Here & Now

Here & Now for August 20, 2021

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Zac Schultz:

New census data begins the every-ten-year remapping process. The maps will determine new voting districts. Local officials find themselves in a race against the clock to do the work. And Fort McCoy will be a landing place for Afghan refugees who will begin anew in Wisconsin.

Good evening. I’m Zac Schultz filling in for Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” the rush is on to use Wisconsin’s census data to produce new district voting maps. What awaits Afghan refugees when they arrive in Wisconsin. We’ll talk a settlement specialist and sociologist. And U.S. Representatives Pocan and Gallagher give their positions on the infrastructure bill. It’s “Here & Now” for August 20th.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:

Whomever draws the political maps will likely determine which party holds the power in Wisconsin. The battle over redistricting in Wisconsin started years ago and after a long delay, the latest census data is finally here and so are the lawsuits. Joining us now to talk us through it is UW-Madison Associate Professor Robert Yablon. Thanks for your time.

Robert Yablon:

Glad to be with you.

Zac Schultz:

Let’s set the stage. Late last year Republicans asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to create a rule giving the state court control over any lawsuits related to redistricting. Last week, the census data comes out and immediately the Democrats filed a lawsuit in federal court. Why did each party pick their favorite court here?

Robert Yablon:

You know, these are strategic calculations that each side makes. The Republicans looked at the composition of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and maybe felt it would lean a bit in their direction. The Democrats may have thought that they were likely to get a fairer shake in federal court. These are imperfect judgments. Who knows really where you’d rather be but each side has made that apparent choice.

Zac Schultz:

We should disclosed you’ve clerked for two Supreme Court justices in Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonya Sotomayor and they heard a case from Wisconsin on the issue of gerrymandering. What does that decision mean for the whole process going forward from the federal court’s perspective?

Robert Yablon:

So the case from Wisconsin that the U.S. Supreme Court heard ultimately was resolved with the U.S. Supreme Court saying it was not going to take an active role in reining in partisan gerrymandering. The court said those kind of claims are nonjusticiable and so they should be resolved through the political process. What you’re getting now is a different sort of claim so after a census we learned that populations shift. There are some places in Wisconsin that have too many people in each district. Other places that have too few and a map needs to be drawn. In the first instance, that task falls to political actors, to the Legislature and the governor. If they fail to do it though, someone needs to draw a new map. So even if federal courts are not actively monitoring partisan gerrymandering, they still have this job as a map maker of last resort and that’s what the lawsuits being filed now are all about.

Zac Schultz:

In past decades, gerrymandered maps have been overturned in federal court for reasons other than racial minority makeup, with the states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina having to redraw maps there mid-decade. I’ve seen analysis that says that Gill versus Whitford decision means the courts may be less likely to step in on an appeal of a map. Do you agree?

Robert Yablon:

It’s hard to say if the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately get involved. These are cases actually that you are allowed to appeal directly from a federal district court to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is no intermediate appellate court as there is with other types of cases. That makes it more likely that the Supreme Court gets involved. But by the same token, whether the court actually steps in is going to depend on the specific issues that are raised and how the lower court resolves it.

Zac Schultz:

Now, in Wisconsin Republicans in the Legislature will draw their own maps and Governor Evers will likely veto them. Governor Evers has set up his Fair Maps Commission. They’ll introduce a map that will have no legal authority whatsoever. Do you think a court will pick between them or draw their own version or work from one of them? How does that happen?

Robert Yablon:

It could be all of the above. It’s clear that the federal court will have before it whatever map the Legislature produces, whatever map the People’s Map Commission comes out with and it’s a near certainty that there will be other actors in the litigation who join formerly as intervenors, as amici who submit their own maps for consideration. The court will have all of those at its disposal. Oftentimes the court will hire its own expert, meant to be an independent actor who it will give some guidance to and then that expert might create a whole separate map that’s meant to be all the courts and you’ll have substantial back-and-forth about all of these options.

Zac Schultz:

Do you think it’s possible for someone to draw a map that most people can agree is fair or will it always come down to who ends up with the partisan advantage?

Robert Yablon:

There is probably no such thing as an ideal district map that everyone will agree is the best one. At the same time, it’s pretty clear some maps will be better than others. You will have some maps that more people agree do a better job with criteria that we care about. And those are traditional redistricting criteria, things like keeping communities together rather than dividing political subdivisions or neighborhoods. Having districts that are more compact, having districts that try to be more competitive. From a neutral perspective, we know that these are things that districting plans ought to accomplish. You can balance between those factors. But when partisanship drives the process as it has in Wisconsin and plenty of other places, you’re likely to get a map that’s not going to fare very well with some of those other traditional fairness criteria that we think about.

Zac Schultz:

We have just a few seconds left. Give me your impression of the time line. Are we looking at next April when candidates have to start filing papers in these new districts before this is actually resolved or could it be before then?

