What A Day - Trump’s “Screw Everyone That Isn’t Us” Mandate

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

The USDA released a new food stamp rule that would kick an estimated 755,000 people off food benefits. We discuss with US Senator from Michigan Debbie Stabenow and senior Urban Institute fellow Elaine Waxman. A flock of law professors descended on the House Judiciary Committee to offer their expert opinions as to whether President Donald Trump’s dealings in Ukraine justify impeachment. 3 out 4 ain’t bad! And in headlines: plantation weddings are actually very bad, Elon mounts the “guy” defense, and a justice for Q.

It's Thursday, December 5th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, the warm blanket from the dryer of daily news podcasts. I need it to be so hot that it burns me. I'm fine if mine is just warm. On today's show, the Trump administration moves to cut food stamps and we talk to Democratic Senator Debbie Sabanow about it. Then some headlines. But first, another impeachment news blast. Oh, yeah. In the first House Judiciary Committee hearing over the impeachment of President Donald Trump, three law professors invited by Democrats to testify said that the president's efforts to push Ukraine to investigate his political rivals justified impeachment. If this, what we're, if

what we're talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created a constitution, including impeachment, to protect against. And if there's no action, if Congress concludes they're going to give a pass to the president here, as Professor Carlin suggested earlier, every other president will say, OK, then I can do the same thing. And the boundaries will just evaporate. That was Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who is one of the people giving testimony, though there was also a fourth witness called by Republicans who argued that so far Democrats had failed to fully prove the case against Trump.

That was Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. I'm concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments. Turley, who said that he did not vote for Trump and actually opposed him, has been inconsistent over the last few decades about what is severe enough to constitute impeachment. He previously pushed for Bill Clinton's impeachment and wrote an op-ed about what constitutes impeachable offenses in 2014, in which he said committing a crime wasn't a prerequisite.

That's right. And today, Turley said that because, in his estimation, Trump didn't necessarily violate a specific federal law, that impeaching him could set a dangerous precedent. Another silly thing that happened was when Stanford law professor Pamela Carlin was making a point about how the president's powers differ from those of a king. She said, quote, while the president can name his son Barron, he can't make him a baron. The White House was angry at that fairly innocuous joke. Because his name's Barron. Yeah, it seemed like a play on words to me. And Carlin later apologized. Republicans spent time pushing some of the professors on alleged past donations to Democrats and even tried to ask if they had voted for Trump. Turley was the only one who chose to disclose that information.

After this, the committee will probably have one or two more hearings before it starts to craft the articles of impeachment. They're probably going to hear from Democratic and Republican lawyers of the Intelligence Committee, too. Yeah, and there could be one other session to give Trump's legal team a chance to actually present a defense if they decide to participate. They haven't so far, and they have until Friday to make up their minds. As always, we'll keep you updated going forward. That was today's impeachment news blast. In keeping with the White House's screw everyone who isn't us mandate, the Trump administration's Department of Agriculture, or the USDA, released a new food stamp rule yesterday that would kick an estimated 755,000 people off of their food benefits. There's also another proposal likely to be finalized by the USDA that would take benefits from an additional 3 million Americans, according to the Urban Institute.

So, Akilah, what is the change here to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP? First, there already was a work requirement for SNAP for able-bodied individuals without dependents. Before the change, individuals could receive benefits for only three months in a span of three years, unless they could prove that they worked at least 20 hours a week or were in school or vocational training programs. States could waive those requirements in the event of an economic crisis. So if the unemployment rate is more than 20 percent higher than the national average, that waiver could kick in. Now the White House wants to get rid of the waiver, calling it a loophole.

So in effect, being in a poor state with less economic opportunity and jobs available is now considered a con to get food on your table. States will now only apply for waivers if their unemployment rate reaches 6 percent, more than one and a half times the national average. I spoke to Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan, who is the ranking member on the Agriculture Committee. Here's what she had to say about the rule change. First of all, in the Senate and in the Farm Bill, where we do food policy and agricultural policy, on a bipartisan basis, we rejected this very proposal that the USDA is now doing as being too harsh and not effective. And instead, we put in funding for job training proposals, which, by the way, I wish they would implement.

