UNBIASED - Week in Review: *Midterm Elections* November 7-13, 2022

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

1. Midterm Elections Recap (1:32)2. Midterm Mini-Stories (9:36) - Maxwell Frost Becomes First Gen Z Congressman (9:54); Most Expensive Midterms in History (11:19); Four States Ban Slavery in State Constitutions (12:32); Four States Approved Abortion Protections (15:00); Rep. Kevin McCarthy Announces Bid for House Speaker (15:51) 3. Texas Judge Blocks Biden's Loan Forgiveness Program (17:04)4. Vogue Sues Drake and 21 Savage for Using Fake Vogue Cover to Promote New Album (22:01)All sources can be found on www.jordanismylawyer.com.Follow Jordan on TikTok and Instagram @jordanismylawyer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day. With a variety of exciting features,

BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only.

Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is My Law podcast. This is your host Jordan and I give

you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually a lawyer. some interesting things in doing my research that I found out about that I feel like you may not know that, you know, like certain ballot measures that passed in certain states and that kind of smaller stuff that maybe didn't make the news in a lot of places. So I want to go over that. I also have a little mini election series. So it kind of ties into those smaller things that maybe the news didn't cover, but yet still came as a result of the elections. So I'm going to get into that as well. And then I will also talk about the student loan forgiveness program and why that is currently

on hold. And I'm also going to talk about a lawsuit involving some pretty popular rappers and a very popular magazine. So without further ado, let's get into it. Okay, let's talk about midterms. So as of Friday afternoon, there were too many Senate races that were too close to call. There were three to be exact, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. But then as of Friday night, the winner in Arizona's Senate race had been called by the AP and other news networks, and that call was made in favor of the Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. So what that means is that control of the Senate basically boils down to two races, Georgia and Nevada. So let's talk about

both of them. Georgia is a bit more complicated. They're going to have to have a runoff election. We'll talk about why, but they basically have the Democratic incumbent Warnock running and the Republican candidate Walker running. Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, has 49.6% of the votes, whereas Walker has 48.3% of the votes and 99% are reporting. So pretty much all the votes are in and they are very, very close. Now, Georgia law requires that one candidate has at least 50% of the votes. Obviously, neither of these candidates do, which is why we're going to see a runoff election in December. Now, Nevada, as of 1 a.m. on Saturday, the Republican candidate had 48.5% of the votes and the Democratic incumbent had 48.4% of the

votes. And there was 95% reporting. This race is so close, literally a difference of 800-ish votes. But as of Saturday, Nevada was still counting votes, which is why we may not know until early this week, because obviously they have to count those votes and see what the results of those are. Nevada's whole rule was that if the mail-in votes were postmarked by election day and received up until Saturday at 5 p.m. local time, then they could be counted. And on top of that, voters also have a couple of days to cure their ballots if needed. So Nevada state law actually allows for certain ballots to be cured. And what this means is that if, let's say, a mail-in ballot was opened, someone's signature isn't there or it doesn't appear to match, then the voter would be contacted to correct it. Now, realistically, the percentage of people that have to

cure their ballots is probably very small, so that likely won't be an issue. But as of Saturday, they were still counting the mail-in votes, and that's why we likely won't know the results of Nevada's Senate race until early this week. Now for the Democratic Party to control the Senate, they just need to win one of these two races, which is why everyone's saying all eyes are on Nevada. Because if the Democratic incumbent wins Nevada, then really the Georgia runoff election doesn't matter too much because the Democratic Party already controls. Now on the flip side of that, if the Republican candidate in Nevada, which he's currently 0.1 percentage points ahead, like I said, up by 800-ish votes as of Saturday morning,

then the Senate control will boil down to Georgia's runoff election. In the Senate, Republicans had zero pickups. Democrats had two, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Arizona was the race that was called on Saturday. Arizona was the race that was called on Saturday. Pennsylvania was the one where Fetterman was running against Dr. Oz. And those pickups resulted in 49 Republican senators, 47 Democratic senators, and two independents who vote with Democrats. So let's break these numbers down and talk about the possible combinations that we could see. Although there are two independents, keep in mind that these independents are basically grouped with the Democrats because that is who they typically vote with.

