What A Day - Panic! At The New York Redistrict

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Oklahoma’s legislature passed the country’s strictest abortion bill. The ban goes further than Texas’ abortion law, and if signed by Republican Governor Kevin Stitt it would take effect immediately.After the New York State Court of Appeals declared maps drawn by the legislature unconstitutional, a court-appointed “special master” released a new set of Congressional districts for the state. The Brennan Center’s Michael Li joins us to discuss the chaos that erupted from New York’s newly drawn maps.And in headlines: the white gunman in Buffalo, New York’s racially motivated mass shooting appeared in state court, SpaceX reportedly paid $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Elon Musk, and clusters of monkeypox have been reported in the U.S. and Europe. Show Notes:Insider: “A SpaceX flight attendant said Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex, documents show. The company paid $250,000 for her silence” – https://bit.ly/3sLFYgXVote Save America – https://www.votesaveamerica.com/ Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

it's friday may 20th i'm gideon resnick and i'm trevelle anderson and this is what a day with one of our first episodes ever that can be heard by rihanna's new baby and for that rihanna's baby we kind of do apologize because this is a rough show news-wise but you know it could get better or not it could go either way. We're glad you're listening. Yes, we are. On today's show, we're going to explain how New York's newly redrawn congressional maps could pit Democrats against Democrats, plus what you need to know about monkeypox cases. I don't want to know anything. But first, yesterday, Oklahoma submitted its bid for worst state legislature in the country by passing what will be the nation's strictest abortion ban.

Yeah, wow. So we obviously know that abortion bans are spreading across the country. be sued in civil court by private citizens, even if you live out of state but are helping someone who lives in Oklahoma. It's modeled after the law that took effect in Texas back in September, which relies on civilians instead of criminal enforcement. As a reminder, it is that particular provision that has prevented the courts from actually blocking the bans as unconstitutional because state authorities cannot actually bring any of the charges. Constitutional rights are not being violated, they say. Right.

The Oklahoma ban, though, which passed 73 to 16, goes further than the Texas law. In Texas, the ban is on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. In Oklahoma, it'll ban abortions from the moment an egg is fertilized. Now, while there are exceptions made for pregnancies as a result of rape and incest, the person seeking the abortion must have reported those crimes to law enforcement, which if you've watched even a handful of episodes of Law & Order SVU, then you know, like I know, like they definitely know, that those types of crimes are underreported if reported at all. Right. And so what would this punishment then be for those who assist in an abortion procedure? Well, if signed by Governor

Kevin Stitt, who is a Republican that has pledged to make his state the most anti-abortion one in the nation, as if that is a badge of honor, the bill would take effect immediately. It would allow civilian lawsuits against anyone who helps pay for an abortion, and those who sue successfully would be given awards of at least $10,000,

as well as compensatory damages for whatever alleged, quote, emotional distress they've experienced by essentially minding other people's business. Right. But the impact here is greater than just on Oklahomans. For those who haven't seen a map of the United States in a minute, like myself, Oklahoma is directly north of Texas. And when Texas's ban went into effect, people who needed such health care started crossing state lines into Oklahoma. With this new bill, however, the leadership we are under right now does not care if we live or die. The only thing our governor cares about is protecting his power

while using fear and intimidation against us, using our rights as the playing pieces of his sick game with the Oklahoma legislature. Yeah. Wow. Unbelievable. Yeah. Shifting to some redistricting news from earlier this week in New York State, on Monday, a court-appointed, quote-unquote, special master released a new set of congressional districts for the state. So that happened after Democratic leaders proposed a map earlier this year that could have potentially netted Democrats another three House seats in November's elections. But the New York State Court of Appeals declared that unconstitutional and said they would appoint someone to redraw them. Well, the result from that new draft map has been chaos, specifically for Democrats. Okay, what kind of chaos? Lay it on us nice, Gideon.

