What A Day - Trump, Indicted (Again)

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

In a social media post on Thursday, former president Donald Trump said he has been indicted on federal charges. Trump faces at least seven counts in connection with the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home last year.In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court voted to uphold the Voting Rights Act and reject Alabama’s congressional map, saying that the state legislature improperly diluted the political power of Black voters in the state. Melissa Murray, NYU law professor and co-host of Crooked’s Strict Scrutiny, joins us to talk about the high court’s history with the Voting Rights Act and the impact of Thursday’s ruling.And in headlines: smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to spread across the country, a squeaky dog toy that parodies Jack Daniel’s could be taken off the market, and YouTube has de-monetized several videos from conservative pundit Candace Owens that include anti-trans content.Show Notes:Strict Scrutiny live from Howard University - crooked.com/strictliveWhat A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastCrooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Friday, June 9th. I'm Traevel Anderson. And I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And this is What A Day, where we plan to spend the entire weekend stewing over the reports that Kelis of the one and only milkshake fame is dating Bill Murray. Listen, the ice cream machine must be broken. Of all the boys, we will reserve our judgment, at least for this take of the headlines.

But that was not on my 2023 bingo card. I'll just say that. On today's show, smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to spread across the U.S. Plus, YouTube is sending a message to Candace Owens to stop misgendering people. Absolutely. But first, just before we sat down to record today's show, this breaking news came in. Former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday evening that his legal team was told by the Justice Department that he has been indicted

on federal charges. Say it ain't so. What a big break for Truth Social, really. But feels like a little bit of deja vu, honestly, for the rest of us. Absolutely. Absolutely. So just to rewind a little bit here, we don't have official confirmation from the Justice Department about this just yet. But this involves the federal investigation over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago last year. Multiple reports are saying that Trump faces at least seven counts as a result of this investigation. But again, as we sat down to record this show, we haven't gotten the official word from the DOJ.

Unfortunately, we do have some reaction from the man himself. Take a listen to this clip from a video that Don Jr. posted shortly after the news came down. Oh, yes. Buckle up. Oh, God. There's never been anything like what's happened. I'm an innocent man. I'm an innocent person. They had the Mueller hoax, the Mueller report. And that came out. No collusion after two and a half years.

That was set up by Hillary Clinton and Democrats. But this is what they do. This is what they do so well. Wow. The Robert Mueller throwback. No collusion. These are things I have not thought of for years. Honestly, blissful years of my life that I got back.

You know, I spent a long time trying to forget those things. Right. But he really just brought it all back for us. But anyways, this is really adding to all the legal trouble that he is in right now. Correct? Because this is just one of many, I think. One of many. You know, he wants to be a victim so bad.

I also want to note, assuming that we can take Trump and all of these sources speaking to the media about this at their word, this would be the first time in American history that a former president has ever faced federal charges. So that's a big deal in and of itself. Not to mention that this fool is trying to run for president again. Okay, so we have to live through him all over again. One other quick note, Trump also posted on his knockoff version of Twitter last night

that he's due to appear in federal court in Miami this coming Tuesday. We will, of course, be following that next week. So hold on to your butts. It's gonna get rowdy, I'm sure. Yeah, that's a big one for me personally because if Donald Trump gets indicted on my birthday, that's a pretty good present from the universe. The universe really is looking out for me,

I feel. So, you know, if that happens, not opposed to it. Fingers crossed. Anyways, that was not the only big news and some other big news that dropped yesterday. The Supreme Court issued a surprising 5-4 decision tossing out Alabama's congressional map, saying the state legislature improperly diluted the political power of black voters in the state. Now, I have been giving the Supreme Court a lot of shit lately because they have deserved it. But I think they got this one right. I think they got this one right. Tell us more about this case. You know what they say about a broken clock. But anyways, at issue here was a map that the Republican-held state legislature of Alabama drew following the 2020 census.