So you'll kind of see how that factors into the breakdown. But there's basically four possible combinations. If the Republican candidate wins in Nevada and the Republican candidate wins the Georgia runoff, then the Senate breakdown would be 51 Republican, 47 Democrat, and two independents. So basically 51-49 in favor of Republicans. Republicans would control the Senate. This is the second possible combination. If the Republican candidate wins Nevada and the Democratic incumbent wins Georgia, then the breakdown becomes 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and two independents. And again, because the independents vote with Democrats, this is technically a Democrat-controlled Senate. Now, the same result would happen if the Democratic incumbent wins Nevada and the

Republican candidate wins Georgia, right? Now, if the Democratic incumbent wins Nevada and the Democratic incumbent wins Georgia, then the Senate breakdown becomes 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and two independents, which is basically 49-51 Democrats in control. So as you can see, the Democratic party really just needs to win either Nevada or Georgia to take control, but they don't need to win both. They just need to win representatives. Now, all of the projections are showing that the Republicans will likely control the House. There is a chance that the Democrats do, but that there would need to be some things to happen for that to happen that likely won't. So according to NBC News, Republicans are projected to win 221 seats in the House, which is three more than the majority needed, which is 218. And Democrats look like they'll take about 214 seats. Now, keep in mind

that estimate has a margin of error of seven seats. And NPR, just to give you a different perspective, had a similar projection, a little bit different, but similar, that Republicans will take a slim majority with anywhere from one to seven seats. And NPR also said that Democrats do have a long shot chance at retaining control, but they would need some races where Republicans are currently leading to shift in their favor in order for that to happen. So those are where the numbers currently stand as of Saturday. We could know more by Monday when this episode drops. So just remember that if the Republican candidate does win Nevada Senate race, which he's currently up, barely up, but currently, then the Senate control will boil down to Georgia's runoff election in December.

Because remember, Democratic Party just needs to win one election, either Nevada or Georgia. But on the flip side of that, if the Democratic incumbent wins Nevada, which again, we'll know early next week, probably, then the Democratic Party controls and that's it. And it doesn't really matter what happens with Georgia's runoff election. Now, this goes without saying that following the election, there was a lot of talk about, you know, how this red wave didn't really hit like people thought. And in my opinion, and again, you guys know I don't like to give my opinions. However, none of my views are infiltrating this opinion at all. This is purely an unbiased, truly unbiased opinion. I believe that the reason that we didn't see a red wave has to do a lot with Roe versus Wade being overturned.

I think that if Roe versus Wade was not overturned in June, then you would have seen a lot less Democrats turn out to the polls, and therefore Republicans would have showed up more so. Because I did talk about in a TikTok, and I believe I covered this in a podcast episode, that leading up to elections, a lot of the polls, the early voting polls found that the main issue that voters were concerned with was the economy and inflation. And behind that was abortion. Now, if abortion wasn't an issue, I think a lot more people would have been concerned mainly and really solely with the economy and inflation, and that's where we would have seen that red wave. So that's my take on it, but nonetheless, those are the numbers. That is where everything stands. So let's get into

this kind of mini election series that I have for you. I have five stories in the series, and it's basically the things that may not have been talked about so much in the news, maybe kind of flew under the radar with everything else going on and figuring out who's going to control the House, who's going to control the Senate, yada yada. So number one is that Maxwell Frost became not only the youngest member in the House, but became the first Gen Z congressman. So he ran for the seat in Florida's 10th district, which is Central Florida, the Orlando area. And he has basically spent years organizing for gun control, and his agenda, stricter gun laws are very high up on that agenda.

He spoke to CBS after winning his race and said in part, something like universal background checks, ensuring guns are not getting in the wrong hands. It's increasingly popular in this country and we just need to muster up the political will. I'm very excited to get Congress to work. Yes, with people across the aisle and in my own party to push this forward. It's something that is often put on the back burner, but we are losing lives. People are dying every single day and we can't just sit around. So those were his words on that. So it sounds like he's not necessarily trying to take away the second amendment like some Democrats are, but rather just kind of find a middle ground and work together to figure something out as far as like, look, you guys, you know, we can have our guns, but let's just make some stricter laws so we don't have the