I'll try. Okay, so the newly proposed districts are leading to, shall we say, some uncomfortable political calculations that are going on. So in one situation, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who is white, decided to leave his newly drawn district and run in a neighboring one. That includes most of Representative Mondaire Jones' constituents. So now Jones, a black progressive freshman member, could either run against Maloney, who also, by the way, runs the House campaign arm, which is a separate thing, or Jones could go to a newly drawn neighboring district against Representative Jamal Bowman, another black progressive freshman. So that's the kind of mess we're talking about so far. Yesterday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries went so far as

to say in a digital ad that the proposed map was taking, quote, a sledgehammer to black districts. It's enough to make Jim Crow blush. And I imagine it takes a lot to make Jim Crow blush. All right. Now, we're recording this episode on Thursday night. But when people hear this on Friday, the proposed map could already be finalized. It's possible. So the final plans are going to go to a state court judge today for approval. But in advance of that, a number of other groups representing marginalized communities have also been submitting responses saying the maps would dilute their political power, specifically in New York City. So before we see that map and what may come as a result of it, I wanted to check in with Michael Lee. He is the senior counsel for the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. I spoke with him yesterday, and I started by asking him to give more details

about New York's current chaotic proposed map. So some of the biggest ramifications are in the New York City area, where the special master redrew a lot of districts that had been placed for a long period of time. And really, I think one thing that is very clear from the maps is that there was no regard to incumbency. It doesn't look like he had turned on in the map drawing software where the incumbents live. And so as a result, a number of incumbents are paired against each other in Manhattan. Carolyn Maloney is paired against Jerry Nadler in the Bronx. In Westchester, Jabal Bowman and Mondaire Jones, two black members of Congress,

now live in the same district, although it's not clear that they're both going to run in that district. But the pairings aren't so much the biggest complaints. I think there are some complaints that the map might dilute the voting power of black voters, particularly in Brooklyn. That is a concern.

And likewise, Asian communities have raised concerns about the fracturing of Asian communities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. And so people have suggested changes to the map that would undo some of that. We will see whether the special master agrees that those are things that can be remedied or not. In terms of the possibility of incumbent Democrats running against each other, there is a similar situation I saw that was playing out in Georgia. So how often do you sort of anticipate we're going to see that? Well, it does happen from time to time, particularly when a state loses a congressional seat.

Somebody has to run and will be paired with somebody. And so that sometimes happens. It likewise sometimes happens as in Georgia because of gerrymandering. The Republicans in Georgia drew Lucy McBath out of her district and she chose instead to run in the neighboring district, which had gotten a lot more Democratic. The problem is that Carolyn Bordeaux also wants to run in that district. So now there is a primary battle on between the two of them in the suburbs of Atlanta. In New York, likewise,

it is not uncommon that there are pairings that result when you unwind gerrymanders or maps that are problematic. But in the New York case, the New York Constitution prohibits drawing maps to favor or disfavor an incumbent. And it does look like the special master just decided the best way to do that is not to even consider where incumbents are and not to worry about that issue and to simply draw the maps and let the cards fall where they may, which is one way to approach the issue. Yeah, just to go a little bit more broad here, I saw you were tweeting about the post-enumeration survey from the census. What did we learn from that, and what are the ramifications of what we found out so far? So it's a fancy word, post-enumeration survey, but after every census, the Census Bureau does basically what is a quality check

to see how accurate it got the hard count of people in the census. And the Census Bureau has completed its post-enumeration survey from the 2020 census, and it turns out that 14 states had fairly significant undercounts or overcounts. Texas, for example, was undercounted by about 2%. And it seems like Texas, had it been fully counted, would have picked up an additional congressional seat. And so Texas, instead of picking up just two, would have had three. That really, I think, sort of shows how Texas ended up creating this problem itself, because the Texas legislature chose not to allocate any money to encourage census turnout

in contrast to states like New York and California, which spent tens and tens of millions of dollars to make sure that everybody participated in the census. Texas spent zero dollars, and it does seem like it has come back to bite them. And it's almost certain that that undercount will disproportionately affect people of color. And so as redistricting fights take place in Texas and people argue about the legal obligation to create additional minority districts and the like, the data that they will be using will have undercounts built into them, and they can make those cases challenging to bring. And so it's certainly a cautionary lesson for states going

forward that in your own interest, have everybody count it because it's not only for redistricting, billions and billions of dollars are allocated every year based on census results. And Texas is losing out because it's undercounted by about 2%. Is there anything that could be done about that before the next census? Like, is there any sort of situation in which you could apply the correction, I guess, for lack of a better term? Calibrating it correctly, I think, is something that the Census Bureau, they're really pros at this. And I think they're very committed to the new census director,

