Here & Now

Here & Now for Oct. 6, 2017

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here and Now,” a first look at the balance of political power in Wisconsin and how it is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. After that, a closer look at the reaction from Wisconsin Congressional leaders following the shooting rampage in Las Vegas. Then in our inside look, see how the state’s farm labor landscape is changing over fears of deportation for immigrant workers. It’s “Here and Now” for Friday, October 6.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here and Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Frederica Freyberg:

Our first look this week, arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Wisconsin's political boundaries. This case started in 2010, when Republicans gained complete control of Wisconsin's government. In 2011, Republicans redrew state Assembly district maps to help them convert normally close elections into legislative majorities. The following year Republicans won only 48.6% of the statewide vote for Assembly candidates, but captured 60 of 99 seats. In 2015, the case Gill versus Whitford was filed as Democratic voters sued, saying voting maps warped by politics violated the Constitution. This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear this case. The Supreme Court has never struck down a redistricting map based on whether it was drawn to benefit one political party. The court has, however, left open the possibility that some political maneuvering may be too extreme. The Wisconsin case is expected to have national implications. Wisconsin Public Radio’s Capital Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson just returned from the Supreme Court hearings in Washington and he joins us from the state capitol, where lawmakers are watching how it could impact their elections. Shawn, thanks a lot for being here.

Shawn Johnson:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Refresh our recollections about the arguments on both sides of this.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. I think this case in a nutshell kind of boils down to when partisan redistricting becomes too partisan to the point that it violates the Constitutional rights of the party that wasn’t in power. The voters for the party that wasn’t in power when map lines get drawn. And so that is what frames this case, is democrats have said indeed Wisconsin’s map was too partisan. We don’t have a voice in our state government. And so they not only want Wisconsin’s map overturned. It would also set a national standard so that cases like these could be brought elsewhere in the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

So having heard the oral arguments, what can you ascertain about the position of the justices?

Shawn Johnson:

Well, we went in kind of knowing that there was this conservative block who we thought viewed the cases one way and this liberal block who viewed them another one. A lot of the justices reaffirmed those suspicions. You had three conservatives speak during arguments and express quite of bit of skepticism about whether the court should step into cases like this. I think you’d have to say the most outspoken critic or skeptic at least of whether or not the Supreme Court should get involved in partisan gerrymandering cases was Chief Justice John Roberts. He said that if partisan gerrymandering claims like these become something that you can take to the court, we will get every one of them. And that even if we based our decisions on the latest social science, on math, that the average person in the street is going to view the court as siding with Democrats or with Republicans. He said that’s going to damage the reputation of the court. Here’s Chief Justice John Roberts.

John Roberts:

And that’s going to come out one case after another, as these cases are brought in every state. And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, on the other side of the court, the other persuasion of the justices, they suggest that these legislative boundaries in Wisconsin result in predetermined results.

Shawn Johnson:

And you had kind of the counterweight to Justice Roberts' argument delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who’s one of the four justices on the court who were appointed by Democratic presidents. Justice Ginsburg said what happens when you have a legislative map that has kind of stacked the lines to such a degree that when it comes time for elections, voters already know the outcome. Here’s Justice Ginsburg.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

What becomes of the precious right to vote? Will we have that result when the individual citizen says, “I have no choice. I’m in this district and we know how this district is going to come out.” I mean, that’s something that the society should be concerned about.

Shawn Johnson:

And you also heard three of the other justices appointed by Democratic presidents say, “Look, the case here is pretty clear. We know that they drew the maps as partisan as they could. We also know that we can measure these things now. That social science has advanced to a degree now that even judges can figure out how these maps can be evaluated.”

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Justice Kennedy is described as the swing vote on this. Did you get that sense from his questions?

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. We went into arguments thinking that he was the pivotal vote and everybody was wondering what kind of hints he was going to send during arguments. I think everybody left arguments thinking the same thing, that while you had three of the four conservatives who seemed to tip their hand a bit as to where they were going and a fourth, Justice Thomas, who everybody assumes is going to vote with them. And you had the court’s four liberals tipping their hand as well. You had Justice Kennedy playing his cards pretty close to his vest.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. No. Go ahead. I understood that, too, that he asked questions mostly pertaining to standing.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. Right out of the gate, I mean, when arguments started, he cut off the Wisconsin Department of Justice attorney relatively quickly and wanted to know, you know, whether this case would be viewed differently if it was a First Amendment case versus a 14th Amendment case. He was very interested in standing. And so that’s left people kind of scratching their heads as to what he might be thinking as he’s looking at that standing. What he did not get into is whether or not this case has that kind of bright line metric to measure partisan gerrymandering. That’s something that Kennedy said in 2004 he was looking for. We presume he’s still looking for it in 2017. But he gave no hints as to whether or not he thought this case had what it takes.

