What A Day - The Little Travel Ban That Could

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Impeachment continued on Wednesday with House managers beginning to lay out their case for why President Trump should be convicted and removed from office. We discuss highlights and re-introduce you to the key Republican Senators who might be feeling the heat. Trump confirmed his intention to widen his infamous travel ban, potentially doubling its scope by adding a bunch of new countries like Belarus, Myanmar, and more. And in headlines: coronavirus updates, standing up to Geoffrey the Giraffe, and the latest from pyramid scheme baroness Betsy DeVos. Check out the Drop App: https://b.ewd.io/whataday

It's Thursday, January 23rd. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, informing you that fictional nutman Mr. Peanut has passed, and it's not something to laugh about. Yeah, I mean, if we had universal health care, he might have lived past 107. He was struggling with crippling medical debt for an operation on his shell. On today's show, an update on Trump's travel ban and then some headlines. But first, and again, you know it, impeachment. Captain's log day 339 of talking about this very long and repetitive process. We've run out of supplies, the headphones and mics are glitching, and we only have water and milk to consume.

But impeachment pressed on on Wednesday with House managers beginning to lay out their case for why President Trump should be convicted and removed from office. They argued that he used his power to cheat his way to win in the next presidential election by trying to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and leveraging military aid to do so. So we've stated these charges so many times on this show that by the end of the month, we should all be able to say it verbatim, like the intro to Law & Order SVU. Well, this is still important. So here's a clip explaining why. If not remedied by his conviction in the Senate and removal from office, President Trump's abuse of his office and obstruction of Congress will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches of government, inviting future presidents to operate as if they are also beyond

the reach of accountability, congressional oversight, and the law. That was Congressman Adam Schiff, one of the House managers, making his remarks on the floor. Also yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that he did not want to strike a kind of ludicrous bargain with Republicans on witnesses that could be called. There had been talk of a trade that would allow for former National Security Advisor John Bolton to testify in exchange for Hunter Biden. Yeah, former Vice President Joe Biden made similar remarks during a campaign event in Iowa when asked about whether he or his son Hunter would testify.

The reason why I would not make the deal on the bottom line is, this is a constitutional issue and we're not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater. They not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater. They're trying to turn it into political theater, but I want no part of being any part of that. The decision to call witnesses or subpoena documents is likely to come up next week, but we figured it's as good a time as they need to go through some of the important senators involved in that process, what their thoughts have been so far, and the electoral pressure they may or may not be facing later this year. Now, remember, Democrats only

need four Republicans to vote with them to call witnesses or get more evidence. So it is possible. Yeah, well, first up, Senator Susan Collins. Okie doke. So Collins is up for reelection in Maine this year and is in a race that Democrats are eager to win. It's one of the ones that could help them get a majority later in the year. Collins is often memed as one of the many Republicans in the Senate with, quote, very serious concerns about any sort of issue that's brought up and ends up doing things like voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh anyway. But on Tuesday, she voted with Republicans a number of times against subpoenaing documents and witnesses, but also claimed credit for some of the changes that McConnell made to the rules and said that she would likely still support more witnesses later in the trial after opening arguments take

place. Yeah, I'm definitely going to believe that when I see it. For sure. Then we have another Republican senator up for reelection this year in maybe an even tougher battle. That's Cory Gardner in Colorado. Yeah, Gardner is representing a state that is increasingly turning more and more blue. I think his odds are probably at this point the worst of the bunch of senators that we're going to talk about on today's episode. But he, like a lot of other Republicans in the Trump era, have decided that the better choice to retain their voters is to just do everything that Trump wants. They think that these Republican voters are going to flee from them if they vote to impeach the president. And they've already lost independence anyway, to some degree, for aligning with the president in the first place. So they're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. Gardner's been noticeably more quiet than others in tough spots on the question of witnesses, more evasive and harder to pin down.

One of the brief interviews people got with him was at an airport when he was exiting a plane. This could all be attributed in part to this exchange that Gardner had in October of last year. Senator, as you know, impeachment's on the minds of a lot of people. You've called it a partisan circus, but I haven't heard you answer this question. Do you believe it's appropriate for the president of the United States to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival? Yes or no? Well, look, this is what we're going to get into. The Senate Intelligence Committee is having an investigation, a bipartisan investigation.

