What A Day - Czar You There Mike Pence? It's Me, Coronavirus

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

President Donald Trump held a press conference yesterday in conjunction with the CDC to update the nation on the COVID-19 preparedness plan. That plan involves appointing Vice President Mike Pence to oversee the government's response to the epidemic—but importantly, he’s not really a coronavirus czar, so don’t call him one. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime on Wednesday — more than 100 years since the first measure against it was introduced to Congress. And in headlines: a mass shooting in Milwaukee, a humanitarian crisis in Syria, and Maria Sharapova hangs up her racquet.

It's Thursday, February 27th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, where we have the best hand sanitizing practices of any daily news podcast. I'm wearing a full hazmat suit, so it doesn't even matter if my hands are dirty. Because I'm not touching anybody and no one's touching me. I'm in saran wrap, head to toe. Hazmat was outside of my budget this month.

Sorry, man. It's okay. Next time. On today's show, Congress finally passes a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Then some headlines. But first, the president's plan for coronavirus. Yesterday, fresh off his trip to India, President Donald Trump had a press conference in conjunction with the CDC to update the nation on the COVID-19 coronavirus preparedness plan. The United States currently has 61 reported cases, mostly stemming from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

42 infected passengers were repatriated there. The other cases are also travel related, with the exception of one new case confirmed on Wednesday in Northern California of unknown origin. Info on that is still forthcoming. In China, new cases have decreased in the past several days, but in Italy, the outbreak has surged, and now more than 40 countries have confirmed cases of the virus. There are a lot of moving pieces with this, but what exactly did Trump say in the press conference? He said a lot of things. He announced that Mike Pence would be in charge of the U.S.'s COVID-19 response. We're going to get to that in a second. But he mostly said the response has been amazing and played down the threat of the virus despite warnings

from the CDC. Here's a clip. The CDC said yesterday that they believe it's inevitable that the virus will spread in the United States and it's not a question of if but when. Do you agree with that assessment? Well, I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared. Yeah, I think totally is doing a lot of work here. But Trump was optimistic about a vaccine coming to save the day soon. We're rapidly developing vaccine and they can speak to you. The professionals can speak to you about that. The vaccine is coming along well.

And in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly. OK, well, the head of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health characterized it a little differently. So although this is the fastest we have ever gone from a sequence of a virus to a trial, it still would not be any applicable to the epidemic unless we'd really wait about a year to a year and a half.

That guy sounds a little like a Scorsese character. Yeah, well, Trump has fired off several tweets about the media stoking fear and anxiety. But personally, watching the president be clarified in real time by scientists, especially ones that sound like Scorsese characters, made me a little bit more terrified and anxious than anything I've seen on TV. Oh, yes. I second that. Okay. But tell us more about the White House response. Okay. Oh, my God. Let's start with Trump putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of handling the epidemic, citing Indiana's amazing health care and his response to the MERS coronavirus that hit Indiana in 2014. So as far as health care goes, Indiana ranks 34th in the nation.

There are 50 states. There are 50 states. And the MERS outbreak wasn't much of an outbreak. One person, one, one finger is up, had the disease there. It didn't spread. The person didn't die. And to date, only 2,494 people have ever been recorded to have the disease. Right now, more than 80,000 people worldwide have coronavirus.

So perspective. One good example of Mike Pence's approach to handling an epidemic is the HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana. So back in 2015, when he was the governor, he signed a bill criminalizing carrying syringes and refused to start a clean needle program until more than 90 people had been infected with HIV.

And his answer in the meantime was prayer. Yeah, prayer. Very, very good. So, you know, super pumped he's in charge. Well, anywho, the administration has called for $2.5 billion to combat the virus, including a proposal to finance it by shifting money from programs for the poor and reappropriating funds from the U.S.'s Ebola response. Ebola, for the record, is still an epidemic in the Congo.

But a vaccine was announced last week. So, you know, I guess everything's done here. Let's just move that money. Good to go. Senate Dems have their own proposal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called for an $8.5 billion emergency spending package that doesn't take money from heating assistance for those beneath the poverty line. The money would be spent on medical equipment, support for localities, and medical research. Okay, yeah. There have been cuts and personnel moves that critics are saying

could weaken U.S. preparedness. We've touched on this a little bit, but can you walk us through that a little bit more? Sure. So in 2018, the White House eliminated a dedicated position on the National Security Council to coordinate pandemic response. Not great. Not great. And earlier this year, the Trump administration announced further personnel cuts to the National Security Council. According to former Obama administration staff who were involved in the 2014 Ebola response, the NSC was the only power center that could harness and coordinate the many federal government agencies implicated,

foreign and domestic. One former senior U.S. official said, quote, For the first time since 9-11, you don't have someone directly and immediately reporting to the president, responsible 24-7 for the major transnational threats we face, terror, cyber, pandemics, yada yada. And then there's the president's proposed budget for next year. It had $3 billion in cuts for global health programs and a 16% cut to the CDC. These cuts probably won't happen, but all math considered, it would appear Trump's priority hasn't been public health so far. But the main takeaway from the press conference is that the CDC believes that public health

measures are going to be far more useful in the coming months than promises of a vaccine. So, again, wash your hands, stay home if you're sick, and maybe check CDC.gov slash COVID-19 every so often so you can stay vigilant. I'm bookmarking it. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime on Wednesday, more than 100 years since the first measure against it was introduced in Congress. The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, or H.R. 35, was approved in overwhelming fashion, 410 to 4. In the 20th century alone, lawmakers tried some 200 times to address lynching on the federal level, and it had the support of multiple presidents. So why on earth is this only happening now?