Frederica Freyberg:

Briefly, with less than a minute left, what happens if the high court overturns these maps and what happens if they don’t?

Shawn Johnson:

If the high court overturns these maps, we don’t exactly know. The presumption is you’d have a legislative map eventually in Wisconsin that’s more competitive, that leads to more Democrats being elected and fewer Republicans. But we don’t know. And we don’t know when that’s going to happen, whether it be before 2018. If the court decides not to strike down Wisconsin map; that is, it upholds the map, does not set a new standard nationwide, this could be the last time the court revisits this issue for years, a decade, a generation. Could be a long time.

Frederica Freyberg:

Okay. Very meaningful stuff. Shawn Johnson, thanks very much for your reporting.

Shawn Johnson:

You're welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

This week, our partners at WisContext landed in the middle of the gerrymandering lawsuit before the high court because Republicans filed an amicus brief in the case citing analysis from the UW Applied Population Lab that looked at the density of voters by county in Wisconsin. But was that analysis published in a WisContext report an apples-to-apples argument for justices to consider? We ask its author, Malia Jones. Thanks for being here.

Malia Jones:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

How surprised were you that your research and analysis ended up in this amicus brief on the part of the RNC?

Malia Jones:

We were very surprised. That is certainly not something I expected to have as an outcome and probably will never happen to me again.

Frederica Freyberg:

As we suggested, though, was this an apples-to-apples application of your research to this gerrymandering case in your opinion?

Malia Jones:

It really was not because the amicus brief talks about our report, which analyzed the population density at the county level of Wisconsin, and partisanship at the county level. And this case is really about Assembly districts, which are in some cases larger than counties, and in other cases much smaller than counties. So it really is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what did your research show?

Malia Jones:

So what we showed was that counties in Wisconsin, like in many other places, have become more concentrated in terms of partisanship over time and especially urban counties have become more and more Democratic-leaning over time. Where rural counties, many of them remain mixed, but overall becoming less Democratic over time.

Frederica Freyberg:

So that’s what you showed. How did the RNC use it?

Malia Jones:

The RNC used this analysis to support their argument that one of the two main processes that’s used to achieve gerrymandering, which is called packing, is not something that the Republican majority in the state legislature did on purpose, but was just sort of a natural demographic process related to how populations have changed over the course of the decades. And so they used our brief or our report to support their argument that actually packing is happening, happening sort of as a natural background demographic process.

Frederica Freyberg:

Packing is happening as kind of a self-selection process?

Malia Jones:

Exactly. So people are self-selecting into urban places and that’s why we see “packing” in these urban legislative districts in places like Milwaukee and Madison.

Frederica Freyberg:

But so how are these kind of political geographies not equivalent, the county versus the legislative boundary lines as drawn?

Malia Jones:

So the main way that they are not equivalent is that legislative boundaries are redrawn every ten years, specifically to respond to population change. And we do that in order to maintain the equal representation or the one person/one vote rule. So as urban places grow and rural places many times stay the same in terms of population or even decrease in terms of population, the district boundaries have to be redrawn in order to ensure that each person has about an equal amount of representation in state government. And so that — those Assembly district boundaries are purposefully redrawn. And they’re done in this state by the party who is in power at the time. Whereas county boundaries in general, they remain fixed except for exceptional cases where something happens that changes the county boundary. So they’re just not at risk for manipulation for political purposes.

Frederica Freyberg:

So did you have any discussions with either side of this case about your analysis or the use of it?

Malia Jones:

We did not have direct discussions with either side of the case, but when we saw that the brief had been filed by the RNC, I really wanted to respond with my opinion about whether that was appropriate. And so we did publish a follow-up report where we go into some detail about how equivalent these two different kinds of geographies are and why they really are not equivalent.

Frederica Freyberg:

And any response to that on your part? Any response to your response?

Malia Jones:

Not from anybody who’s been involved in the case. Although we’ve had a positive response from readers on it.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what do you expect to research in regard to this issue coming up?

Malia Jones:

Well, we’ll be very interested to follow the Supreme Court case outcome and see — and especially see if we will be required to draw new boundaries if the court upholds the lower court’s decision that this was a case of gerrymandering.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Malia Jones, thanks very much for your work.

