney general that's coming in said that one of the first things he would do

in office would be to remove Wisconsin from the federal lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act. Republicans in the state don't want that to happen to the point that the Republican state house speaker is saying we need this proposals because we don't like what the Democrats who won said that they would do. And we need to have the power to stop them from doing it. And they're just all out saying that? They're being completely transparent about what their intentions here? Completely explicit. We have had an incredible partner with Governor Walker. We have taken the time to look at Wisconsin in 2010 and where we are today. There are a number

of very important reforms that each one of us have ran on and that we have promised our constituents we will do everything in our power to make sure that they stay on the books for Wisconsin. I'm concerned. I think that Governor-elect Evers is going to bring a liberal agenda to Wisconsin. So how contentious has it been?

How do the Democrats feel about it? It's been a huge fight. I mean, this is something that Wisconsin Republicans unveiled at 4.30 p.m. on Friday. And over the course of five days, Democratic leaders in the state have been shouting on the statehouse floor saying that this is undermining the election results, that it is justining the election results, that it is just a blatant power grab and it's desperate. So what we're doing here tonight with this piece of legislation, with the appointments, with the other legislation that may be coming up tonight,

is the majority party, Mr. President, is trying to circumvent a legitimate election. Never before in the history of our state have we seen an extraordinary session that takes away the powers of a newly elected governor. You know those things that just kind of make you go, this is one of those things. The Wisconsin GOP hasn't fully ran this through yet, right? How far along are they? So it has now passed both the state Senate and the state assembly and is headed to Scott Walker, the current Republican governor, who has expressed his support. Is it legal or is this just going to be immediately challenged by Democrats in the courts?

I think it is fair to assume that Democrats are going to take this to the courts fairly quickly. Talking to advocates in the state, they've told me that they're already talking to their attorneys. They're ready to fight this, especially on things like cutting early voting down. That's something that Wisconsin tried to do in the past, and actually a liberal advocacy group took them to court for it and won. And so not only now are we seeing that Republicans are pushing something that they tried and failed to do in the past, but they're almost expecting that legal challenges are going to come to them. They have every right to go to the courts, ask the courts if what we have done is constitutional. I believe, and the advice I have been given is, everything that we have done has been within the bounds of the Constitution, and I think it'll be found that way.

But of course, they have the right. That's our process. Three co-equal branches, they have the right to go to the third branch. Democrats want stuff all over the country. Is this happening anywhere else, or is Wisconsin a super special case? Wisconsin is not a super special case. We just go across the lake there in Michigan Michigan and you see the same thing is happening. There was an overwhelming rebuke of Republican leadership in Michigan where trying to push proposals that would undermine the attorney general's position, essentially allowing the Republican legislature to intervene in any state cases that the attorney general would not want to defend. For example, in Michigan, there's a very heated legal fight over a bill that allows faith-based adoption agencies to not work with same-sex couples. That's something that the incoming attorney general said that she doesn't want to defend that law. So that's something, for example, that the Republican legislature could then insert themselves in. Okay, but things are farther along in Wisconsin

than they are in Michigan, right? So how are people in Wisconsin reacting to this now that it looks like the bill's going through? The moment Republicans unveiled these proposals, people poured out to the state capitol. There have been protesters there every step of the way. There's clearly anger in the state. They elected Democratic leaders that campaigned on very specific policies, and now they're seeing their Republican legislature say, we don't like those policies, and we want to stop these Democratic leaders from enacting them. And it raises really serious questions about what representative democracy means if you have a state legislature that is undermining the overwhelming decision of the voters. And we're seeing how that plays out in states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

We're going to have to wait and see how all of this shakes out in Wisconsin, but this whole scenario has already played out in North Carolina. That's next on Today Explained. You know, it occurs to me that Y2K happened so long ago that there's someone in our listening audience that doesn't even really know what it is. So Headlong, Surviving Y2K, is a great podcast for you. It's from the team behind Missing Richard Simmons, and they take listeners back to the hysteria at the turn of the century when the world braced for Armageddon, for disaster. But then nothing really happened.