That is when, you know, all these states redraw their legislative maps based on the results. Of the seven congressional districts in the state, only one was a majority black district, despite the fact that the state's population is actually 27% black. The state had illegally packed many of those voters into a single district while dividing other areas with black voters across multiple other districts. So essentially, your basic packing and cracking for any of you who have learned about gerrymandering in school or since then. That's basically like this is the textbook version of what happened. At stake, of course, was Alabama's map, but several other GOP-led states have taken a similar approach with their own maps. Supporters of voting rights were worried that if the court had gone the other way on this,

it would have made it harder to challenge other maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. I wanted to learn a little bit more about what happened here and why, because this actually was a surprise. So earlier, I checked in with Melissa Murray. She is a law professor at NYU and one of the co-hosts of Crooked's legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny. She is so smart and such a wealth of knowledge. She explained that the court in recent years has not had a great history with the Voting Rights Act. They have gutted it over the years. So this was actually a very surprising result.

That's a huge victory. And I want to underscore that. It was a huge victory. It's a major victory for civil rights groups that have been fighting and litigating these kinds of challenges all throughout the country. But it's also a bit of a pyrrhic victory or maybe it's a non-defeat, if you will, because when you really think about it, we've already lost a lot because those maps actually went into effect in the 2022 election. They may have been significant in shifting the balance of power in the House of Representatives. And though going forward, we have perhaps the status quo preserving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, we haven't gotten the kind of

full-throated victory that the United States and its people deserve. Definitely. I mean, I was going to ask you about that because you had some thoughts on Twitter. And I was like, that is interesting because when you see it on its face, it does look like, you know, oh, this is great. Something right happened for once. But there's a lot of context that people need to know. Again, I think it's very easy for folks in the media to trumpet this as a victory. And it is a victory. And I don't want to undersell that. And this was a huge win for the NAACP Legal Defense

Fund, who was taking the lead in litigating this case. It was a huge victory for Dewell Ross, the African-American lawyer who argued this case before the Supreme Court and did a masterful job. But I'm coming back to the fact about how anesthetized we've become to what we can expect from this court. This is a victory, but it's not the victory that we deserve. And we shouldn't be giving this court a pass because they, months later, agreed that this was an unlawful racial gerrymander. It was an unlawful racial gerrymander back in February 2022 when this court allowed these maps to be used. And we should remember that and we should hold them accountable for it. And we shouldn't celebrate it as the court doing something right. We should make clear that the court did something really wrong back in

February 2022, and they've now corrected it well after the time to do so. Definitely. I mean, I wanted to ask you about some of the justices. For example, Brett Kavanaugh, I know he flipped on this issue. What do you make of that? Well, a lot to say here. In his separate opinion in this case, Justice Kavanaugh suggests that jingles, which is one of the major precedents here that the majority refused to narrow in the face of Alabama's request to do so, that Jingles would stand. The court said that. But Justice Kavanaugh, in his separate opinion, seemed to suggest that maybe there's some play in the joints there. And in the future, maybe he's receptive to tinkering with the Jingles analysis or maybe narrowing the scope of how and when claims can be brought under Section 2 of the

Voting Rights Act. So again, to say this is an unalloyed victory, I mean, I think is to miss some of the crumbs that are being dropped here, some of the breadcrumbs. Like, this is going to be a live issue. This is a court that has shown its disdain and antipathy for voting rights in the past, Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which dismantled the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in 2021 that hobbled Section 2. And again, in those emergency stays issued on the shadow docket, this is not

a court that has been full-throated in its support of voting rights. And we shouldn't expect them to be full-throated in that support going forward. And we're getting some hints that there may be some room to maneuver going forward, and they may take that opportunity. And Justice Kavanaugh's opinion was one of those opinions that suggested that. All right. Tell us more about Justice Thomas's dissent as well. So Justice Thomas wrote a scathing dissent in which he excoriated this sort of hastily cobbled together, it seemed, majority of the three liberals and the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh. He said that race should have no role in the drawing of districts, that the majority had prioritized race over other values in drawing districts and determining what fair districting looked like.