Unfortunately, though, what we've seen is a very political process takeover. If you look at Al Green in Texas, a member of Congress has said, we need to impeach President Trump now because we might not be able to beat him in November. That's about politics. That's not what the serious investigation

should be about. But is it appropriate? Joe, I've answered your question. No, you didn't. Is it a yes or no? Well, then another senator who might have a tough election this year, Senator Martha McSally of Arizona. It's not a children's book character.

It just sounds like it. Martha McSally. She was involved in a pretty high profile and ridiculous stunt around impeachment pretty recently. Yes. Yeah. I mean, this was one of the more craven and obvious ploys that a senator has taken recently in an era of craven and obvious ploys. First, take a listen to this. Does the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial? You're not going to comment about this? So it's kind of hard to hear there, but that's a CNN reporter asking McSally if the Senate should consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial, a fair question that's being asked to lots of people.

And then McSally calling the CNN reporter a, quote, liberal hack. Now, then she turned around and started fundraising off of it, creating a website called liberalhack.com and then went on Fox News to talk about it that very night. Makes it seem, you know, kind of clear that this was a setup plan to just raise money and do so by trying to dunk on a reporter. Yeah, but it didn't work that well. Her opponent, Mark Kelly, raised $100,000 via moveon.org, you know, in the week, I guess, since she said this. And, you know, he already had outpaced her in fundraising all of last year. So maybe that's her future. She's just going to do this website and see where it goes. Yeah, could be possible. I mean, even in the context of the Fox News interview, McSally had difficulty answering this pretty straightforward

question about how she would vote on the question of witnesses. How can it be this hard? Like, it doesn't need to be. Yeah, it really doesn't. They're just choosing to evade. All right. Well, then the other Republican senators to watch who are not up for reelection this year, that's Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Lamar Alexander. They could, emphasis on could, be the senators to seek more witnesses with Democrats if any

Republicans choose to at all, because the rest are mostly in lockstep with Trump. Yeah, that's right. As the trial progresses, though, Democrats are going to be keeping an eye on how all of these senators vote. And long after the trial is over, their decisions could end up in advertisements against them closer to Election Day. We will keep you updated as all of this progresses. Say what you will about President Trump. Okay, well, he's in Congress. No, no, let me finish. Say what you will about President Trump, but the man is pretty decent at multitasking. He's in Davos, he's being impeached, he's minimizing brain injuries suffered by our armed forces. Look that one up. And he still found time to confirm his intention to widen his travel ban, potentially doubling its scope with the additions of Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria,

Sudan, and Tanzania. Several outlets are reporting on this, NPR, the AP, Wall Street Journal, but all the sources are anonymous. We don't know much yet, but Trump was asked about this yesterday. What exactly did he say? All right. Well, when asked about the proposed additions to the travel ban, he told the Wall Street Journal, quote, we're adding a couple of countries to it. We have to be safe. Our country has to be safe. You see what's going on in the world. Our country has to be safe. So we have to have a very strong travel ban and we'll be adding a few countries to it. So I don't know if you got that, but we have to be safe. We have to be safe. Our country needs to be safe.

Yeah. The administration stated reason here is that banned countries don't do enough security screening or coordination with the U.S. Trump should probably work on his sales pitch for this. I am not convinced. It seems pretty vague. Yeah. And it's important to note here that historically we've seen that details around Trump's actions can change and shift from reports to when the official documents or proposals are actually released. NPR is reporting that an announcement about the additional countries is expected on Monday. So rather than panic, expect an update then. Okay, right. In the meantime, though, can you remind us what the travel ban actually mandates and where it currently stands? I know that there were a lot of legal challenges to it when it came out and some changes as well.

Sure. The original Trump travel ban was executive ordered in January 2017. And as we all remember, it was met with nationwide protests and was immediately challenged and stifled in various courts. It remained in diminished effect for less than two months. Then Trump signed a new executive order that superseded the travel ban and reduced the number of refugees America takes in. So you might remember last week on the show, we covered how under Trump, America now helps the fewest refugees since Reagan took office. The second version of the travel ban also suspended immigrant and non-immigrant visas to applicants from five majority Muslim nations. And that's Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. There are some exceptions for students in other special cases.