psychopaths and the criminals and whoever else getting their hands on guns. He also plans to focus on abortion rights, saying, quote, we need to make sure we protect safe and legal access to abortion, end quote. So that is Maxwell Frost making history, becoming the first Gen Z congressman. The second mini story I have for you in regards to the election is that this was the most expensive midterm election yet. According to a nonpartisan research group, Open Secrets, candidates and political action groups spent almost 17 billion combined dollars on state and federal campaigns. So 7.8 billion of that was spent on state elections, 9 billion of that was spent on state elections 9 billion of that was spent on federal

elections and both of those numbers are up from the last midterm election now where is this money coming from well according to open secrets just 10 wealthy people gave more than half a billion dollars alone but a lot of the money actually came from cryptocurrency and the tech sector. And then there's also almost $100 million of what they call quote unquote dark money. And it basically got its name because it is what it is. It can't be traced back to the original donor. It's kind of a mystery where it came from. So that's where the money comes from in a nutshell. But thought that was interesting that this was the most expensive midterm election yet. And I have a feeling that as time goes on, they're just going to get more and more expensive, but we'll see with that. Number three, four states approved ballot measures

to ban slavery in their state constitutions in the 2022 midterm elections. Now these states are Vermont, Oregon, Alabama, and Tennessee, and you're probably sitting there thinking, wasn't slavery banned by the 13th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution in 1865? Why are we still talking about it in 2022? Well, that is because, yes, slavery was banned by the 13th Amendment, but the 13th Amendment provided an exception for punishment, which you may not know. So, the exact text of the 13th Amendment provided an exception for punishment, which you may not know. So the exact text of the 13th Amendment reads this, Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the state shall

have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction, end quote. So basically, slavery is not allowed except if we're punishing someone and they have to be punished as a slave, right? So interestingly enough, Louisiana also had this ballot measure, but it wasn't approved because the measure's sponsor withdrew his support before election day. He said it was because of changes to the text, but nonetheless, it was rejected in Louisiana. Now, something interesting about this is that states have slowly began removing slavery from their state constitutions since 2018, when Colorado was the first to do it. Nebraska and Utah then did it in 2020. And that's not to say that slavery was a thing in these states up until 2018, 2020. This is just to say that up until then, slavery still

existed in the constitution as an acceptable form of punishment. So according to Ballotpedia, 15 state constitutions expressly allow slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Eight states will expressly forbid it once this year's ballot measures go into effect. So once these ballot measures take effect, eight out of those 15 states will not allow slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. The other 27 states just make no mention of slavery as punishment for a crime, so it's not an issue. But I thought that was interesting nonetheless. I, to be honest, did not know that slavery was still allowed as a form of punishment in some places. So there's that. Number four in the mini-series is that four states voted to protect abortion rights. Vermont,

California, Kentucky, and Michigan. So Vermont, California, and Michigan all voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. So basically, there is now a right to abortion in the state constitution. It is a constitutional right in that state. Kentucky voters didn't necessarily do that, but they rejected a measure that would have explicitly stated in the state constitution that there's no right to abortion. So it kind of would have left it up to Kentucky, the Kentucky legislature, to do what they want with abortion, but that was rejected. So now the state constitution won't say that. So a little bit different, but kind of the same. Now the fifth and final mini story in this little mini election series is that the Republican representative Kevin McCarthy has announced his bid for House Speaker. So in a letter to his caucus on Wednesday, House Republican

leader Kevin McCarthy announced his intention to his caucus on Wednesday, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy announced his intention to run for Speaker of the House. It didn't really come as a surprise. I mean, he's currently the House Minority Leader. He was expected to run for the top House leadership position. He doesn't currently have any challengers. So it was kind of, you know, a lot of people, I guess, saw this coming. The internal vote inside the GOP conference is expected next week, but the full House vote won't happen until January when the new Congress starts. stories as they pertain to the election. And from there, we're going to get into the student loan forgiveness plan and what happens now that a Texas judge blocked the program. On Thursday, a Texas judge blocked President Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for certain borrowers, ruling that the program usurped Congress's power to make laws. In coming to this ruling, the judge explained in part, quote,