It's a valid question. The history on it is this. I mean, between 1882 and 1968, the time at which people would want to have passed laws to prevent things, an estimated 4,743 people were lynched. That's according to the NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative. The first attempts at any sort of federal action on this came in 1900 from North Carolina Congressman George Henry White, who at the time was the only black member of Congress. He introduced a bill on it. And then from there, the story is sort of various forms of obstruction that happened in Congress. Historians have said specifically that Southern lawmakers, particularly Southern Democrats in the 1920s and 30s, often did this thing where they asserted

states' rights as their rationale for not wanting enactment. The South loves that. Yeah, that's always the fallback, if there's nothing else, for not wanting enactment on the federal level. Right. But then the question became, what did these southern states actually do? Well, they would pass their own legislation to try to make the federal law seem unnecessary and then just go ahead and not enforce it. Weird, you know, you got gotta beware cyclops, right? Yeah, right. That's what they're saying out here. And, you know, as we know, Emmett Till,

who the bill is named for, was murdered by two white men in 1955 in, you know, the history of this story that we're telling not very long ago after a white woman accused him of whistling at her and he was just 14 years old. The men were later acquitted by an all-white jury in Mississippi and he was just one of thousands. The men were later acquitted by an all-white jury in Mississippi,

and he was just one of thousands of lynching victims across the country. Right, and these weren't isolated events. There are pictures of towns coming out to, you know, these public gatherings that basically were picnics to watch lynchings, to celebrate them. They were selling pictures of them on postcards with, like, wish you were here. And I think it's just important to recognize

that this was really a pastime in a lot of places. And you know, thousands of people died, but millions more were terrorized. And you know, they were told not to go out after dark, not to talk to white people, don't look at white people, you might get lynched. And so I think that like the culture of it is something that is also just important to note. But back to the history of the laws around this. What happened next? Well, not much of anything. And so little that by the time we got to 2005, the Senate had to put forward and approve a resolution that apologized for their inaction. We're sorry we didn't say sorry yet. Right. And we're sorry that this is still in some ways not a federal crime. Wow. Well, before this week's vote in the House, the Senate took action on this last year, and it took the three black senators in the Senate to propose a bill.

Remind us how all of that went down. Yeah, so that bill was proposed by Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Tim Scott. These lynchings were acts of violence. They were needless and horrendous acts of violence. And they were motivated by racism. And we must acknowledge that fact, lest we repeat it. Lynchings were also crimes that were committed against innocent people. These crimes should have been prosecuted. There were victims who should have received justice but did not.

With this bill, we are finally able to change that and correct a burden on our history as a country. That was Harris discussing the legislation in late 2018, and the Senate unanimously passed the bill in February of 2019, marking the first time that federal anti-lynching legislation passed the Senate. The Senate bill also noted that 99% of lynching perpetrators escaped punishment to the Senate bill, adding lynching to the criminal code and making it a hate crime. Rush cited not only Emmett Till and his personal story learning about that tragic event, but more recent violent racist acts in Charlottesville and El Paso in 2017 and 2019. And murder is often prosecuted at the state or local level, but the passage of this legislation, even if perhaps symbolic at this stage and after over 100 years of effort, follows the precedent of civil rights legislation getting passed at the federal level when these states fail to act or act like they're going to and then don't do

anything. That's right. Well, what's next with this bill? All there is to do now really is to reconcile the House and Senate versions. And then the president is expected to sign it. Congressman Rush also said that the aim would be for it to be passed before the end of Black History Month. Got a couple more days. Yeah. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. brewery complex. All the victims and the shooter were employees at Molson Coors Brewing. Police say the gunman died of a self-inflicted gun wound. Mayor Tom Barrett said the incident was an unspeakable tragedy for the city. At this point, the police have not released additional information on the victims or motives behind the shooting. The humanitarian crisis in Syria reached new heights this week. Refugees in the northwestern province of Idlib are now caught in the midst of what many see as the last battleground of a nine-year-long civil war. The region was a

refuge for the nearly 1.5 million displaced Syrians. Many of them now face immense housing and supply shortages in addition to indiscriminate attacks by the Russian-backed Syrian regime. Aid groups are unable to fulfill the need for tents, which are becoming increasingly necessary as many refugees are shelterless and the temperature begins to dip below freezing. A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can withhold funds from so-called sanctuary states for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Yes, you can either have Trump's money or a gallant heart that will get you into heaven, but you simply can't have both. The court examined a Trump executive order from 2017, which was blocked by lower courts in 2018. With the order reinstated, New York City and seven states, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Rhode Island, can once again be excluded from a grant program meant to fund state and local law enforcement. The case will likely go to the Supreme Court, which often hears cases to resolve conflicts among federal appeals courts.

Tennis pro Maria Sharapova announced her retirement on Wednesday, citing pain from recurring tendon damage in her left shoulder. Sharapova often talked about her rivalry with Serena Williams, who she beat at Wimbledon in 2004 to kick off her career. But the two played against each other in 22 matches, and Sharapova lost 20 of them. So it's kind of like the rivalry a forest fire has with a bone-dry pine cone. Sharapova is one of the highest-paid female athletes of all time with career earnings of $325 million. She was suspended from tennis in 2016 for doping

with a drug called meldonium that was banned in the same year, but she returned after 15 months. One of her post-tennis projects has been running a candy company called Sugarpova that I have binged on turbulent flights several times. So all's well that ends well, you know? Yeah. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, dump Mentos into our diet soda to prank us and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just magical scrolls like me,

What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And keep your hands medically sterile and we'll see you tomorrow. Sterile. Sterile. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media.

It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.