Rob Santos, seems very committed to making new census director, Rob Santos, seems very committed to making the census better. But the planning for the next census has already begun. It takes about 10 years to do it. So there's a lot of lead up and we'll see what happens. So that was my conversation with Michael Lee, the senior counsel for the Brennan Center's democracy program. More on all of this very soon. But that is the latest for now. Let's get to some headlines. Yesterday, the 18-year-old white man accused of targeting and killing 10 black people and wounding three others in Buffalo, New York last Saturday appeared in state court. A grand jury voted to indict the suspect on first-degree murder, although their investigation is not yet complete.

They could indict him on further charges in the next month or so. The gunman was initially charged with one count of first-degree murder just hours after his arrest on Saturday, and at the time, he pleaded not guilty. This new indictment, however, covers all 10 deaths. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Yesterday's court appearance was brief and some family members of the victims attended. The gunman is currently accused of targeting a specific grocery store in a black neighborhood of Buffalo, and federal officials are still investigating the shooting as a possible hate

crime. The judge announced the gunman's next court appearance will be on June 9th, and in the meantime, the suspect is being held without bail. Meanwhile, more funerals for those who were murdered are being held today. SpaceX reportedly paid a flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim that was leveled against Elon Musk in 2018. That is according to an exclusive from Insider, whose reporting is based on a declaration signed by a friend of the attendant, plus other documents. Insider says the incident occurred in 2016 and involved Musk, quote, exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. Per that declaration, the woman said that she'd been encouraged after being hired as a flight attendant to train as a masseuse so she could give Musk massages.

The alleged incident occurred during a massage session. When Insider reached Musk for comment, he initially emailed to ask for additional time, saying there is, quote, a lot more to this story. He referred to the story as a, quote, politically motivated hit piece and said that, quote, If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30 year career that it comes to light. Insider said he did not comment further after being given an extension to do so.

We will link to the story in our show notes. Disturbing. We need to tell you about a bad thing named after a beautiful animal. Yes, we are talking about monkeypox. A case of it was reported in Massachusetts yesterday, along with a possible case in New York. Zooming out further, several clusters of monkeypox have been reported over the past two weeks in places like Spain, Portugal, Canada, and the UK, where the infectious disease is rarely found. If you want a monkeypox primer, it is similar to the smallpox virus. It often spreads from rodent to human, and nowadays it's most commonly detected in Central and West Africa.

It causes fever and swollen lymph nodes and eventually fluid-filled bumps or pox on people's skin. I did not pause to ask if you wanted the primer. I apologize. It's not anywhere near as transmissible as COVID, so you can breathe a sigh of relief, preferably with a mask on since COVID cases are still high. But the recent rise in monkeypox cases is unusual, particularly because some of the infected individuals had no travel links to places where monkeypox is more common, indicating some amount of community spread. There's also evidence that the virus could be spreading sexually this time around. And at least in the UK,

it is predominantly infecting individuals who self-identify as men who have sex with men. Again, the case numbers that we are talking about here are in the low dozens. And the bottom line, according to experts, is don't panic. The director of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told the Washington Post, I think the risk to the general public at this point from the information we have

is very, very low. Whew. Monkey pox. I need whoever is playing Mother Nature up there to slow down. I was going to leave it like that. I completely agree.