In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone. End quote. Now, the arguments in this case basically boil down to the authority that the HEROES Act provides. What is the HEROES Act? It's also known as the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. It was enacted after 9-11, and basically what the government's lawyers are arguing here, what the Biden administration is arguing here, is that under the HEROES Act, Congress granted the Secretary of Education the power to broadly discharge student debt in the event of a national emergency. And what the government and Biden administration are saying is that the pandemic is considered a national emergency and therefore the Secretary of Education has the

power to implement this loan forgiveness program. Well, what the judge in Texas is saying is that, no, the HEROES Act didn't provide the authorization for the loan forgiveness that the Biden administration claimed that it did. And this law doesn't provide the executive branch clear congressional authority to create this student loan forgiveness program. Because remember, the Secretary of Education is part of the executive branch. So again, just to kind of recap and clarify, the Biden administration is saying that under the HEROES Act, Congress gave the executive branch, aka the Secretary of Education, the power to broadly discharge student debt in the event of a national emergency. But the judge is saying, no, this law does not give the executive branch clear congressional authority because this authority exists within Congress, the authority to make laws.

Now, although this is a Texas lawsuit, this isn't the first challenge. There's been many challenges by many states and many different groups. But this Texas case did change things a little bit. So the program was already on hold due to a separate lawsuit filed by six states, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, and South Carolina. It's on hold because these states brought this lawsuit. The court basically said, look, you don't have standing to do this. They appealed it, and now it's being considered by a federal appeals court. But in appealing the case, the program was put on hold. And that happened in October, at the end of October, October 21st. And what that hold did was stop the Biden administration from clearing debt. So they couldn't really take any

action as far as forgiving any debt, but they could still accept applications, right? So borrowers could still apply for relief on that website that everyone's applying on. Now though, what this Texas ruling did is basically has the Department of Education not accepting applications anymore. So previously, although the program was on hold, applications could still be submitted. Now you can't submit an application. So if you actually go to studentaid.gov, which houses the debt relief application, it updated its website to notify people visiting the site that student loan debt relief is blocked. And what the website says is, quote, courts have issued orders blocking our student debt relief program. As a result, at this time, we are not accepting applications. We are seeking to overturn those orders,

end quote. This decision from the Texas judge was appealed immediately to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the DOJ. And what this means basically is that this case has to play out entirely before the Biden administration can do anything as far as canceling debt. So this case will likely make it all the way up to the Supreme Court. So that will add time to when we could see a final result. So it's going to take a while. That's my anticipation that, you know, this isn't just going to take a month or two. This is going to take a long time to figure out if any debt can

be canceled. But all in all, this isn't that surprising. And I'm sure it doesn't really come as a surprise to you. Once this program was announced, there was immediate pushback and people were, you know, it was almost like instantaneously there was talks of challenges. So not surprising. What you need to know that stems from this Texas lawsuit is that as of now, the Department of Education is not accepting applications for debt relief. So that takes us into our fifth and final story, and it's kind of a more lighthearted one, I guess. Vogue is suing rappers Drake and 21 Savage over a fake magazine cover promoting their new album. So Drake and 21 Savage have this new album coming out called Her Loss. Actually, it already came out, my apologies, came out on November 4th. It's called Her Loss. Actually, it already came out. My apologies. Came out on November 4th. It's called Her Loss. And prior to its release, they basically made these fake Vogue covers. It looks

like it would be a Vogue cover, right? It says Vogue in the style that Vogue is typically written. It looks like it would be a cover. And it's Drake and 21 Savage on the front. And so what Condé Nast is saying, Condé Nast is the publisher of Vogue. And what they're saying is that Drake and 21 Savage used a fake Vogue cover to promote their album. They didn't get the permission of Vogue. And therefore, they are now suing for any potential profits that were made off of the trademark infringement.

So this wasn't just an Instagram post, right? It's not like Drake or 21 Savage just posted this picture to Instagram and, you know, made his followers think he was on the cover of Vogue. No, he posted to Instagram, but also made his caption, quote, me and my brother on newsstands tomorrow. Thanks at Vogue magazine and Anna Wna winter for the love and support on this historic moment her loss november 4th end quote i mean that like he goes so far as to thank vogue magazine and anna winter um how could people not think you know that this isn't real right so connie nass filed their lawsuit it It's a 30-page lawsuit. I have it linked on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. And basically, they're arguing that

