What A Day - Don't Be Like Mike

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

Vice President Mike Pence says the federal coronavirus task force could be disbanded within a month because of “the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country.” We discuss what that could possibly mean. Wisconsin's Republican-controlled legislature is suing over the state's stay-at-home order, in a case that’s currently being heard by Wisconsin's conservative Supreme Court. We talk to Justice-elect Jill Karofsky, who will begin her term on that court in August.And in headlines: Georgia prosecutors will bring the case of Ahmaud Arbery to a grand jury, California sues Uber and Lyft, and meat shortages mean no junior bacon cheeseburgers at certain Wendy’s.

It's Wednesday, May 6th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, where we're congratulating Grimes on becoming a motherboard. Yeah, and using a keyboard and just slapping our hands on it to name the kid. It's like XAEX977, whatever it is. Look, as a black person with a name that people fuck up, I'm upset. On today's show, we check in with Wisconsin's newly elected Supreme Court Justice, then some headlines. But first, the latest. Okay, so that's the sound of shepherds herding tons of sheep through streets in Turkey that are empty because of coronavirus curfews.

So in case you ever wanted to know what that sounds like, that was that. But in news, Vice President Pence told reporters yesterday that the coronavirus task force created to manage the federal government's response to the pandemic could be disbanded within a month because of, quote, the tremendous progress we've made as a country. To that I say, sir. Akilah, what does this actually mean? Dude, I don't know. Like at this point, I don't know. I don't have an answer for the delusion. And I just literally don't know. As far as progress goes, many states are reopening, even as cases are increasing and models are predicting an additional uptick in cases. More than 70,000 Americans died.

So if this is progress, honestly, I don't know what the goal is. A senior White House official told CNN that the task force will be phased down by Memorial Day, and Trump told reporters during his maskless trip to the Honeywell mask plant in Arizona that even after the task force is disbanded, Dr. Birx, the virus response coordinator for the task force, and other top public officials could still be involved in the efforts to address the pandemic. And on that front, do we know in what capacity are they going to be doing their own press conferences or something?

I mean, I think we just have to stop assuming that this administration has a plan. All we know is that they claim that we're still going to hear from them. There are never details. But practically speaking, disbanding the task force means that we could have less coordination between federal agencies and less of a planned response effort. Not that it's been going that great so far. The administration is having a particularly bad week in regards to their coronavirus response. Aside from this bizarre statement from the vice president, Ree Progress, Rick Bright, the former top vaccine official removed from his post in April, alleged in a whistleblower

complaint that he was reassigned because he tried to, quote, prioritize science and safety over political expediency, and added that he was pressured to contract with companies that have political links to the administration. Yeah, this is definitely something that we're going to have to keep an eye on going forward. Yeah. And a complaint filed to the House suggests that the coronavirus team headed up by nepotism poster child Jared Kushner has been suffering because it relies on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms that are completely underqualified and ill-suited for the job. So seems like a real theme with Kushner and his team, which has been acting kind of like a shadow task force, is expected to continue. Yeah, his shadow task forcing in the Middle East went great. Shifting gears, though, let's talk for a second about something else coming out of the government at the moment. Stimulus checks. Seems like theES Act, families should be receiving $500 per child,

but undocumented people and mixed-status families were excluded. The suit claims that these children, U.S. citizens, are being denied that relief and their constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. So, damn. And this also follows last week's lawsuit from spouses of undocumented immigrants who similarly have not received their money. All right, so that's a quick look at the government and stories related to that. Do we have updates, though, on the science front as it relates to the virus?

Thankfully, yes. Science is still crushing it. So a couple new studies are adding to the pile of evidence that children can and do transmit the coronavirus. So while Trump might want Barron to go back to school already, epidemiologists are just cautioning entirely against reopening. In a study published last week in the journal Science, data from two cities in China were analyzed. Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, and Shanghai. The study found that children were around a third three times as many contacts as adults and three times as many opportunities to get infected, which essentially just evens out their risk. There are several countries who have begun to reopen schools, but they have done a better job of controlling the virus than we have. And only time is going to tell if they continue to be safe in that decision.

Another study out of Germany backed up the findings that children can spread the virus readily. This is one of the big questions epidemiologists are trying to solve. So studies like these are really important to getting to a practical answer on what to do about schools in the future. Right. So that's what's going on nationally. But let's take a moment to zoom in on Wisconsin, where the state legislature is suing over Wisconsin's stay-at-home order.