Robert Yablon:

It could be a bit sooner than then. I think you’re right April would be the very end. Once candidates have to start filing papers, they need to know what districts they’re going to run in. But this will take some time to play out. This is complicated, contentious litigation. It’s really going to be a whirlwind for the courts to try to get there. I imagine they might target something like March as a time when they would like to get this finally resolved.

Zac Schultz:

All right. Thank you very much for your time today.

Robert Yablon:

Glad to be with you.

Zac Schultz:

While all the focus on redistricting is on state and congressional maps, there is an important step that has to happen first. Wisconsin’s counties, villages and cities will need to redistrict their own maps and they don’t have much time. I traveled to northwest Wisconsin to find out why.

Andrew Mercil:

Most of our growth actually occurred within the city of Menominee.

Zac Schultz:

Andrew Mercil was appointed as the Dunn County clerk just a few months ago and he’s approaching the once-in-a-decade task of redistricting with a good attitude.

Andrew Mercil:

I’m certainly one of the clerks that’s energized by the redistricting process but I love data. I love maps.

Zac Schultz:

That’s good because the redistricting process for local municipalities has been shrunk to around 90 days.

Andrew Mercil:

We’re trying to make sure that nobody will lose out with this compressed timeline but we’re doing the best we can.

Zac Schultz:

As with just about everything, the blame lies with the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed the census collection last year and meant census data clerks were expecting in April just came out last week.

Curt Witynski:

The one hard number we have to comply with is November 23rd.

Zac Schultz:

Curt Witynski is with the League of Municipalities which represents cities, towns and villages. He says local redistricting needs to be done by the end of November so candidates for the spring elections know which district they’re running in. The league got Republicans in the Legislature to pass a bill that would have delayed local redistricting for a year to give them more time, but Governor Tony Evers vetoed the bill saying it wasn’t proper to run spring elections on outdated maps.

Curt Witynski:

We were unable to stay below the partisan radar or the lens through which everyone approaches redistricting. When you use the word redistricting, alarm bells go off. In many cases justifiably so.

Zac Schultz:

Ten years ago, Republicans in the Legislature created maps for state Assembly, Senate and congressional districts in secrecy. They made their members sign confidentiality agreements just to look at them and then passed them in summer fearing recall elections that could have cost them control of the state Senate. That meant local lines were drawn afterwards and had to fit the state lines already in place. That would have happened again if not for the veto.

Curt Witynski:

The order was manipulated in 2010, different than it was prior to that. And that again, raises people’s suspicion and skepticism about any change in any layer of the redistricting process.

Andrew Mercil:

We see a lot of municipalities especially throughout the state that have very strange electoral wards.

Zac Schultz:

Dunn County is split between four Assembly seats. Mercil says it makes for some weird local districts. He hopes letting the locals draw their ward lines first will create a better process even if there’s not much time for public input.

Andrew Mercil:

One of the things we’re concerned about is feedback from individuals who live within the municipalities and the county.

Curt Witynski:

I think there will be an opportunity to participate. Everyone is going to have to be on their toes moving much faster than usual.

Zac Schultz:

Under the redistricting process, counties draw their supervisory districts, then send that info to the towns and villages to draw their local wards, hopefully matching up with county lines. Normally that takes four months.

Randy Scholz:

They’re not going to have their 60-day windows. We’re not going to have our 60-day windows.

Zac Schultz:

Randy Scholz is the Chippewa County administrator. His redistricting team has a different concern. The county board is considering expanding from 15 seats to 21.

Randy Scholz:

Obviously if it goes to 21, there’ll be dramatic changes. If it stays at 15, probably not a whole lot.

Zac Schultz:

Still even with the tightened time frame and an expanded board, Scholz says they’ll be ready.

Randy Scholz:

I think people are confused about what happened with the governor and veto and all that kind of stuff but I guess I just want to let people know as far as Chippewa County is concerned, we’re going to get it done. We’re going to do our due diligence. We’re going to spend the time we need to to get it right.

Zac Schultz:

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced this week he has filed a lawsuit seeking to remove the chair of the National Resources board. As we’ve reported, Fred Prehn was appointed to the board by former governor Scott Walker. His term expired in May but he refused to step down saying he was able to stay on until the state Senate confirmed his replacement’s appointment. However Republicans in the Senate have refused to schedule a hearing on Governor Evers’ nominee, which gives Prehn the chance to stay on the board indefinitely and maintains the Republican appointee control of the board. A second Walker appointee whose term expired in May did step down from the board. The issue came to a head in the last meeting when conservatives on the board authorized a wolf hunt this fall with the harvest number nearly double what DNR wildlife officials recommended. We have asked Fred Prehn and Senate Republicans to talk about their decisions but they’ve declined our interview requests. However, Republican legislative leaders are planning to hire outside lawyers to intervene in the attorney general’s lawsuit.