And I don't know if it augurs anything going forward. I mean, but I do think it means that he's really mad about the use of race. And I think we're going to see that play out when we get a decision on the affirmative action cases. And if you're just sort of reading the tea leaves and thinking about who's been assigned what opinions in which sessions of the court's term this year, the affirmative action cases are still out. And one of the justices who has not written in that session in which the affirmative action cases were heard is Justice Thomas. So it may be the case that he may have the final word on how much race can be used in our public policy and public discourse. Oh, wow. And I feel terrified about that prospect. You should feel terrified. I mean, this dissent, if it is a harbinger of things to come,

it means that affirmative action case is going to be a banger and not in a good way. Yeah, no. Let's talk about the impacts of this decision, though. You know, how will this affect communities and voters of color specifically? And what impact could it have on nationwide elections? So it's obviously huge. Again, the impact of gerrymandering is enormous. It makes it difficult for voters of color to be represented in wide numbers in state legislatures and in Congress. It's enormous. So this is a huge victory going forward. It doesn't necessarily mitigate the losses that occurred in the 2022 midterm election. And again, I think we have to think about it in that context.

But it means going forward that the core of the Voting Rights Act, what has remained since 2021 in that decision and Brnovich versus Democratic National Committee, that's been preserved for now. But this is a conservative supermajority of the court. Its antipathy for voting rights is well known and well documented. This is not going to be the last word. It's become clear we can't rely on this court to uphold voting rights and do the right thing always. But what needs to be done to protect voting rights and our democracy as a whole? Like what's even the starting moves here? Priyanka, it's a terrific question. We've been talking entirely about the court. The court's not the only actor in our democracy.

Where is Congress on this? When I wrote that long Twitter screed today, one of the things I noted was that in 2013 in Shelby County versus Holder, Chief Justice Roberts in that 5-4 majority only invalidated the preclearance formula of the Voting Rights Act. It didn't actually dismantle the preclearance regime entirely. It just invalidated the formula. Congress could have picked up the ball and written a new formula that comported with the parameters of the court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder, saving the preclearance regime. But Congress is famously polarized and dysfunctional at this moment in time. They never did that. And that's why the preclearance regime died.

That's why we don't have preclearance. And that's why states like Texas can pass laws that basically say Harris County can't do anything to have local control over its elections. They can stick it to minority populations and Democratic strongholds and red states. They can do all of that because there's no preclearance regime. If Congress could step in and pass any of those laws that are intended to shore up voting rights, we would have a much different field of play. If it could step in, restore the preclearance regime, firm up protections under Section 2, Congress wrote the VRA and Congress has strengthened the VRA. And in the face of this court's efforts to dismantle and hobble the VRA, Congress can step in and bolster it. And it won't. And it should. That was my conversation with Melissa Murray, co-host of Crooked's legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny. We'll keep you posted as more decisions are handed down by the Supreme Court

later this month. But if you want to hear more about yesterday's decision, be sure to tune in for Strict Scrutiny's live stream that is happening at 1 p.m. Eastern today. Truly the perfect timing. We'll have more information about how to register at the end of the show, and we'll include it in our show notes as well. Let's get to some headlines. Headlines. In other Supreme Court news, we have an update on an unusual trademark case that we have told you about on the show before. The justices unanimously sided with Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey in their lawsuit against VIP products. That is the company behind the Bad Spaniels

squeaky dog toy that parodies the iconic liquor brand. Jack Daniels sued VIP back in March, claiming that their goofy lineup of dog toys violates federal trademark law by mimicking its whiskey label and changing the label copy to poop jokes. Seriously, people went to law school and went into debt to help litigate this. I'm sure they're feeling great just about now. A lower court ruled that VIP's, shall we say, creative license was protected by the First Amendment, but the high court disagreed. Yesterday's ruling allowed Jack Daniels to revive its lawsuit against VIP in the lower courts, which could ultimately force