Gideon, you want to explain? Yeah, so the case is called Wisconsin Legislature v. Palm. And the Palm in this situation refers to Andrea Palm, who is the head of the state's health agency, appointed by Governor Tony Evers, who is a Democrat. The lawsuit, filed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature, is effectively seeking to put an end to the stay-at-home order in the state. But it ends up being bigger than that. It's also questioning whether Palm exceeded her authority when she ordered those closures and instructed Wisconsinites to stay home beginning on March 24th. And it could impact this kind of quick, necessary decision making by

figures like Palm in the future. Wisconsin currently has about 8,500 cases. All right. So this case is now in front of Wisconsin Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority. Yesterday, they heard oral arguments over Zoom. Any sense of how they're going to decide? Right. Even though the justices themselves were practicing social distancing, the five conservative justices on the court appeared fine with the prospect of ending this mandated order. To give you a sense of where their heads are at, here are a few of the issues those justices brought up. I am paraphrasing here. Is Palm's order akin to the executive order mandating internment of Japanese Americans in World War II? Could Palm use the same authority to do shutdowns for the seasonal flu? And when the lawyer arguing on behalf of the order mentioned a COVID-19 outbreak at a meatpacking facility in the state,

one of the justices jumped in to point out that those cases weren't among, quote, regular folks in that county. Whoa. Yes. What? Yes. Sorry. That's just that's a wild thing to say. Yes.

All right. Regular folks. Regular folks. The court, though, has not said yet when a decision would be reached on the case, but we'll keep you updated. Yeah. And as we've talked about on the show, this is the same Wisconsin Supreme Court that overturned the Democratic governor's order to postpone a recent election in the state, forcing people to scramble to get their absentee ballots in or even go to the polls. We now know voting in person on that day has led to dozens of identified COVID-19 cases, which obviously terrible, totally predictable. But in that same election in April, one of these conservative justices, Daniel Kelly, who had the backing of President Trump, lost his seat on the court.

Judge Jill Karofsky, running on a platform of restoring faith in our courts, defeated him. And we spoke to her earlier this week about the election. I do think that there were people who were angry about what the United States Supreme Court, what the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, what the Wisconsin legislature decided on the eve of the election. And they said, we are going to vote. And you saw them in their masks and you saw them with their gloves and you saw them standing six feet apart, especially in Milwaukee. And they went to the polls. They wanted their voice to be heard. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to force people to be risking their lives, then like they're going to show up and vote against you. But, you know, Karofsky winning was a really big upset. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, incumbents don't lose often in these circumstances. Kelly was just the second incumbent to lose since 1967. And in the more immediate future, Karofsky's victory means that the court's conservative

majority will fall from 5-2 to 4-3. And that'll be important for upcoming cases, things that have to do with voting rights, gerrymandering, other civil rights cases, things of that nature. And there's also some actual evidence that Republicans' insistence on making people show up to vote, endangering their public health and safety, may have led to a backlash against them. The progressive organization Future Now Fund put out a study showing that counties in Wisconsin

with higher coronavirus infection rates had bigger shifts towards Karofsky than places with lower rates. So Wisconsin is a swing state. So this win has some Democrats feeling like they could take the state in November, given the apparent success of the organizing that went into mobilizing vote by mail and voter sentiment, and this sort of broader backlash against Trump and Republican mismanagement of the pandemic. Right. But for Karofsky, the win was bittersweet because she found it unconscionable that people were made to vote under those circumstances. When we talked to

her, she said that she's hoping to be part of making the courts less partisan and less bought off by businesses or special interests. Donald Trump first endorsed Dan Kelly back in January. Dan Kelly started signaling to Donald Trump that if you get me across the finish line on April 7th, I will be there for you come November when we talk about things like voter purge or other issues. And so it was no surprise at all. Dan Kelly was a very, very consistent vote for right-wing special interests and seemed to be very, very aligned with with Donald Trump. August 1st, I will start my term. It is a 10 year term on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

And I am going to get busy doing the job that I was elected to do, which is interpreting the law and making decisions that come before us based on what the law says. Yeah, sounds like a good plan and like what justices are supposed to do. By the way, while we're talking about fairness, vote by mail is going to be an essential part of a safe and fair election in November. And the great news is there's research that it increases participation to for young people, for people of color and across socioeconomic groups. If you want to push for that, join our campaign and call your members of Congress. Head over to votesaveamerica.com slash call to find out more.

It's Wednesday, WOD Squad. Is it Wednesday? It's Wednesday, WOD Squad. Is it Wednesday? It's Wednesday. Well, you know, how you doing? I hope you're doing okay. I hope you're sleeping enough. Let's check in. So, I've been watching a lot of TV, new and old.