the widespread promotional campaign is built entirely on the use of Vogue's trademarks, which gives the false premise that the two artists would be featured in an issue of the magazine. And they're not, right? And they never got anyone's approval, they never talked to Vogue, they never talked to Anna Wintour, nothing. So according to the complaint, they actually created copies of the cover, the fake cover, and distributed them to people and put them up as posters, and this is something that Vogue typically does as part of its own real promotional activities, right? So now they're mimicking Vogue's promotional activity. On top of that, following the Instagram post, news outlets published stories with headlines like, Drake and 21 Savage, Land Vogue cover, Ahead of Collab album, like all of these headlines that literally like people thought this was real. And the complaint

references comments from Instagram users that are basically illustrating people thought this was real. And the complaint references comments from Instagram users that are basically illustrating people thought this was a real cover. There was no indication that this was fake. People were commenting things like, it's about time and so excited, can't wait to pick up this issue, yada yada. So clearly people fell right into this. And the complaint goes on to say that on October 31st, Condé Nast and his lawyers demanded that the defendants stop what they're doing and take appropriate measures to curtail further public confusion before the release of the album on November 4th, but nothing was done.

So then this lawsuit was filed on November 7th. Now in total, there are seven claims. So there's trademark infringement and counterfeiting, false designation of origin and unfair competition, dilution, false advertising, violation of New York General Business Law 360K, which basically deals with the use of the counterfeit Vogue trademark,

common law trademark infringement and unfair competition, and a violation of New York General Business Law 349 and 350, and that basically deals with the false and misleading statements and advertising concerning the fake issue of Vogue. Kanye Nas is seeking $4 million in damages, or triple the rapper's profits from their album, whichever is higher. I would imagine the profits from the album will be higher, but in addition to damages, Connie Nass is also seeking a preliminary injunction, which you've

heard me talk about before. It basically asks the court to require a party to stop doing something. They also requested a temporary restraining order to stop the rappers from continuing to publicize the fake magazine cover and they're also asking for damages over the trademark infringement so here are my thoughts unless drake and 21 savage profited from selling the magazines it doesn't seem like con con day really lost anything right like there was no real detriment to them so maybe if they were handing them out to people or if they were putting them up as posters, okay, fine. But if they weren't selling them, it's a little bit different territory. If anything, let's say Drake and 21 Savage weren't making a profit from it,

then if anything, this was just publicity for Vogue. And you know what they say, any publicity is good publicity. Or is it all publicity is good publicity? Either way, you get what I'm saying. So obviously, you know, we'll see how the judge rules on this. We'll see where this case goes. It'll be interesting because the album is already out. So even if they stop using the Vogue covers now, the damage has kind of already been done, you know?

So even if a judge does grant the preliminary injunction or the temporary restraining order, it's already out there. So that's the deal with that. And those are the five stories for the day. Now, obviously, with the election results, things are going to happen. Things are going to change. We're going to see more. Keep in mind, though, that although my numbers are as of Friday afternoon, really nothing is going to change because we're already seeing Republicans are going to gain the majority in the House. That's not going to be surprising when it happens. And then as far as the Senate, you know, if over the course of the next few days, the Republican Party wins either Arizona or Nevada, then we're

not going to know who controls the Senate until December anyway, right? Until that runoff election in Georgia. So I figured, you know, why not talk about the elections now? It's not like anything is really so up in the air that it can't be talked about, but that's what we have as of now. As always, please leave me a review on whichever platform you listen. If you enjoyed this episode, guys's reviews really really help me more than you know if you've already left a review obviously don't worry about it but if you haven't i'd really appreciate if you could take the time to do that and then i also did want to let you guys know a little um look into the other side of me so i know a lot of you guys obviously follow me on tiktok and instagram and you know

listen to my podcast because of my unbiased news. But if you're ever interested in getting to know me on a personal level, I did come out with a podcast with my sister. It's called Same But Different. It's available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And it's basically us just, you know, talking about various things, telling stories, giving life advice, talking about being sisters, how we're the same, how we're different, all that fun stuff. And it's more of a fun show of personality rather than me just kind of reporting on the news, which I also love doing, but it's really nice for me to kind of have the balance of both. So if you're ever interested in getting to know me a little bit more, that's always there for you as well. And with that, I'm checking out. I will see you next Monday. I hope

you have a great week. And until then, I'm checking out. I will see you next Monday. I hope you have a great week. And until then, take care.