What A Day - Iowa Wish I Could Quit You

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

The Iowa caucuses took place on Monday night and more full results have finally started to come in. 100 percent of precincts have been reported, but most news outlets has yet to declare a winner. Bernie Sanders leads in vote totals and he and Pete Buttigieg differ by just .1 percent in Standard Delegate Equivalents. Following the recent string of deaths in Mississippi prisons, the Justice Department is now opening a civil rights probe into the state’s prison system. As the lawsuit goes on, inmates are living in an environment that’s proven be unsafe. And in headlines: Christina Koch makes space history, Trump’s very gracious acquittal speech, and the perils “free” tax filing.

It's Friday, February 7th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, where we are still unable to declare a winner in the Most Adorable Host Contest. Dude, it's me. Buy a landslide. Just let it, you gotta concede at some point. I'm succumbing to peer pressure again. Sorry, listeners. On today's show, the latest out of Iowa and what's next in the 2020 presidential race. The Department of Justice investigates Mississippi's prison system. Then, as always, some headlines. All right. Well, the Iowa caucuses took place on Monday night.

And here we are back at it again with fuller results. 100 percent of precincts have been reported, but no winner has been officially declared. Here's what we know. Senator Bernie Sanders leads in vote totals, and he drastically closed the gap in state delegate equivalents with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. They are now within point one percent of one another. But the results are still being checked for potential small errors since the race is so close. And that's keeping outlets from calling it gideon what is going on it's just a continuous saga yeah it's it's been going and it goes and

goes uh but on thursday we had a couple of other developments in the race besides all the precincts returning what we think are the results but again could could and likely do have inaccuracies according to reporting uh the other developments though first, first in New Hampshire, Sanders declared victory. So what I want to do today, three days late, is to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night. The shade of three days late. Let's take a step back here, though. So what Sanders said throughout the rest of this press conference was that it was possible that he or Buttigieg would ultimately lead in this SDE count that we've been tracking, knowing and loving over the last couple of days, but that Sanders had a

commanding lead of 6,000 votes when people first chose their candidates. His argument is that since it's a virtual tie on SDEs and on total state delegates that are going to be sent to the convention, he should be the winner based on winning the vote totals. But let's take a second to kind of figure out here how Sanders came to be so close in the first place to tying with Buttigieg on these SDEs. It has something to do with something called satellite caucuses. Yeah, and you know, these are not in space. They're just, they're called that. Right, they're safely on Earth. Everybody was standing on the ground with them.

They are just new and they were set up for people who couldn't make the regular caucus time because they live out of state or they have to work, for instance, or they have children and it's difficult to bring people to a gym and stand around for a while. These satellite caucuses were the last to be reported. And Sanders focused on them, in some cases, drawing out minority and working class caucus goers. And that has been rewarding so far in this SDE count. I would caveat, though, that with anything having to do with Iowa, things could seemingly change because it is a large mess. We could go up or down by just a

little bit here in the next couple of days, and it could change the way people look at things again. But when we were in Iowa, we had the chance to witness one of these satellite caucuses, and it was honestly pretty fascinating and strange. It was at Drake University, and on the first go-around, only Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren had enough people to make it to that final round. Then when some of the supporters of other candidates were deciding, you know, who they would go for, literally, you know, a mom or dad type situation, Congressman Ro Khanna, a Sanders surrogate, walks over to try to discuss some of the important issues with a Buttigieg supporter.

Then, as this is happening, he convinces him to join the Sanders group. And our good friend, Crooked producer Michael Martinez actually got this audio about him explaining how he did it. Hey, Congressman. How are you? Good to see you. Did you just land that guy? First, I said how much respect I have for Pete Buttigieg and the type of campaign he's run. And so that, I think, opened him up to listening. And then I said, what's your biggest issue?

He said, climate change. And I said, here's what Bernie Sanders is going to do. Then he said, well, I have a disagreement with Bernie Sanders on health care, for Medicare if you want it, and on Medicare for all. And I said, look, what Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have in common is far more than what divides them. And you can rest assured that Bernie Sanders is going to have a place for people like Buttigieg in the coalition. And it seemed to work one at a time. But that's the great thing. Yeah. So at the time.