And Giddy, I want to know, what new show do you love? Oh, I have a bad answer for this. But I have a rec for a movie that is the length of perhaps three shows. Three like 30 minute shows. So like a standard movie. Standard movie, yes. That was an easier way to put it. It's called Unstoppable.

And the concept is that Chris Pine and Denzel Washington have to stop a runaway freight train that is going through the middle of Pennsylvania. Cool action movie, cool concept based on a true story. And it features like a fairly old Denzel running on the top of a train to actually like hit the brakes on it while it's running away. So it's speed. It is speed. It's speed, but real and on a train. Yeah, it rocks though. Well, I mean, I'm not the target demographic for that, but I guarantee someone listening is going to watch

and get back to us. The Unstoppable Hive is unstoppable, frankly. But what is your binging habit like? Okay, so eating, terrible. But binge watching, I have loved Never Have I Ever on Netflix. The show is incredible. Mindy Kaling's new show, it's about teenage girls in high school. It is not just about that, though.

It's about so many things, grief and being Indian and all of these very interesting things. But I think my favorite thing about it is that John McEnroe, the very angry to this player, narrates it from the perspective of the teenage girl. And every time his narration breaks in, I have to pause it to stop laughing because he is very good at narrating. That rocks. Yeah, I've heard really good things about this.

I'm excited to catch on to it approximately five years late and report back to everyone at that point. Yeah, I mean heard really good things about this. I'm excited to catch on to it approximately five years late and report back to everyone at that point. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. There's plenty to watch. We have time, it seems like. But guess what, guys? We did it. We did it.

We checked these temperatures, and wow, I feel better already. Hope your streaming service of choice just stops asking you if you're still watching and just assumes that you are. We're going to check your temp again tomorrow. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Prosecutors in Georgia say they plan to present a case involving the killing of an unarmed black man to a grand jury. 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was jogging through a neighborhood back in February when two white men chased after him in their truck and fatally shot him.

The men said they thought he was involved in a burglary and claimed self-defense. Neither of them were arrested after the shooting, which drew a lot of rightful anger from civil rights activists and local NAACP leaders. One prosecutor who later recused himself from the case said that Arby's assailants acted legally under Georgia citizens' arrest statutes. After a graphic video of the incident emerged online, the case's current prosecutor contradicted that position, deciding that a grand jury should see the case and consider criminal charges against the men who killed Arby. That could take up to a month because of the pandemic. California is suing Uber and Lyft for misclassifying their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The state's attorney general argues they violated

a new California law requiring companies to prove that contractors are free from company control. The suit claims that by classifying workers as independent contractors, the companies are depriving them of basic workers protections such as minimum wage, overtime and unemployment insurance. Uber and Lyft have been pouring millions of dollars into ballot initiatives in recent months to make sure that their workers would be exempt from the new law. Astute listeners will notice this could mean that those ballot initiatives are bad. Intriguing. Meat shortages stemming from coronavirus-related plant closures

have begun to hit home for certain junior bacon cheeseburger-loving members of the WOD squad. Nearly one-fifth of America's 5,500 Wendy's restaurants are currently out of beef. That's according to one industry analyst who said that Wendy's is especially vulnerable among fast food places for using beef that's always fresh, never frozen. Their only crime was being too damn pure for this godforsaken world. True. In contrast, though, the CEO of McDonald's gloated last week that his company hasn't experienced, quote, a single supply chain break.

We'll be sure to come by then so the folks at McDonald's can thaw out one of their ice cold two year old patties and watch me throw it in the garbage. You stay away from my noble red haired friend, Wendy. Oh, Wendy. I guess we know where the beef is. All right. Well, a large portion of American workers aren't ready to give up the pajama bottoms and fully loaded 11 a.m. sandwiches of their work from home lifestyle. That's according to an IBM survey released last week, which found that 54 percent of the 25000 adults polled want the ability to work mostly from home after the coronavirus pandemic ends. Work from home is an option that's mostly available to white collar workers. It's usually not possible for people who work in manufacturing jobs or grocery store clerks, delivery people, and more. Those who have the ability might be able to continue clocking in from their living room.

A Gallup poll showed that 52% of managers whose employees are currently working from home will allow more remote work in the future. Tight. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like this show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, donate beef to a Wendy's near you and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just cursive before it's wiped off the face of the earth 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 enjoy your fully loaded 11 a.m. sandwiches. I wish I was a part of that lifestyle. I'm eating Pop-Tarts over here.

I know. Where are we getting these Sammies, friends. What a day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun 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.