UNBIASED - NBC/Ronna McDaniel Drama, RFK Jr. Names VP Pick, Texas Appeals Court Blocks SB4 Immigration Law, Disney and DeSantis Reach Settlement.

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

1. RFK Jr. Names Nicole Shanahan as VP (0:38)2. Texas Appeals Court Rules Against Texas; Blocks Immigration Law from Taking Effect (4:20)3. Disney and Gov. Santis Reach Settlement in Years-Long Lawsuit (8:41)4. NBC Hires, Then Fires, Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel (9:46)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Watch this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok. All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 Wednesday, March 27th, 2024, and this is your less than 20-minute daily news rundown. This is also the third time I've recorded this episode due to camera technical difficulties, so bear with me. If you love the unbiased approach this episode provides, you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. Hit that thumbs up button if you're on YouTube and be sure to share the show with your friends. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories for the third time this afternoon. Yesterday after the episode wrapped, RFK Jr.

named Nicole Shanahan as his VP pick. You might be wondering, who is Nicole Shanahan and why did he pick her? Shanahan is a 38-year-old mom. She's also a patent lawyer, co-founder, and CEO of a patent analytics company involved in AI. She is a charity founder and also a lifelong Democrat. Shanahan is big on the environment as well as children's health because of her own daughter who was born in 2018 and later diagnosed with autism and special needs. And Shanahan believes there is a direct correlation between environmental toxins and her daughter's diagnoses. So very passionate about the environment as well as children's health. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, though, Shanahan said that she does intend to leave the

party due to what she calls a disillusionment over what she sees as a lack of progress on both of those aforementioned issues, environmental issues as well as children's health. And she also cites to the growing debt and lack of strategy to secure the border as contributing to her decision. She spoke with Newsweek in an exclusive interview and she said, quote, my plan is to leave the party and I don't take that lightly. I always thought Democrats were the party of compassion and the working class and that incremental assistance could change people's lives, end quote. But she says over the past decade, but especially the past few years, the party has more so become the party

of the very elite. And she says she doesn't relate to that. She doesn't come from elitists. Instead, she grew up in poverty. Her mom was an immigrant from China. Her dad dealt with substance abuse issues as well as mental health issues. And she says her family survived partially on food stamps and welfare growing up. So as far as her support for Kennedy goes, it has come and gone in waves over the years. So she supported Kennedy when he ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination. Then once Kennedy became an independent, she withdrew her support and then eventually became a supporter again. In speaking about why she likes Kennedy, she said, quote, I saw a person of intelligence,

of compassion, and of reason. I discovered a person who speaks out on issues that, even though they are critically important to human health and welfare, are consistently ignored by our government. And for the first time in a long time, I felt hope for our democracy, end quote. As far as Kennedy's decision goes, he says he wanted someone who's not in league with big pharma, big agriculture, and the processed food industries that are poisoning our children. So they very much see eye to eye on that. He said, quote, we didn't want an insider because they're the ones who broke the system

and ran up a $34 trillion debt and pretend it's okay. They're the ones who shut down the country during COVID. They're the ones who are normalizing a chronic disease epidemic. End quote. Aside from their seemingly similar viewpoints, something else Shanahan brings to the table

is her wealth. She has obviously done incredibly well for herself as an attorney, but adding to that is her previous marriage to Sergey Brin, co-founder and former president of Google. In fact, Shanahan is the one who paid for that $4 million Super Bowl ad for Kennedy's campaign, which she now says was a test, but that test ended up going well. She said after the ad ran, he was pulling in the double digits, he was trending nationally, and she said it was a far more positive response than she could have imagined. And that's the point at which she told him that she would consider accepting a vice presidential candidacy should he offer it to her.

In an update to the case out of Texas dealing with the controversial immigration law, SB4, the appeals court has ruled two to one that the law will remain blocked while the appeal plays out. So you've heard me talk about this case a lot. If you want a deeper understanding of this case, go ahead and listen to last Friday's episode if you haven't already. That way you're caught up on the procedural history of the case, the arguments on both sides, and sort of how the oral arguments played out. And in that episode, you'll also hear me say that I did think this ruling was going to be a two-to-one decision with Judge Richmond being the swing vote. So the decision was two-to-one. Judge Richmond ultimately