Sorry, we have to address the pronunciation. We're all thinking it. Yeah. It's a hard name. It's got a lot of letters. Just go with Pete on the second or third reference. But anyway, so at the time, we didn't realize that this, you know, small action could have ended up being pretty significant if these are the caucuses that are or the caucus sites

that are making up the difference here. Yeah. And it's kind of cool that, you know, Ro Khanna's really a celebrity, you know, in terms of like, being a surrogate for someone in that room. Yeah. So like actually advocating in person is wild. All right. Well, back to Thursday, DNC Chairman Tom Perez had something to say about the results in Iowa. Can you talk about that for a sec? Yeah. Perez, who's in charge of the organization that's supposed to oversee the national primary process, he puts out this tweet saying he was calling for the Iowa Democratic Party to re-canvass the vote. That would effectively be just a rechecking of the vote. It wouldn't be, you know, come back

February 29th and we'll do it all over again. No one's coming back. And officials in Iowa would have to hand audit these caucus worksheets. But later, though, the Iowa Democratic Party put out a statement that didn't directly address what Perez said and only wrote that the party would do a re-canvas if presidential candidates were to be the ones that requested one and they have not so far. So since no candidate has done it, it's kind of unclear whether that would actually happen at all. So what you're saying is I'm going to be dead before this Iowa thing is over. Oh, yeah, we all will. All right. Well, we also have yet another debate

this evening and the New Hampshire primary is right around the corner. So what's going on over there? We're gonna find out. But this is a state that Sanders won handily in 2016. And at least for now, he is the favorite going in again. The polling average has him in first place ahead of Biden by eight points, who was followed by Buttigieg and Warren, though Buttigieg has been gaining a bit in the last few days there after the Iowa caucus. And in this debate, I would think that there's going to be some aggressive tactics from Biden who had a dismal showing in Iowa. And he's trying to right himself and has been trying to contrast more with Buttigieg and Sanders. It's also the first time that we're going to have a debate after the acquittal of President Trump. So I'd anticipate some questions on that, especially for the

senators that are involved. And it's going to be the last chance for Warren and Klobuchar to make some kind of headway on a national stage before next Tuesday. So I figure, you know, they're going to try to do that as well. And then Andrew Yang is going to be back again. So, you know, can anticipate some funny stuff from him as well. Tom Steyer will also be there, if only to just say hi to Bernie. Well, we'll talk to you again on Monday from New Hampshire, where the 2020 race continues. Following the recent string of deaths in Mississippi prisons, the Justice Department is now opening a civil rights probe into the state's prison system. On December 29th, there was a major prison riot at Parchman, the most notorious of their penitentiaries.

And since then, 15 inmates have died at four separate sites. There's been national attention around the conditions in these prisons, and Jay-Z's label, Rock Nation, is funding a lawsuit brought by prisoners against the state. Still, while the investigations and suits play out, there are inmates living in a proven unsafe environment. Akilah, can you tell us a little bit more about the background on this and how this all began? Yeah. Well, the first thing to realize is that deaths in prisons in Mississippi are not at all a new phenomenon. Here's some stats. In August 2018, 16 inmates died in custody there in just a single month. About four inmates per month die in Mississippi prisons, according to the most recent data we have from the Justice Department,

which is one and a half times the national average. But let's talk about this most recent situation. The deaths have been a mix of suicides and gang violence, and Mississippi has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation. It also has a hard time hiring people to work in the prisons due to their very low pay. So it was only a matter of time before all of these factors reached a fever pitch. In other words, the prisons may not be staffed or funded to keep the prisoners safe. Yeah, it's awful. One of the prisons at the heart of this story is Parchman. Can you tell us a little bit about its specific history? Yeah, so Parchman is the only maximum security prison for men in the state of Mississippi,

and it is the state's oldest prison. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History says that Parchman was, quote, in many ways reminiscent of a gigantic antebellum plantation. And it was. It was originally only used to imprison black men, and they were mostly used as unpaid laborers, so that's exactly what it sounds like. A big plantation with a bunch of black people who are not being paid. Two and two.