Yeah. So this is a rule change that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have disagreed with. Right. Stabenow pointed out that the average food stamp benefit is around one hundred twenty seven dollars a month. So it's not a super generous benefit, but an amount of money that could be the difference between going hungry and not. Yeah. And as you mentioned, work requirements for SNAP benefits aren't new, but now they are just more strenuous. Yeah, there is a pervasive narrative about the poor in America that, you know, they are poor as a personality flaw or they're lazy, when we all know that that's just incredibly reductive and a bad assessment of the situation. When the USDA announced this new rule, Sonny Perdue, the Agriculture Secretary, echoed the same narrative, saying, quote, we are taking action to reform our SNAP program in order to restore the dignity of work to a

sizable segment of our population and be respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program. OK. Yeah. But the change to the program doesn't actually give people jobs. It just takes away their benefits. By the way, one way to restore the dignity of work might be to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. But I'm asleep. Also, the evidence shows that SNAP is more than a benefits program for the hungry. It's actually an economic multiplier for communities. I spoke with Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied SNAP and its outcomes. When people redeem their SNAP dollars at their local stores,

those dollars are paying for, you know, cashiers and stockers and producers. And a lot of that money stays local. And in fact, we know that, you know, particularly during periods of recession, for every dollar spent on SNAP, you generate about $1.80 in economic activity. So not only is it not a drain, but, you know, it's a boost.

Yeah, it helps the economy. Exactly. And it's a boost often in communities that are, you know, chronically depressed. Right. And there are other rule changes potentially on the way, too, that could impact another three million people. Can you explain how those ones would work? Yeah. The rule that you mentioned, it's going to probably affect another three million Americans, essentially wouldn't allow households with assets of two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to be

eligible for aid. To make this disaster even worse, many schools have a food stamp requirement for students from low-income backgrounds to receive free lunch. Here's Elaine Waxman, again, from the Urban Institute. The administration has acknowledged that maybe just under a million kids will lose that direct link between those programs because of the eligibility changes.

That doesn't mean that they won't be able to access lunch at all, but it will make it more difficult, and it's clear that folks will fall through the cracks. Yeah, so some kids aren't going to get to eat lunch if that new rule also gets announced. Right, and hunger obviously is a major issue in America. It always has been.

According to data from the USDA, nearly 14 million Americans suffered from food insecurity in 2018. And it's just insane that this can happen in the richest country on earth. Yeah. And there's a lot of reasons for this, right? So Trump gloats about job growth, but wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation. So yeah, you can work two jobs and still be broke. Add on Trump cutting taxes for the wealthy and all the corporations that don't pay taxes. And it becomes incredibly clear that the estimated $4.5 billion in savings from taking food out of the mouths of impoverished Americans is solving zero problems. Also, announcing this right before Christmas is

just cruel. I mean, I'm supposed to be mad that a law professor realized that Barron is both a child's name and a word for a powerful nobleman, but be fine with actual children going hungry. The times we live in, they're terrible. You got to be both sides, you know. The rule doesn't take effect until April 1st. Senator Sabanow is looking into whether Congress can figure out if there's a way to overturn the rule. But in the meantime, she urged people to reach out to local food banks,

and she said not to underestimate how important that that can be. Another way to get engaged in this issue is at the state level to put pressure on your local leaders to mitigate the impacts of this rule change. And now to some ads. It's December and my favorite thing to do in December is get a month head start on everyone doing New Year's resolutions, which is why I'm using Babbel to master French once and for all. Oui, oui. Babbel is designed to quickly get you speaking a new language within weeks with daily 10 to 15 minute lessons.

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when you sign up to redeem your award. That's what a day to get a $5 gift card through the free Drop app. Get it. Drip drop. And now back to the show. And now for some headlines. Headlines. Two of the biggest wedding planning sites in the country will no longer promote content that romanticizes former slave plantations.

Pinterest will restrict plantation wedding content and make it harder to find on their site, while the Knot Worldwide will ban wedding vendors from using terms like elegant and charming to refer to plantations, which were, I repeat, the places where slavery happened. These developments are thanks to a civil rights group called Color of Change who contacted both sites. People who still want to have weddings where the baseline requirement for guests is that they're at least 75% racist will have to look up plantations on Google. The not going to happen worldwide. The trial of he who must never post Elon Musk continues in our fine city of Los Angeles today, examining charges that he defamed cave explorer Vernon

Unsworth by calling him a pedo guy online in the summer of 2018. In a riveting twist, Elon tried the rare and elusive guy defense in court on Wednesday, saying, quote, pedo guy is less significant than pedo. If you add guy to something, it's less serious. Important, devastating own. And not surprising that the man who brought electric cars to the masses would say something so brave and yet so true. I truly cannot wait to see where this lawsuit goes. Me neither. President Trump teased a new no fake friends policy yesterday when he canceled a conference at NATO's 70th anniversary after he heard that multiple world leaders were trashing him behind his back. A video clip of that

conversation went viral leading into Wednesday, and it featured Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and yes, even the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark. In the clip, Trudeau mocks the lengthy, impromptu press conferences Trump had taken earlier in the day and gets big laughs. Trump responded to the video by calling Trudeau, quote, two-faced. I don't know if he was counting the black one, though. Ooh. Eh.