sided with the Biden administration in denying Texas's request for a stay. But here is the rationale. So when a party requests a stay pending appeal, as Texas did in this case, they're essentially asking the court to put a lower court's ruling on hold on hold so that it could start enforcing that law while the appellate court considered the actual merits of the case. Now, when a court decides whether it's going to grant such a stay request, the court weighs certain factors, and those factors are as follows. One, did Texas make a strong showing that it's likely to succeed on the merits of this case, aka, did Texas show that they will probably win this case once it's argued? Two, will Texas be irreparably injured without a stay? Three, will granting the stay substantially injure other parties in this case, aka the United States? And four, the last factor is where does the public interest lie? Does it lie in granting the stay

or denying the stay? And here's how the majority of the court answered these questions. One, the court found that Texas did not show a likelihood of success on the merits because what the court said is there is, quote, considerable authority supporting that the core provisions of SB4 conflict with federal law, end quote. And that's the Biden administration's argument, right? That SB4 directly contradicts federal law and is therefore unconstitutional. Factors 2, 3, and 4 were answered together, and the court found that when you take these together, they weigh against a stay. The court said, quote, it's generally enough to say that any time a state is enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people, it suffers a form of irreparable

injury, but we must also consider whether a stay would injure the United States and the public interest, end quote. And in finding that it would, the court said, one, there's a high risk that enforcement of SB4 would cause international friction. Two, enforcement of SB4 risks taking the United States out of compliance with its treaty obligations. And three, the court says, while we understand it's undisputed that there are competing interests at play or there's competing public interests at play here, the Supreme Court has said in a case called Hines that state and local interests are subservient to those of the law from taking effect until the court renders a decision on the merits. So that's what I'll say on that. Of course, if you do feel like you need more of an explanation on this ruling or you want to know a little bit about the dissent, which was 70 pages long, let me know. That way I can include it as a deep dive on Friday. But I also do want to mention that Texas has appealed this decision, and here's what

that looks like. So the appeals court, as I've said, still has to actually consider the merits of this case, which it will do next month when it hears oral arguments. But basically, by asking the Supreme Court to review this decision to deny the stay pending appeal, the Supreme Court can now determine whether they even want to get involved, whether they want to review the denial of the stay. And if they do decide they're going to review it, if they review it and they uphold it, the law will still be blocked. If they review it and they reverse it, then the law can be enforced until the appeals court makes that final decision on the merits of the case.

The third story I have for you, a settlement was officially reached today in the years-long lawsuit between Disney and Florida's governor over alleged retaliation as well as First Amendment violations. So I had the entire premise of this lawsuit in an older episode dated April 28, 2023, April of last year. If you want to get caught up to speed, I very much go into detail, but basically the long and the short of it is that after Governor Ron DeSantis enacted the parental rights and education law, Disney spoke out against it. And shortly thereafter, DeSantis went ahead and took some steps which effectively revoked Disney's self-governing powers. So Disney sued. But today, the president of Disney World and the vice chairman of the Florida District Board that was on the other side of the lawsuit released statements confirming a settlement. And the

most notable component of that settlement is just that Disney pretty much accepts that it's not going to be self-governed anymore. It's giving up that fight to reclaim self-governance and that the new board created by DeSantis will be the governing body over Disney. The last story I want your thoughts on. So about a week ago, NBC hired former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid political contributor for the network. In a memo to NBC, Carrie Budoff-Brown, who oversees the political coverage on the network, wrote, quote, it couldn't be a more important moment to have a voice like Rana's on the team, end quote. Budoff-Brown also wrote that having McDaniel would sort of provide an insider's

perspective on national politics as well as the future of the Republican Party. So McDaniels was on this two-year, $600,000 contract, $300,000 annually, but almost immediately her hiring was faced with tons of criticism. Hosts of the show Morning Joe on MSNBC, which is NBC's sister station, said on air that they hoped the network would reconsider its decision. Another MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow, she spent the first half of her show addressing what she called an inexplicable hiring. NBC Politico went and talked to executives, hosts, and correspondents within NBC and boiled it down to a few things based on the

responses they got. One, hosts and correspondents were not asked what they thought of the hire before she was brought on. They thought that this was wrong, that their opinion on it should have been weighed. Two, apparently NBC has been cutting contributors left and right. Layoffs have been happening. So some aren't really understanding where the network found the money to hire McDaniel. And then the third reason is that McDaniel doesn't have much insight into the Republican Party now that she's not a part of the RNC and she doesn't have relationships with what some call anti-Trump Republicans. So their thought is why hire her of anyone's that that's that's another one of their concerns. On top of this,