Malia Jones:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

In our closer look this week, the fallout and reaction in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting. That shooting has put Republicans on the defensive over their opposition to new gun restrictions and their efforts to eliminate existing ones. This week Republicans halted at least temporarily a plan to advance legislation making it easier to buy gun silencers. The shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 dead and hundreds injured magnified those efforts. House Speaker Paul Ryan says the focus should be on mental health rather than on gun restrictions.

Paul Ryan:

So I think it’s important that as we see the dust settle and we see what was behind some of these tragedies, that mental health reform is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening in the past. So that’s just one example of the things that Congress has done to make sure that we can try and get ahead of these problems.

Frederica Freyberg:

Following the attack, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said, “My committee will work to support the federal role in investigating this attack and protecting against further threats. As Americans, we might unite to defeat threats to our nation’s security, both foreign and domestic.” Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senator, Tammy Baldwin, said in a statement, “It’s frankly hard to comprehend a tragedy of this magnitude. It’s evil and senseless. So to my colleagues, let’s move past thoughts and prayers. It’s time for action.” According to Wisconsin laws, machine guns or any other fully automatic guns for the most part are illegal. Under federal law there are some exceptions. You can purchase what’s called a bump stock legally in Wisconsin or online, which can convert a single-fire semiautomatic gun into a fully automatic weapon that files 400 to 600 shots per minute. However in Wisconsin, it’s a felony to modify a weapon to make it automatic using that device. Senator Johnson and Speaker Ryan say they are open to the idea of banning bump stocks. This week Foxconn revealed the location for its massive new technology factory. The Racine County location is in the Village of Mount Pleasant. The Taiwan-based company is set to acquire more than 2,500 acres for which includes the factory site, additional land for future expansion and constructs staging. Foxconn would be by far the largest manufacturing campus in the state, with an estimated workforce of 13,000. In addition to the $3 billion state incentive package, the Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County will provide Foxconn $764 million for development. Local officials said all of it will be repaid by taxes the project generates. Our partners at WisContext have also learned the city of Racine will provide water for the complex.

This week, our inside look examines a key labor market shift in the state. Wisconsin dairy farmers now depend on immigrant labor to produce the amount of milk that ranks us second in the nation. But with immigration fears and an already short supply of workers, farmers worry about who will help them get the chores done and the milk to market without breaking the bank. This week we check in with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism which queried experts and farmers to ask what needs to happen to stabilize the labor situation on Wisconsin's dairy farms. We started by asking Managing Editor Dee Hall how fears of deportation have changed the landscape for farmers and their immigrant workers.

Dee Hall:

That's a big concern among the workers. We’re seeing some anecdotal evidence that some of the workers are leaving in anticipation of an immigration crackdown. We haven’t actually seen evidence that there’s a crackdown on farms or in Wisconsin particularly, but there is a fear because of the rhetoric surrounding both the election and then the administration’s talk about getting rid of all illegal immigrants.

Frederica Freyberg:

So this would suggest that a certain number at least of this immigrant labor are undocumented.

Dee Hall:

Yes. It is not known in Wisconsin, for example, how many people are undocumented. We know numbers about immigrants and it is pretty overwhelmingly immigrant labor that produces most of the milk nationwide.

Frederica Freyberg:

One of your experts and that was kind of the point of this overall coverage, was to pick the brains of all these different people in this regard. But one of your experts said, “Immigration is really a symptom of a rural labor shortage.” What does your reporting show about that trend?

Dee Hall:

We have actually at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, we actually documented that several years ago, that some of the most rural counties are facing the largest depopulation, especially young people. And these are the strong people that you would expect to work on dairy farms. So in fact there’s no doubt that there is a rural labor shortage of some type. It’s caused by many factors. So there’s a general rural labor shortage. And then there’s the specific one regarding dairy farms. We have fewer family farms. So that used to be a pipeline for people to come in and work at farms. A lot of those are closing. They’re consolidating and as a result you don’t have the people growing up on a dairy farm who are ready to work on one when they grow up.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why can’t this be mitigated by simply offering higher wages, whether it’s to local workers or to immigrant workers?

Dee Hall:

Well, that is a debate. It is not known whether that would actually alleviate the problem. I know there are some experts who believe this simply would not be enough. American workers do not want to do some of the really hard and dirty work of dairy farming. It’s 365 days a year, 24/7, erratic hour, long hours. Others believe that if you did raise the wages significantly enough that in fact at some point American workers would be tempted to take the jobs.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet that would be difficult according to your reporting for the farmers and their businesses.