the company to pull its bad Spaniels silly squeaker off of the market. If you happen to be a dog listening to the show today and you are tilting your head to understand what is going on, legal experts say that VIP still has a shot at winning this case. That is because the company has argued that consumers can, in fact, tell the difference between a bottle of Jack and a squeaky dog toy. I would have to agree with that reasoning. They might have themselves a little point there. We're still keeping an eye on the skies across the Northeast. New York City's air quality has improved since Wednesday's apocalyptic orange views,

but experts are still cautioning residents to limit their time outdoors. As wildfires continue to rage across eastern Canada, the smoke has now billowed west toward Chicago and could reach as far south as Florida in the coming days. However, it's likely that air quality will not deteriorate as badly in those areas compared to what we saw across the major cities along the East Coast this week. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that there was a noticeable uptick in emergency room visits in New York City on Wednesday as more people were admitted for various breathing problems

like flare-ups of asthma, which, as a reminder, disproportionately affects Black and Latino children as well as people living in lower-income areas. Public transit centers in D.C. and New York stepped up and began offering masks and upping air circulation on subway trains. And staying with some climate news, it has been an extraordinarily hot week in Puerto Rico, where temperatures have soared well into the triple digits. In some areas, the heat index, which measures how hot it feels due to humidity and other factors, topped 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. I lived in L.A. for a long time.

That is not a temperature we ever hit and not one that I would ever be okay with. Big yikes. I don't like it. The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat watch for the entire island through Saturday night. It's part of a larger heat wave that has blanketed the entire Caribbean, which meteorologists warn could become more frequent as a result of human-driven climate change. The U.S. territory is also grappling with a power grid that was battered by Hurricanes Maria in 2017 and Fiona just last year. The ramped-up demand for electricity has periodically left thousands

of residents without power for air conditioning over the past few days, which is horrific considering the temperatures that they are in. That is not right. No, no, no. Not a good time to be having electricity and air conditioning issues at all. No, no, no. And finally, YouTube has demonetized several videos from conservative pundit Candace Owens saying that her not cute habit of misgendering and dead naming trans people violates its policy against hateful and derogatory content. While YouTube doesn't specifically mention misgendering anywhere in its public policies, the video streaming platform issued

a statement saying that it will not run ads on content that deliberately uses the wrong gender pronouns when referring to a trans person or invokes a name they no longer use. This is a big deal because Owens has a lot of influence on the platform with over a million subscribers on her podcast channel alone, where she frequently quote-unquote debates whether trans people should have rights. YouTube taking a stand against misgendering could mean that other big conservative pundits who make a lot of money off the platform, like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder, could risk getting demonetized themselves if they continue pushing anti-trans rhetoric. As you might guess, Owens claims that YouTube is censoring her by doing all this, but many of her anti-trans videos are still up and available to view.

She just can't make any money off of them. Ah, yes, censoring. That is exactly the definition of that. You know, I feel like YouTube, that is a good move. Like, I can't really argue with you there, but like, why not take the full step? You went halfway. It's an important half, but take the full step. It's Pride Month, no less. It's Pride Month. Say it with your whole chest, YouTube.

Something for the people. Say it with your whole chest. A little something for the people. Make some headlines. Do something that actually would be considered good for Pride. Absolutely. Just a thought. Absolutely.