And there are some interesting stories in there, from an evangelical family preparing for the apocalypse to the coders who fixed the millennium bug. Surviving Y2K follows all these stories through New Year's Eve 1999 and reveals what really happened at midnight. You can find Headlong Surviving Y2K wherever you find your podcasts. David Graham, you're a staff writer at The Atlantic. This whole thing sounds a little nuts, what's happening in Wisconsin. These Republicans who are losing power, trying to change all the rules on their way out. But there is a precedent, right? There is. It's North Carolina in 2016.

So in 2016, there was a closely fought race between Governor Pat McCrory, who was a Republican, and Roy Cooper, who was at the time the state attorney general and a Democrat. And after a very close election, including some fairly controversial recounts and a lot of lawsuits, Cooper won. But the Republicans maintained a strong control of the legislature, in fact, super majorities in both chambers. And so in December, after the gubernatorial election was finished, but before the new governor had taken over, the General Assembly came in and they used this special session that was designed for disaster relief from Hurricane Matthew. And once they had passed the disaster relief, then they introduced a whole bunch of measures that were designed to

strip power away from the governor. And what were the measures specifically? The big highlights were, one, they wanted to make some of the governor's cabinet members be Senate confirmed, which hadn't been the case before. He was able to just appoint them. They made it so that the trustees of the University of North Carolina system and the Board of Education were appointed not by the governor, but by the legislature. They made it so that a bunch of formerly political appointments within the executive branch and elsewhere in the government became permanent employees. And then they also tried to reconfigure the state elections board, basically to give Republicans more power and to reduce Democratic power on the board.

And how long had these North Carolina Republicans been in power? Well, the Republicans took over the legislature in 2010, both houses, and it was the first time that they had control of both houses, I believe, since the 19th century. Wow. And then they won the governorship in 2012. So this was kind of like their first chance to do something like this. Exactly. And they hit the ground running with a whole load of conservative priorities. With a Democratic governor coming in, they wanted to preserve as much as they could and to grasp at as much power as they could. So they strip appointment powers. They cut down on people working in the executive branch.

They sort of reconfigure the board of elections and confirmation powers. How does the governor of North Carolina respond to that? As you can imagine, he was not happy about it. He immediately said he would sue. And also, you know, Democrats mobilized across the state. There were big protests in the state legislature while these bills were under consideration. When justice is under attack, what do you do?

Stand up like that. Get back. Get back. Get back. I need help. What do you do? Stand up like that. And there was a lot of pushback saying that this was sort of taking away the will of the voters by doing this right after they'd elected a Democrat.

And how did the suits go? Well, for the most part, they were successful. The governor sued on every one of these. And courts ruled that, in fact, the idea of making cabinet members Senate-confirmed was totally constitutional. But everything else got slapped down. So the alterations to political appointments were ruled unconstitutional, and the adjustments to the state board were also ruled unconstitutional, but everything else got slapped down. So the alterations to political appointments were ruled unconstitutional, and the adjustments to the state board were also ruled unconstitutional. Did the Republicans apologize?

You'll be surprised to believe they didn't. In fact, for the most part, they just kept trying to do these things. So they passed another law on the state elections board, which then was again found unconstitutional just this fall. What was that one? It was a similar thing, but different? Right. Basically, they tried to tailor the law a little bit differently so that they thought it would pass muster in the courts, and they were incorrect. And then this fall, they put a ballot measure on the ballot that would have had a constitutional amendment to reconfigure the state elections board, and voters defeated that. Generally, they've been trying, I would say, throughout Roy Cooper's term in office, just to limit his powers however they can.

Is this just a Republican thing? I mean, we have it happening in Wisconsin, looks like maybe Michigan, North Carolina. And in all these cases, it's Republicans who are trying to constrain Democratic governors and Democratic attorney generals. But have Democrats ever tried something like this? One of the things that Republicans in the General Assembly said to defend their maneuvers was, look, Democrats did this. You know, Democrats controlled the state for this extremely long period of time, and they'd done a lot of things to maintain their power. In the 80s, when a Republican governor was elected, it was very similar to what Republicans did to Roy Cooper.

