UNBIASED - Can Undocumented Migrants Vote? Let's Clear the Air. Biden Sparks Controversy After Transgender Day of Visibility Coincides With Easter, CA Fast-Food Minimum Wage Takes Effect, and More.

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Starting point is 00:00:50 call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, April 1st, 2024, and this is your less than 20-minute rundown of today's top stories. If you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides, you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review. On whatever platform you listen. Be sure to share this show with your friends, your family, whoever you feel will appreciate nonpartisan news. And if you're watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button. All of those things

Starting point is 00:01:34 really help support my show. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. Alec Murdoch, the former attorney from South Carolina who is currently serving two life sentences for the murders of his wife and son, as well as 27 years for state financial crimes, was sentenced to another 40 years for various federal crimes. The judge also ordered him to pay $8.7 million in restitution to his victims, though I'm not entirely sure where that money will come from aside from the selling of his properties because he has definitely had a bit of financial turmoil lately. Last September, Murdoch pled guilty to 22 federal charges. These included wire fraud,

Starting point is 00:02:20 bank fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and it all stemmed from him working with a bank employee to defraud both his personal injury clients as well as his law firm out of millions of dollars in settlement funds. And he has fully admitted to this. He said he was dealing with an opioid addiction and used these funds to sort of fund that habit. The second story is that AT&T announced a data breach over the weekend. Well, it announced over the weekend, but the data breach happened a couple of weeks ago where its current and former customers had some of their information leaked onto the dark web. The company's statement read in part, quote, while AT&T has made this determination, it is not yet known whether the data in those quote, while AT&T has made this determination, it is not yet

Starting point is 00:03:05 known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors. With respect to the balance of the data set, which includes personal information such as social security numbers, the source of the data is still being assessed. Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders, end quote. And in addition to the social security numbers, the leak is also said to have included passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, as well as birthdays, but does not appear to include financial information or call history.

Starting point is 00:03:50 And as of now, it does not appear that that leak is related to the February outage that affected roughly 70,000 AT&T customers. But as I said, the investigation into the cause is still ongoing. A California law took effect today, which requires most fast food workers to be paid at least $20 an hour. Now, this number is up from the state's standard minimum wage requirement of $16 an hour, which was just set in January. And I'll get into sort of the specifics of fast food establishments in a second, but workers are particularly happy because this says, they say that this into sort of the specifics of fast food establishments in a second. But workers are particularly happy because this says they say that this will sort of help them a little bit when it comes to California's high cost of living. Restaurant owners, on the other hand, are saying that they're going to be forced to

Starting point is 00:04:35 raise prices, add automation and cut hours and jobs. So just so we have all of our facts straight, this law specifically applies to fast food chains with at least 60 locations nationwide. So it won't affect smaller mom and pop shops, and it won't affect actual restaurants, just fast food establishments. Now, it is true that states typically increase their minimum wages annually and adjust for inflation and all of that. But the reason that California is different in this case is because this was a particular piece of legislation that specifically applies to fast food workers and increases the minimum wage for fast food employees only to $20 an hour. So that is the first sort of legislation of its kind on a state level. Google has reached a settlement in a 2020 class

Starting point is 00:05:26 action lawsuit claiming that it secretly tracked the internet use of people who thought they were browsing in private mode. In court documents filed earlier today, Google will delete and or remediate billions of data records, update disclosures about what it collects in quote-unquote private browsing, and also let incognito users block third-party cookies for five years. Per usual, the settlement will have to get approval from a judge before it becomes binding. USPS announced today that UPS will take over for FedEx as its primary air cargo provider at the end of September, which is when the Postal Service's current contract with FedEx ends, and this will mark the end of a more than 20-year partnership. So reportedly what happened is the two parties just couldn't agree on mutually

Starting point is 00:06:18 beneficial terms of a new contract, given that FedEx wanted terms to improve. Over the past few years, payments from the United States Postal Service to FedEx had actually declined because USPS made the shift from planes to more economical trucks, and that affected how much FedEx brought in from that partnership. But even still, USPS was the largest customer for FedEx's Express segment. FedEx said that it would be making adjustments to its network in order to make up for the loss of the contract, which did still bring in just under $2 billion annually. As for the amount of the UPS contract, the financials have not yet been disclosed, but UPS said that the award was quote-unquote significant. The sixth story is about this Transgender Day of Visibility. So the president sparked