Why not? And those are the headlines. We'll be back after some ads with the latest cringy effort to celebrate pride. It's Friday, Watt Squad. And before we sign off for the week, it's time for a little segment we like to call rent free. Because no matter how many things are happening in the news, and there's always so many things, there's always that one thing that ends up living rent-free in your head. We know the sensation all too well. We are here today with our good friend,

Crooked Associate Editor, Julia Clare. She is the mastermind behind the What a Day Nightly newsletter. Julia, welcome back to WOD. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be back. Happy Pride Month, everyone. Okay, so tell us. I know there is one story that has been taking up way too much of your brain space this week. Let us in. A little producer may have told me that what you picked actually has something to do with Pride Month. Well, you know what? I actually had a different segment planned for rent-free today. And then I saw a tweet that could not be ignored. It comes from none other than our very own CIA. The CIA did allyship today by posting a Pride tweet for the ages, and I'm going to read it to you. CIA's 2023 theme for Pride Month is WELCOME, in all caps.

Wellness, equity, LGBTQ+, community, openness. And the last one is just ME. Those are the last two for welcome. Pride Month is an occasion for all of us at the agency to pay tribute to the rich history, community, and mission contributions of our LGBTQ plus officers.

Hashtag Pride 2023. The CIA said gay rights. It's the funniest tweet in the world. Did we like it better when Kirsten Gillibrand did? Like, whose do we like best? The CIA's is particularly funny because I just, obviously the clandestine services have no interest in quote unquote openness about anything. But in particular, the CIA just had explicit ways of investigating gay people for years. I found this memo that was published in 1980, an internal memo at the CIA for, quote unquote, homosexual investigations.

And it is about how to identify someone who is gay, particularly a gay man. There are some all time poll quotes in this memo. It is about how to identify someone who is gay, particularly a gay man. There are some all-time poll quotes in this memo, and I will read you one right now. The subject. One of the most common mistakes made by the average person is the conviction that he can recognize a homosexual on sight. This is similar to recognizing a communist. The subject has a mental or emotional problem rather than a physical one. You know, you can't just know by sight, so they give you some tips. They said a homosexual frequently uses a post office box to receive mail from trusted friends.

What? Although bills, ads, junk mail, and letters from relatives are received at his residence. Okay, so the gays go to the post office a lot he is dragging po boxes to hell yeah he wrote this his telephone number is often unlisted he does his own shopping avoiding where possible delivery people or other outsiders coming to his home his car parentheses preferably foreign is often reserved for weekends, rarely driven to the office. How's he getting to the office? I don't know.

He's walking. He's taking public transportation. The gays are using public transportation. I think that's what they're saying. Oh, wow. They also have definitions for gay, straight, and bi. Ah. I mean, my favorite one is the definition for straight.

Straight. This word means, quote, normal. Just that simple. Can we, for a second, just circle back really quickly to the acrostic poem that they wrote in that tweet? What? I would just like to say, on behalf of the community, to the acrostic poem that they wrote in that tweet. What? I would just like to say on behalf of the community that it's also okay to not celebrate pride.

You know, just ignore us. Leave us out of it, okay? We didn't ask for this. Just be normal, as you say. Just be normal. That is Crooked Associate Editor, Julia Clare. Julia, thank you as always for sharing just things that we could not live without knowing.

Bye. Thanks, guys. One more thing before we go, just another reminder that Crooked's go-to legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny, will be recording live from Howard University today, starting at 1 p.m. Eastern. Hosts Leah Lippman, Kate Shaw, and Melissa Murray will be joined by President and Director Counsel

of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Janae Nelson, along with Crooked's very own VP of Politics, Shaniqua McClendon. Get your live stream tickets now by heading to crooked.com slash strict live and get a 25% discount if you are a friend of the pod subscriber. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, give Candace Owens a big thumbs down on YouTube and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just poop jokes on squeaky dog toys like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. I'm Trevelle Anderson. And see you in Miami, Donald. Or maybe not. Awful orange in Miami, just dripping.

I'm picturing like Rudy Giuliani dripping down the face. I don't like it. It's what he deserves. It really is, but still disgusting. Well, today's a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our show's producers, Itzy King Dania, Raven Yamamoto, and Natalie Bettendorf are our associate producers.

And our senior producer is Lita Martinez. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.