the critics are annoyed that she she's what they call an election denier. And so they're so they have this concern that she's going to come on to NBC and spread lies while on air. Taking all of that into account, let's add a little bit more color. McDaniel's first and last appearance on NBC was on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker. Throughout the interview, Daniels was asked whether she was pushed out of the RNC, whether she thinks it's appropriate for donors to pay Trump's legal fees, whether she regrets paying millions of millions of dollars of Trump's legal fees through the RNC when he was president, whether she supports pardoning January 6th convictions, whether she agrees that Trump was

responsible or is responsible for January 6th, whether Biden is the legitimate president, and whether she regrets her phone call to a Michigan official during the 2020 election asking the official not to certify the election saying, quote, if you can go home tonight, do not sign it. We will get you attorneys, end quote. And some of McDaniel's responses were that, one, she does not agree with pardoning January 6th convictions, but also doesn't agree that Trump is responsible for January 6th. She said she's still voting for Trump in the upcoming election. She said she doesn't regret her call to the Michigan official. She said that Joe Biden did win the election fair and square and that he is the legitimate president. But at the same time,

she thinks it's fair to say that there were problems with the election. Now, I highly recommend you watch that 20 minute interview. It's, of course, available on YouTube. It's in the sources section for this episode. So you can, of course, hear my very brief recap, but I just think actually watching it, listening to it will give you even more color. After that interview aired in that same Meet the Press segment, Kristen Welker sat down with Chuck Todd and a couple of other analysts. And Welker's first question to Todd was, what were your thoughts on the interview? And this was his response. Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room. Yeah.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract. She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for her. So she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her? I will say this. I think your interview did a good job of exposing, I think, many of the contradictions. And look, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this, because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last

six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. So it is, you know, that's where you begin here. If you told me we were hiring her as a technical advisor to the Republican convention, I think that would be certainly defensible. If you told me, we're talking to her, but let's see how she does in some interviews and maybe vet her with actual journalists inside the network, see if it's a two-way, what she can bring to the network. So I do think, unfortunately, this interview is always going to be looked through the prism of who is she speaking for? So that was the general sentiment from NBC and MSNBC employees. There was this big concern about credibility. And because of all the backlash, there was this looming question as to whether

NBC executives were going to stand by their decision in hiring McDaniel. They did not. In a memo to the company on Tuesday, just yesterday, NBC chair Cesar Conde wrote, quote, after listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor, end quote. Conde said that the decision to hire her was made, quote, because of our deep commitment to presenting our audiences with a wide, diverse set of viewpoints and experiences, particularly during these consequential times. We continue to be committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs, and to that end, we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts

of the political spectrum." End quote. So now the clip I'm about to play is Rachel Maddow's take once it was announced that McDaniel would no longer be a contributor. So she had previously had some things to say on her own show, but this was her response after the announcement was made. Our chairman of the NBC Universal News Group, Cesar Conde, who we both know very well, he sent a memo that we all got as employees here rescinding the hiring of Ronna Romney McDaniel. And I know I felt very strongly about it. I know you felt very strongly about it.

I think everyone from four o'clock on, from Nicole all the way to midnight, we all felt very strongly and said so on our respective shows yesterday. And I just have to say, when somebody does the right thing, I feel like it should be acknowledged as publicly as we acknowledged our outrage.

And so I know how I feel about it. I am grateful to Cesar for actually making the right decision. I think it was the right decision, but I want to get your take as well. I will just say that journalists are a fractious bunch. And in our big company with all sorts of different journalistic entities, you have all sorts of different people working in this business, doing all sorts of different kinds of work. And to see the essentially unanimous feeling among all the journalists in this building and all the sort of senior staff and all the producers and everybody in this building about this was one thing. But then to see the executives and the leadership hear that and respond to it and be willing to change course based on it,

based on their respect for us and hearing what we argued. I have deep respect for that. And I'm grateful to them. You know, it's not about hiring a Republican. It's not even about hiring somebody who has Trump ties. This was a really specific case because of Ms. McDaniels and her involvement in the election interference stuff. And I'm grateful that our leadership was willing to do that. I think the bold, strong, resilient thing. And again, general sentiment of those who had an issue with it. So it'll be interesting to see what NBC does next, who NBC taps next, because they said they are committed to diverse viewpoints.

So we will see. I would love your thoughts on this story, as I said. And when you're thinking about it, ask yourself some questions. You know, is Ronna McDaniel someone you would have liked to see on NBC? Do you think NBC could have picked someone better? Do you agree with networks having hosts and contributors with a variety of viewpoints? Or is it better in your eyes for networks to stick to one side and that, you know, that way we know which networks go to for what? Let me know what you think. But that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here, and I will be back on Friday to deep

dive.