Woo! Got him. Okay. Now, for this last story, we are going to do a little something we're going to be calling cold reads. Okay. Akilah, we've given you some note cards.

Yeah. I'm passing them right now. Okay, I have them. You've never seen them before. I have never seen them. And you're going to go ahead and present this story on them to me and all of our friends at WOD. Are you ready? I guess.

All right. Go right ahead and get started. All right. As you know, there's a figure named QAnon who works in the shadows of our government to defend Donald Trump against deep state Satan worshippers, and interact with retirees who have 500 million link karma from posting skinny neck Adam Schiff memes to r slash the Donald. Don't I know it? That's the only thing I do know. What is that?

500 million link karma? Okay, fine. They're on Reddit. Oh, that's on Reddit. Okay, sorry. I'm a Twitter girl. Okay. The Q theory encompasses a variety of other conspiracy theories, including the idea that

John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death 20 years ago, has been hiding out in Pittsburgh under the name Vincent Fusco, and may or may not return to support Trump as his running mate in 2020. This is not a joke. Yeah, you won't be laughing when Mr. Fusco returns. All right. Is Mike Pence aware of this? He will be soon.

Q knows all. Maybe he's Q. Okay. Back in January, a Washington Post reporter named Avi Selk received an email responding to two articles he had written about the QAnon theory. The email read, whether Q is real or otherwise, there is a movement started by the hypothesis of a Q and somebody behind the scenes standing up for the average American citizen. Patriots are uniting against people like you. Your world of fake news and liberal agendas that give away our country to

foreigners. Wow. And protect the Clintons and obamas is coming to an end wait for it a hundred ellipses you pathetic snobby ass wait whoa yeah i mean i i guess i don't know enough about this cute conspiracy theory but this is it's still happening but wait there is more there's more that email was from an elected Montana County judge. His name is Michael Swingley, and he sent his critique from his official government account, which, as it turns out, was a bad move. Sounds like it. Snobby ass. Strong words.

The Montana Judicial Standards Commission has now reprimanded Judge Swingley, and Swingley has admitted that he violated four canons of the Montana Code of Judicial Conduct. In an apologetic statement sent to a local Montana newspaper this week, Swingley said, I have, quote, I have punished myself over the last 11 months almost daily and learned a hard but valuable lesson in the process. My fault. I own it and accept the judicial stipulation. There are judges that believe this bullshit. Okay, sorry. There are four rules, and the first one is don't mention Q. Yeah.

As is two through four. The third one is have fun. Try your best. Okay. TBD, whether Swingly is really punishing himself or the architects of chaos who represent the deep state are making him punish himself using mind control. This looks like a job for Q. Wow. That was yeah so is he a judge anymore he's still a judge yeah he's gotta that's not fair if i commit a crime i don't want a judge that uses the phrase snobby ass and believes in

fairy tales about someone named q i mean honestly you might get a fair jury because they'll be like q is just gonna decide we don't care what this jury has to say. Maybe I'll just tell him I'm Q and he'll let me off. Yeah. Well, that was our first cold read. Wow. And those are the headlines. One last thing today. I wanted to clarify something from yesterday's show. So when I was talking about Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, I said she went farther than any other black woman candidate. I was referring to the length of her campaign, which was longer than any other black woman before hers. But there are obviously two more black women I want to make sure we recognize who ran before. That's obviously Shirley Chisholm in 1972. She made it through the primaries to the DNC

convention that year, coming in fourth place in the delegate count. And in 2004, Carol Moseley Braun made it through January, dropping out just four days before the Iowa caucuses. Shout out to Chris Drew from Chicago, who messaged us about this. We love how invested you all are in the show, and we're happy to shine a light on the Black women who paved the way for Senator Harris's campaign. So thank you. And that is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, let down your hair from the balcony window and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just IMDb's behind the scenes trivia page for Jackass the movie like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why if you add guy to something, it's less serious. The guy defense. 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.