And the ban also applied to North Korea and Venezuelan. They're not Muslim nations, but they are also not white. In June of 2018, the Supreme Court upheld Trump's travel ban in a five to four decision. Chief Justice John Roberts, who you may know as that guy from Trump's Senate impeachment, wrote in the majority opinion that the Muslim ban was within the scope of presidential authority. So helping less refugees and dividing the country further seems to be the main effects that I can point to. You know, America is not safer than it was before the ban and we don't have time to fully litigate it. But the cliff notes are that it's xenophobic and did nothing to address the terrorism it purports to want to curb the ban doesn't address

the 14 most significant terrorist attacks or attempts that have happened in america in the past 25 years so riddle me that man yeah um you called it a muslim ban which makes a lot of sense because trump has called it that before even when legally speaking probably shouldn't have and state department data shows that there was a significant decrease in the number of immigrant visas issued called it that before, even when legally speaking, probably shouldn't have. And State Department data shows that there was a significant decrease in the number of immigrant visas issued to Muslim countries affected by the travel ban. Meanwhile, the number of immigrant visas issued per month to the non-Muslim countries in the ban virtually remained unchanged. So aside from an announcement next week, what comes next? Yeah, hopefully some marching and unity and a commitment

to vote Trump out of office for the love of God. We're all tired. All right. Well, visit VoteSaveAmerica.com to make sure you're registered. Tell your friends if you needed a reason to vote. Here's a great one. And now for some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Some updates to one of our stories from yesterday. The death toll of the new coronavirus rose. Chinese authorities are closing off Wuhan, the city of 11 million people, in the epicenter of the virus.

All flights to and from there have been canceled, along with all other forms of transportation. Chinese authorities made the announcement on state media just hours before everything got shut down. As of now, the World Health Organization is holding off on declaring the virus a public health emergency, and they say they need more information before making that decision. New Jersey became the first state to guarantee severance pay for laid off workers. That means in the event of a mass layoff, employees will get a week's pay for each year they worked at the company. Pretty cool. The law was a response to Toys R Us closing down all of its stores last year, leaving 2000 people in New Jersey without a job. Now it's looking good for

workers in the state, which recently passed laws to increase minimum wage and raise taxes on bigger businesses. Congrats to the X Toys R Us employees. We will never forgive your evil CEO, Jeffrey the Giraffe. Sick bastard. Yeah, you fucking giraffe. All right, well, Education Secretary and Pyramid Scheme Baroness Betsy DeVos was sued on Wednesday by the American Federation of Teachers for unjustly repealing an Obama-era regulation

that aimed to prevent for-profit colleges from overcharging their students. Betsy loves her Phoenix Online programs and criminal justice, and she will not apologize for it. The law worked by cutting federal funding to colleges that charge thousands of dollars more for their programs than graduates could ever make annually. It's called the gainful employment rule, and the teachers say that its repeal by DeVos was hastily executed and not supported by data. Though, to be fair to DeVos, she's always acted more on instincts than data, and her main instincts are helping her rich friends and buying more boats. The union is asking the courts to reinstate the regulation. Dog? Cat? Little horse? Am I talking about the zoo? Or am I talking about the flying zoos that allow us to cross the friendly skies?

The airplanes of our modern age. Folks, a lot of people fly with their pets these days, but that could change in the coming months as the U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing new rules that would narrow the definition of a service animal. Only dogs would qualify under the new rule, and they'd have to be, quote, individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability

for airlines to be required to let them fly. The rule won't take effect for at least 60 days, and it's open to public comment, so if you oppose the rule, now's the time to let that DOT know. Yeah, maybe take your fentanyl trip really quick before it's over. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, take us fly fishing, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading

and not just rude t-shirts from Spencer Gifts 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 how you take a really big trip with a really little horse. Come here, Winnipeg.

Hop into 12F. Window seat. 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.