Okay. Yep. One Republican congressman is learning firsthand about the dangers of being a terrific host. Representative Barry Loudermilk from Georgia has been called to testify to the House January 6th Committee about tours that the committee says he led through the Capitol complex on the day before the insurrection. We've heard about these tours before. Soon after the attack, 34 House Democrats signed on to a letter to the Capitol Police asking the department to investigate them, suggesting that an unusually large number of tours were given on January 5th. These claims were denied by House Republicans, who said security footage from that day showed, quote,

no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on, which sounds like a line that Trump would say. In calling Loudermilk to testify, the January 6th committee said it had evidence that, quote, directly contradicts those Republican denials. The Capitol may be haunted, but the people Democrats saw there were not ghosts. After Loudermilk's possible stint as an insurrection travel agent, he was one of the 147 Republicans who voted on January 6th to overturn the 2020 election results.

The House committee wants to meet with him next week. This is just person after person getting called into the principal's office by name at this point. Week by week on end. We could have just done a group reprimand, you know? Yeah, get it done in one conversation.

I love the unusually large number of tours we're given. Just so happens to be the day before this other big thing happened. Interesting. What a time that we live in. And those are the headlines. We'll be back after some ads with a story about the evil lady luck from a small town in Japan. It's Friday, Wild Squad.

And for today's Temp Check, we are talking about the nightmare that can begin when free money lands on your doorstep. A 24-year-old man was arrested this Wednesday in Japan after he gambled away $360,000 in COVID-19 aid that he had received by accident. His name is Sho Taguchi, and he lives in a small town called Abu that is home to just over 3,000 people. Low-income households in that town were supposed to receive about 800 each from the government instead though all of that money was wired to taguchi yikes he refused to give it back when

confronted by authorities and eventually revealed that he had lost it all at online casinos what are you doing reflecting on the way taguchi gained access to the money one prosecutor in abu told the new york times quote the town's approach was not strict enough. Maybe their approach was based on a view of human nature as fundamentally good. Ooh, that is a brutal reading of them. So, Travelle, what do you make of this, and would you be more or less responsible than Taguchi here?

Okay, so here's the thing, Gideon, all right? If I mysteriously stumbled upon $360,000 and I knew I had to return it, I can see one saying, you know what? Let me take a couple of these coins, see if I can like double it, you know, at the casino. And then I can still give these people back their money, but also have a little for myself.

It just seems like maybe Mr. Show wasn't as lucky as he thought he would be you know at the roulette table I had the similar good-natured view of the situation which was yeah he was like oh 360,000 would you like 720,000 or perhaps even more he was just waiting to try to give everybody even more. He was just waiting to try to give everybody even more money. This is obviously crazy, but it strikes me as very similar to those stories in the US with those like PPP loans that you would see going to some, you know, 22 year old guy in South Florida who all of a sudden had like six Lamborghinis or whatever. So, you know, I guess in that sense, encouraging some perspectives that 20 something year old men across the world, when given a lot of money, will not know what to do with it, I guess. Ah, aye, aye, aye. Okay, just like that, we have checked our temps.

Be careful with your local government's money. Yes. Please. One more thing before we go. We can't give too much away right now, but Crooked has something big coming soon. It's been in the works for over a year, and it's something pretty much everyone at Crooked loves. Again, we are extremely limited in what we're allowed to reveal, and if we go too far, only God knows what Crooked could do to us. For now, all we're allowed to tell you about this thing is that it is delicious. It is delicious. What could it be? It's a pie that gets delivered to my face every day. Is that what you really want, Gideon? Sure. I don't know. Well, stay tuned, beautiful people. When there's an announcement, you'll be the first to hear it.

That is all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, fire your insurrection travel agent, and tell your friends to listen. And if you are into reading and not just the terms and conditions of any free money that arrives by mail like me, what today is also a nightly newsletter, check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Travell Anderson. I'm Gideon Resnick. And thanks for listening, Rihanna's baby. We're sorry that the world is the way that it is,

but frankly, we can't really control that. We just read the news out, honey, okay? Yeah, but welcome and thank you. Yes, for all the brilliance you will bestow upon us, we know. Yeah, thank you. Yes. For all the brilliance you will bestow upon us, we know. Yeah, thank you in advance. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Jazzy Marine and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers.

Our head writer is John Milstein and our executive producers are Leo Duran and me, Gideon Resnick. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.