Right. Today, the prison holds about 3,000 people, some on death row, and critics say it operates in a constant state of crisis and neglect, putting it in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Right now, there's a big push to shut down Parchman. Since the beginning of January, eight inmates have died at that facility alone, and just a couple weeks ago, the head of the Department of Corrections stepped down. So in January, one segment of Parchman, which housed 625 inmates, was shut down because of how dire the living conditions are.

But critics say that's just not enough. Like, obviously, the problems don't begin in there. Right. And so the Justice Department is looking into this. What exactly are harm at the hands of other prisoners and whether there is adequate suicide prevention, including adequate mental health care and appropriate use of isolation. So, you know, just the big things that most prisons should have in place already. Yeah. I mean, if this makes you angry like it does me, there's so many ways to get involved. One that caught our eye is a letter writing campaign called Mississippi Freedom Letters that's aiming to write to every single inmate in the state to let them know that people are paying attention and fighting for their rights. It's pretty powerful stuff. Definitely look that up if you have a chance. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch made history yesterday as she touched down on Earth after the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Now, this is my kind of satellite cock. Ew. You love that joke. All right, well, Christina stayed in space for 328 days, and just four months ago, she and fellow astronaut Dr. Jessica Meyer performed the first ever all-female spacewalk.

Both records are incredible milestones, but both NASA and Koch want people to know that a lot happened in between those big, flashy numbers. Koch did research on the role of gravity on plant health, studied how fire works in space, and, you know, way more stuff than that. But before she returned to our one strange rock, she said she was looking forward to eating with forks and knives again because they don't have them in space. Apparently, the TSA laws around sharp objects also apply to space travel. You have to have a very small travel size. Colgate toothpaste. You're up there.

Corteva, the largest producer of a pesticide linked to brain damage in children, announced that it will stop making the chemical by the end of this year. Several studies have found that even a moderate exposure to the chemical during pregnancy could result in memory problems and a lower IQ for the child. It's so dangerous that the United States banned it from residential use 20 years ago, which is when you could still smoke cigarettes in every restaurant. There were recently plans to ban the pesticide for commercial use, too, but the Trump administration rejected the research and reversed the ban. Why would you do such a thing? Before we pat Corteva on the back for their decision,

the company says the reason it's halting production is declining sales. You know the first rule of buying pesticide, don't get one that attacks your brain. Well, Trump celebrated his not-guilty impeachment verdict in a normal way on Thursday by gathering all of his friends and employees in a room to yell about people that weren't there. In an hour-long ad-lib speech from the East Room of the White House, Trump played all the hits. He called the process a witch hunt. He popped off

about leakers and liars and insisted he'd done nothing wrong. He attacked political adversaries by name, calling Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, quote, horrible people. And Mitt Romney, quote, a failed presidential candidate. Where's the light at? All right, well, when Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted in 1999, he appeared alone in the Rose Garden and gave a somber apology. Trump nixed that option and went with a more petulant birthday boy approach. Trump still faces a number of legal battles over his tax returns and outstanding Mueller subpoenas, which should give him plenty of things to be mad about going into 2020.

He's going to be stomping his feet in a grocery store type energy all year. Good piece of info for you as we come up on tax season. If your adjusted gross income was less than $69,000 last year, you might, thank you very much, you might qualify for free tax return software through IRS's free file program. Now, that's the kind of news you'll only get at What A Day and not from tax companies like TurboTax and H&R Block, who grifted millions of dollars from at least 14 million Americans that qualified for FreeFile last year, according to a recent ProPublica report. To give you some context, the FreeFile program is a public-private partnership that points users towards free versions of software like TurboTax that they normally have to pay for. Tax companies

have lobbied heavily for it because it gives the IRS an excuse to not develop their own free software, which could create competition. They are historically lazy. At the same time, these companies have gone out of their way to bury their free file options in Google results and generally make them really hard to use so that people would end up paying even if they shouldn't have to. Just 2.4% of the people who could have used FreeFile last year did, which, as it turns out, sucks very bad. The IRS has been gutted by budget cuts over the last eight years, so it's unlikely they'll do anything about this any time soon.

Woof. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, buy me fish and maple syrup because I'm New Hampshire bound, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just the things teenagers write on trees 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 that's my kind of satellite caucus. This joke was stolen from me and used two times without my permission. 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.