Starting point is 00:07:10 some controversy over the weekend when he issued a presidential proclamation on Friday recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, which happened to fall on Easter Sunday. Here are the facts. Transgender Day of Visibility was created in 2009 by the executive director and co-founder of Transgender Michigan. It was designed as a day to contrast Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is held on November 20th to honor transgender people that are killed in anti-LGBTQ violence. And according to the creator, it was, it's celebrated on March 31st to space it out from Pride Month, which happens in June, and then that November Day of Remembrance that I just mentioned. In the beginning of the movement, it was just a day that was celebrated by a few cities in the United States. But over the years, it's sort of picked up steam in other countries as well, such as

Starting point is 00:08:08 the Netherlands. But the Biden administration was the first administration to acknowledge the day as a national day of recognition in 2021. However, in 2021, it didn't really make waves because March 31st, 2021 was not Easter. Easter was on April 4th that year, and this Transgender Day of Visibility is always March 31st. So same thing in 2022 and 2023. It just, they never coincided. The last time the two coincided was 2013, but Transgender Day of Visibility was not yet on the map as this National Day of Recognition.

Starting point is 00:08:51 But as I said, the Biden administration has been recognizing this day since it took office in 2021. If you look back on the White House's website, the president has issued a Transgender Day of Visibility proclamation since 2021 and every year that has followed. But again, it's this year caused controversy because the two fell on the same day. The final story is a couple of weeks old, but I never got around to covering it. And I don't know if it's because I wasn't doing daily episodes at the time and the story just kind of got lost amongst all of the other stories, but I do feel it's an important story to set straight because I do remember some of you reaching out to me about it, wanting me to clear the air. So that's what I'm going to do. A couple of weeks ago, Mississippi's Secretary of State Michael Watson tweeted that he had written a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland about a specific executive order and

Starting point is 00:09:45 this concern that he had that the order creates opportunities for undocumented migrants to vote in the upcoming election and that this was a sort of scheme set forth by President Biden. Following the tweet, multiple ex-users bought into this idea that undocumented migrants were going to be able to vote. Fox News even released an article that was titled, quote, top red state official demands answers on Biden executive order attempting to register illegals to vote, end quote. So let's set some things straight. The executive order that Watson was referencing is an order dated March 7th, 2021. It is three years old. It's called the Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting. And the order reads in part, quote, it is the responsibility of the federal government to expand access to

Starting point is 00:10:37 and education about voter registration and election information and to combat misinformation in order to enable all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy, end quote. And the order then does what an executive order does and directs various agencies to consider different ways that they can expand opportunities to vote and ways to get more information about voting out there. And the order says, quote, the head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation. This effort shall include consideration of ways to provide relevant information in the course of activities or services that directly

Starting point is 00:11:25 engage with the public about how to register to vote, how to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and how to cast a ballot in upcoming elections. And the order lists more considerations that these agencies shall give, but just wanted to give you a couple of them to give you an idea of what this executive order says. Now, here's the thing. Who is allowed to vote in presidential elections? Citizens of the United States. The U.S. Code, which specifically sets forth federal law, makes it illegal for a non-citizen to vote in federal elections. And on top of that, Congress has banned non-citizens from voting in federal elections in a piece of legislation called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. And the president knows this. This is not news to anyone in the federal government. In fact, the president's order reads, quote,

Starting point is 00:12:15 agencies shall consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and obtain information about the electoral process. End quote. So nothing in this years-old order gives or attempts to give undocumented migrants or non-citizens the ability to vote. Also, keep in mind, the president isn't the one who makes voting laws. So even if the president wanted undocumented migrants to have the right to vote, it is not up to him. It's up to Congress, as per the Elections Clause of the Constitution. And even then, changing who can vote would likely require a constitutional amendment,

Starting point is 00:12:55 as we've seen in the past, like when women were given the right to vote, African Americans were given the right to vote. These things happened by way of constitutional amendments, not the president. So again, let me just stress that, you know, don't believe everything you read on the internet. A lot of what we're seeing, especially heading into the election, is fear-mongering on both sides. And that is just the unfortunate reality. So if there are any other storylines that you want clarification on, please email them to me at jordan at jordan is my lawyer dot com. I will do my best to feature

Starting point is 00:13:25 it on one of my episodes. I'll look into it, see how much truth there is there. And if, you know, if enough of you are confused, I will talk about it and I will try to clear things up. So that is what I have for you today. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.

UNBIASED - Can Undocumented Migrants Vote? Let's Clear the Air. Biden Sparks Controversy After Transgender Day of Visibility Coincides With Easter, CA Fast-Food Minimum Wage Takes Effect, and More.

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