They basically tried to make a bunch of jobs that had been political appointments into permanent jobs so that the governor couldn't fire them and the Democratic political appointees would remain in place as civil servants. I think people generally would think that this is tacky. Have the people in North Carolina ever weighed in to say like, this is why everyone hates politics? So, you know, it's an interesting state. There's a really strong protest movement and a lot of sort of liberal activism, and also a lot of Republicans. It's a fairly evenly divided state. And so there were huge protests at the time. You had dozens of people being arrested at the General Assembly during protests. And I think the more direct and measurable impact is this fall,

the first time there were elections for the General Assembly again, even though there's this strong gerrymander, voters reduced Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature, including getting rid of the supermajority, which means that now Cooper can veto. So you see voters reacting fairly poorly to what Republicans have done. In this most recent instance here in North Carolina, where you have Republicans sort of constraining the governor, getting shot down by the courts, finding new ways to try and constrain the governor, are they doing anything illegal? Like, is all this stuff allowed? You know, in these specific cases, obviously the courts did not hold up most of what they had done.

But I think that's mostly because the North Carolina state constitution has an extremely strong separation of powers clause, which means that a lot of times when the General Assembly does try to do this kind of thing, it ends up falling afoul of the constitution. But in general, obviously the legislature has the power to pass laws. In this case, they had a super majority and they were using that power as they saw fit. There's nothing that is inherently wrong with that. I think what was dubious about this sort of legislative coup in 2016 was first that it was done so quickly and cloak and dagger. They came in under the cover of this disaster relief special session and then, with very little warning, introduced these things and rammed them through. They also did this when they had just seen a Democrat elected governor, and it looked a lot like they were trying to thwart the will of the voters of North Carolina.

A majority of state voters had voted for Roy Cooper. You know, I think the voters' will was not really all that ambiguous. And suddenly they wanted to strip away all these powers from the governor that they had had no problem with a Republican governor having. So, you know, I think people looked at that and saw it as a fairly craven political move, but not an illegal one, just a craven one. So they're playing by rules that are sort of laid out for them. Right. And, you know, it's interesting because Democrats controlled the state for so long. Much of the system was designed by Democrats for a one party state. You know, they set up a system where they could keep power and they can make sure the Republicans never gain too much. Then when Republicans got control of the state, they suddenly had all these rules in place that were very favorable to them and they didn't hesitate to use them. I can't help but let out a deep sigh because it just feels like Republicans and in the case of North Carolina's history, Democrats too are just doing things

that aren't in the interest generally of democracy, just partisan hackery. I mean, is that our future? You know, I think, especially at this moment where you have Republicans in control in so many states, but Democrats finally starting to get a toehold back and get a little bit of power in places like Wisconsin. Anywhere it's going one way or the other, you're going to have this kind of tension. And I guess this is sort of a flaw in a democratic system. Anytime you've got a partisan setup like this, there's the potential for abuse. But I also think that when you thwart voters' will like this, they don't respond well to it. They understand what's going on, even if they don't pay close attention to the details or they have mixed feelings about what the specific laws are.

They understand that it's just flexing political power and it's thwarting their will. And so in North Carolina, you saw this time around, they punish Republicans in the General Assembly. I hope you're right. I hope I am too. It'd be reassuring to know that sort of accountability works. Sometimes it does, and often it probably doesn't. David Graham writes about politics at The Atlantic. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of the show.

Bridget McCarthy is the editor. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vander P executive producer of the show. Bridget McCarthy is the editor. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vanderplug produce the show. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. And the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. Special thanks to John Delore this week. And bottomless thanks to our outgoing intern, Catherine Wheeler. She's been great, and we're looking for a new great intern. You can find the posting on the Vox Media careers page. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we are part of

the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.