Next week, the U.S. House is scheduled to vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure plan. The rare bipartisan compromise between Senate Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are also looking to advance a separate infrastructure plan that’s much larger and can pass without Republican support. Two Wisconsin congressmen are looking at the bills as one, but with different results.

Mark Pocan:

I think the biggest concern for many of us is we don’t want to just do that pared-down infrastructure bill without the promise we’ve had all along, a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that has a lot of the human infrastructure.

Mike Gallagher:

Right now we don’t even know what’s coming to the floor next week and Pelosi is trying to sequence one or the other. And I think it’s a mistake to think of them as two separate bills. It’s all one gigantic bill that massively increases federal spending.

Zac Schultz:

The infrastructure vote next week will not pass either bill but help set an agenda with further details to be hashed out in September. Also in Washington, the Pentagon this week authorized Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy to receive refugees from Afghanistan. This will mark more than 40 years since the base housed Cuban refugees fleeing Fidel Castro in 1980. U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher and Governor Tony Evers both reacted to the news.

Mike Gallagher:

I guess I am sympathetic to the idea that if you fought with us, you should be eligible for the SIV program. But I don’t think we should relax the vetting standards for that program. So as we make sure people are eligible for that program, we also need to be working with countries in the region who can take the broader population of refugees and asylees that quite frankly we’re not equipped to handle right now.

Tony Evers:

We have open arms here in Wisconsin. I do not believe that all of them that come here are going to end up in Wisconsin. But we have a wonderful group of organizations, Lutheran Social Services, Jewish Social Services, any number of them that will be national in scope that will be helping to place these people.

Zac Schultz:

Fort McCoy could receive anywhere from hundreds to a few thousand refugees according to the governor. Earlier this week on “Noon Wednesday,” Marisa Wojcik spoke with Dawn Berney, executive director of Jewish Social Services of Madison, a non-profit that handles refugee resettlement. Berney says this process is happening much faster than normal.

Dawn Berney:

We have been told that we have 24 hours to agree to take on a case, including weekends. And that’s very different for us. Usually we have a week or even longer to make that decision and then once we’ve agreed to take a case, we’ve been told we could potentially expect someone in as soon as 24 to 48 hours. It doesn’t seem to be happening right now. There seems to be a bottleneck. The people coming into Fort Lee currently in Virginia, it’s been a very slow process and that is why they are opening up these new places to be able to help bring people to speed up the process. I think once they get some of these kinks figured out, it will happen rather quickly. In a statement from the secretary of defense that said that these new places like Fort McCoy will be starting to receive refugees in somewhere between two to four weeks. So I’m hoping that between now and then we will have some additional information, but I strongly suspect that the processing has to happen before anyone decides who’s going where. Typically, there is a long screening process that happens overseas and somewhere between six to seven federal agencies are involved in screening refugees. The process because of this crisis situation, a lot of that work is now going to be happening here in the United States. And so we don’t even know how long people are going to be at Fort McCoy before they are allowed to resettle into their new homes.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so based on how quickly this is happening and the large scale, how different is this from any other resettlements that your agency has helped with?

Dawn Berney:

This is very different because we expect potentially to be asked to resettle a large number of people at the same time. We generally only resettle historically about one family per month. So we are now talking about considerably more. We may be seeing two or three families in a week. And that would be a big change for us.

Marisa Wojcik:

So can you describe just the resettlement process? What happens once a person or a family is resettled here and what kind of funding and support is available for these efforts?

Dawn Berney:

So when a person comes to the United States, we are given, on average, about $1,000 per person total that can be used for the expenses of the family. So our agency does a lot of fundraising to help with — because that is just not enough money. And our responsibility is to find an appropriate place to live. For us, it needs to be on a bus line. And we are required to fully furnish and provide household goods for the home. We are required to provide a pantry and a refrigerator full of food for about a week, a culturally appropriate meal, and then we go and collect the individual or families from the airport. And once they come into their new home, then we work with them, particularly for the first three months, to make sure they go for their medical screenings, to help them get their social security card, to enroll children in school, to enroll parents in ESL if they need that, to help with employment. So all of the things that they need so that hopefully as quickly as possible they will be completely self-sufficient.

Zac Schultz:

You can see the complete interview with Dawn Berney by going to PBSwisconsin.org and clicking on the news page. Eventually those Afghans will be settled and will have to adjust to their new lives. For more on what they can expect we turn to Paul Van Auken, an associate professor at UW-Oshkosh who has worked extensively on this issue. Thanks for joining us today.

Paul Van Auken:

Thanks for having me. I wish it was under better circumstances, though.

Zac Schultz:

Let’s start first with the words we’re using. These people fleeing Afghanistan are refugees, but once they’re settled you prefer to call them residents with refugee background saying we shouldn’t be reducing their identity to a single thing. Why is that important to you and your team?