Dee Hall:

Exactly. So the farmers cannot control the cost of milk. It’s a fixed price. It’s a very complicated formula. Essentially they have to take what that price is and use that to run their farms. And what they’re saying is sometimes they would be caught very short if the price drops, which it tends to do. It can be pretty erratic.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet does immigrant labor drive down the wages?

Dee Hall:

That is one of the concerns as well. Is that when you have immigrant labor, people who are used to making significantly less money, they will settle for lower wages and that will become the market rate for those wages. So that’s another debate. I can’t answer it except that definitely there’s an opinion out there that this is happening. And it’s making these jobs even less attractive to Americans.

Frederica Freyberg:

One of the people that you interviewed talked about the need to automate on the dairy farm to help this situation. But can family farmers or even medium-size farms afford this automation?

Dee Hall:

That can be very expensive. So that is the question, is what are you going to spend on automation and will it replace enough labor to make it worthwhile. Some farms are finding that it does. Some aspects of mechanization are working, but others have not gone that direction yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

You also discussed changing federal immigration law because how are dairy workers treated now under visa programs?

Dee Hall:

Right now we have visa programs for temporary, seasonal workers who come to the United States to harvest crops for example. We do not have a similar program for dairy workers who need to be here year-round because that’s how dairies work. There are some moves in Congress right now to create a separate visa program that would meet the needs of the farmers and the immigrants who are coming here to work on the dairy farms. I don’t know what the chances of that passing are. But there is a recognition I think now finally that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Frederica Freyberg:

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism report on immigrant dairy workers can be seen online and in newspapers across the state.

In tonight’s look ahead, the future of broadcast news, specifically PBS. I had the opportunity this week to interview PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger during her visit to Madison. We discussed the attacks on the mainstream media and the challenges news organizations face. I started by asking what she thinks explains recent Gallup poll results showing only 24% of Americans trust TV news.

Paula Kerger:

I think part of what has contributed to a mistrust in media is what we observe in a number of media organizations that blur news and point of view. And I think one of the principles for us in the work that we do in our news coverage is we understand what’s news, we understand what’s point of view. I think both are important and relevant, but you need to keep them separated and label them as such.

Frederica Freyberg:

In fact, you have said that inmate to PBS’ core is to find common ground on even the most divisive issues and that your network has a relentless quest for getting at the truth. But in this era where even demonstrable facts are fungible, that they can be recast, how has the work of getting at that truth changed?

Paula Kerger:

I think there is a significant need in this country for media literacy. And for people to understand, beginning with the work that we do with kids, to really understand in looking at any story how to figure out the accuracy of the sources. So many people if you talk to them, young people, you talk to them, “Where did you get the information?” “I got it from my phone.” They don’t always pay attention to the source of that information and is it coming from a credible news source. Or is it coming from, you know, someone’s blog or is it coming from a neighbor who’s giving opinion. And it is a collective effort, both for kids as well as adults, on really understanding where you’re getting your information and the accuracy of it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, PBS and public media in general often has the rap of having a liberal bias. What do you say to that?

Paula Kerger:

Well, people have leveled that from time to time. I will tell you that as we look at different polls, you know, we see that we are appealing to people of all political stripes. And so I think that there are people that I think because of the nature of some of the stories that we report on, may question whether there is some bias. I’ve been in this job through three administrations and question whether we’re being too hard or not hard enough on the president, you know. The fact is the president is in a very different role and is going to be written about critically, whether it’s a Republican president or a Democratic president. And people will see that and respond to it. I also think that because of the fact that so many media organizations are reflecting opinion alongside of news, people are gravitating to places where they see their own opinions reflected back. And so for an organization like ours that tries diligently every day to reflect the news as it occurs, I think you’re going to see some pressure from those who would like to see their own point of view.

Frederica Freyberg:

We couldn’t let the week pass without telling you about a monumental shift at the state capitol in a tradition that dates back to 1853. That’s when the first legislative Blue Book was issued in Wisconsin. It’s a roadmap of information about every state legislative district, lawmakers, state office holders and a who’s who and a what’s what in Wisconsin politics. The iconic blue-bound book takes on a different color this year, however. State law actually mandates that the spine be blue, but the front and back cover this year are redesigned with a granite pattern in celebration of the state capitol’s 100th anniversary. Along with the redesign, the book itself is shortened, shedding nearly 300 pages. The chief of the Legislative Reference Bureau says this is to make the book more accessible to high school civics classes as well as reflecting a citizenry more prone to looking things up online.

And that is our program for this week. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here and Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.