Paul Van Auken:

That was one of the first things that we decided as we started this project working with local resettlement agency partners so that we could help establish that idea in the community where we’re working in resettling people, that they are not something to be stigmatized as falling into this category, but they are people that were forced to flee as refugees, had that status and had that background but they are people first and foremost with all kinds of interesting experiences and stories to tell and things to offer.

Zac Schultz:

Now, you and your students have been studying these communities in Wisconsin for a few years. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know Oshkosh is one of the leading places for people to resettle in Wisconsin. Why is that?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. That was part of the basis for the origin of the whole project, sort of curious situation where the city of Oshkosh is the ninth biggest city in the state, or at least it was, I think it still is. The census numbers just came out. But the second largest place of resettlement in the state, ahead of Madison. So that’s a pretty interesting phenomenon that has its roots in resettlement of Hmong people in the ’70s. The Fox Valley was one of the first. First families to come as Hmong refugees came to the Fox Valley, and there were organizations that were interested in sponsoring and helping, and things moved on from there to eventually having a resettlement agency World Relief be located in Oshkosh. Now they have Oshkosh and Appleton offices, so that infrastructure is there. You know, it’s maybe more affordable than other places in the state, so you add that along with this history of welcoming and resettling people so people know how to do it in this area. And word of mouth means a lot because there are a number of people that come and they’re resettled to someplace they didn’t choose in the United States but they followed their networks to places that others in their families or friendship circles have told them this is a good place to raise kids, or to find a job and that sort of thing.

Zac Schultz:

Along those lines, one of the people that you studied and you changed his name, you call him Jawad, is a former Afghan translator who’s been settled in Wisconsin. What can his experience tell us about what some of the people coming here might go through?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. He’s — like so many of these people, they are just such interesting, amazing people, really resilient. I think one people need to know about residents with refugee backgrounds is it’s less than 1% usually of people that are displaced because of war and violence and other persecution that actually ever get resettled somewhere. These people have gone through serious trauma and gone through a lot of rigmarole to end up being placed in Wisconsin, wherever that might be. So it’s a hard thing. In his case, the reason we had to hide his identity, even though he was so willing to talk to us, such a warm person. We were in his house. He served us tea and treated us like friends. But it’s that people are actively looking for him and would like to see him dead. And he’s very, very worried. This is a couple years ago when we actually interviewed him. So now I can only imagine what he and others like him are going through that are here on special immigrant visas who are treated like — people in that category are treated similarly to people that come as refugees, but they come because they’ve given aid to the U.S. government. He told us then that he was every second of every day thinking about his family that was not with him in the United States. So they’re dealing with trauma of all kinds, but a guy like him, like many people that we talk to from all over the world, have extensive education and experience. They have a lot to offer. But people need to understand that they have been through some hellish trauma and it’s going to take some time to readjust to life here. By the time we talked to him after being here about five years, he owned a home. He had a steady job, had enrolled in a four-year university with plans to get a master’s and maybe even a Ph.D. That is not unusual. These are often quite highly educated people that in some ways take a step down when they come here. They’re grateful to be here but they have a lot more to offer in a lot of cases than the opportunities they’re given partly because people don’t quite understand what a refugee is or why people like him have ended up in Wisconsin. So hopefully people can become more aware of that, especially with this relative deluge of people that we may soon be seeing in Wisconsin that are going to need extra, extra help and compassion and interest.

Zac Schultz:

We have just a few seconds left, but I want you to briefly answer, the idea of assimilation and America as a melting pot, is that still apply? Is that still relevant today? What does that mean for the people coming here to come in to a majority culture but still retain their own identity?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. I think one thing that’s been really interesting is that for the most part people — we interviewed and/or surveyed over 100 residents with refugee backgrounds so far. Most of them have expressed positivity about how they were welcomed here, that they were welcomed in Wisconsin but many also said yes but people don’t really understand our culture and yes to the question of, you know, do you feel like people expect you to change your culture. So on the one hand, it is — I think it meets up with people’s expectations in a lot of ways in terms of being the land of opportunity, especially when it comes to education. But in other ways, they feel like Wisconsinites aren’t necessarily — and not everyone, but they’ve had experiences, enough experiences to know that not all Wisconsinites are very well-educated on who people are from different parts of the world.

Zac Schultz:

All right.

Paul Van Auken:

So that the intermingling doesn’t necessarily happen very easily always.

Zac Schultz:

We’ll have to leave it there. We’re out of time. We do want to follow up with you on the road. Thank you for your time today.

Paul Van Auken:

Thanks a lot.

Zac Schultz:

For further coverage of the arrival of Afghan refugees to Wisconsin, go to PBSwisconsin.org and click on the news site. That is our program for tonight. I’m Zac Schultz. Have a good weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.