Here & Now

Here & Now for Dec. 21, 2018

Frederica Freyberg:
I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on Here & Now, the lawsuit challenging lame duck changes to early voting. The latest from Baraboo, where a controversial high school photograph touched off serious reflections on racism. Wisconsin growers look ahead to the return of industrial hemp and a UW-Madison environmentalist with a bracing new report on the velocity of climate change. It’s “Here & Now” for December 21.

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

Frederica Freyberg:
In our first look tonight, one of the Wisconsin legislature’s lame duck session bills is already facing legal action. This week, liberal groups with assist from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s foundation filed a motion in federal court asking a judge to enforce his earlier order concerning early voting and voter ID provisions.
Under the bill, as passed and signed into law by Governor Scott Walker, early voting in Wisconsin could only take place 14 days ahead of elections. Instead of allowing local governments to offer as much early voting as they choose. In the 2018 election that swept in a Democratic governor and attorney general, Milwaukee allowed early voting 44 days prior to the election and more than 93,000 people there voted during that time. Likewise, Madison offered 33 days of early voting, and more than 87,000 people voted then. Republicans say the limits on early voting are designed to even the playing field with smaller municipalities, which are not as able to host multiple weeks of early voting. Here’s how Republican leaders explained the new limits and why they pass legal muster, this time.

Robin Vos:
You can do it on the weekend. You can do it 24/7. You can do it at as many polling places as you want. If the city of Madison wants to have a thousand polling places for those two weeks, they have every right it to do that. That is totally different than the first proposal we passed, which was more restrictive. We wanted to listen once again to what Judge Peterson said but also do something that does not disadvantage rural areas that don’t have the resources that a Madison or Milwaukee does.

John Nygren:
I can tell you as somebody who represents a more rural part of the state, having an equal playing field once again where my constituents have the same opportunity as constituents in more populated communities, we do believe that’s a fairness issue.

Frederica Freyberg:
One Wisconsin Institute filed the motion with the federal court this week. Analiese Eicher is program director with One Wisconsin Now. And thanks very much for joining us.

Analiese Eicher:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So as we heard, Republicans believe this is a fairness issue. What is your response to that?

Analiese Eicher:
That’s a great question. I know it’s something that’s been raised by the Republicans since we first started talking about the expansion of early voting in Wisconsin. And, you know, we got an email earlier this week from a woman who was a clerk in a town of about 800 people in northern Wisconsin. And she was emailing to say that having early voting, having multiple weeks, multiple days, multiple locations, allows her to best serve the people in her town, to best allow them to early-vote. So this is a fairness issue, you know, for small towns of 800 people to places like Milwaukee, where you have over 500,000 people, to places in the middle of Wisconsin who are, you know, 10, 12,000 people. The fairness issue is, can they fairly and properly serve their constituents and serve voters in communities with early voting.

Frederica Freyberg:
In striking down early voting limits in 2016, the federal judge, James Peterson, wrote this. He said: Stifling votes for partisan gain is not a valid interest. And rather than expanding in-person absentee voting in smaller municipalities, the state limited in-person absentee voting in larger municipalities. Do you believe that is what is happening again in this latest lame duck legislation that has now been signed into law?

Analiese Eicher:
This is exactly what’s happening again. You know, what was ruled unconstitutional in 2016 remains unconstitutional today. We’ve done the math. The six weeks that some communities had in 2018 for early voting is longer than the two weeks that is proposed in the lame duck legislation. And so it remains unconstitutional. It’s limiting access to early voting. If they were really concerned about making sure that folks had access to voting, you know, like you said in Peterson’s ruling, you know, they would have made it easier for all communities to meet the needs of their voters.

Frederica Freyberg:
So unconstitutional because it violates the Voting Rights Act and how does do that?

Analiese Eicher:
Well, I’m not an attorney, but the Voting Rights Act is something that provides for voting in not just Wisconsin but our country that is one vote, you know, per person and it prevents the discrimination on the basis of race. What Judge Peterson found in our case was that restriction of early voting in — across Wisconsin, was actually intended and discriminated on the basis of race because it limited the ability of voters, people of color, other particular classes of people who might not vote for Republicans, it limited their ability to access voting early.

Frederica Freyberg:
What kind of reaction has your group and others that work with you, gotten from Wisconsin when those people, voters potentially, learned of this new legislation?

Analiese Eicher:
Voters were upset. You know, we’ve gotten a number of contacts since the rumors started, that they were looking to limit early voting, and then actually went through with it during the extraordinary lame duck session. People are concerned. Voting — early voting is popular in Wisconsin. Early voting is legal in Wisconsin. You know, the number of voters who utilized it this last year was over 560,000 voters. That’s a record. Record early voting turnout. So, you know, voters are concerned about it. They want voting — the early voting access to remain as it is, so that each community can do it in a way that serves its voters and serves its community.

Frederica Freyberg:
I know just a bit ago, you said you weren’t a lawyer, but what do you think about Speaker Vos pointing out that this new legislation does not limit kind of time of day or locations as the legislation that was struck down by the judge in 2016 had done? So he believes that this new law restricting early voting passes legal muster.

Analiese Eicher:
Well, again, not a lawyer but, you know, it’s hard to see that argument and that point of view because two weeks is two weeks, you know? It’s the same two weeks that they cut early voting down to previously. And it was ruled unconstitutional before, and it remains unconstitutional today.

Frederica Freyberg:
How do you believe that the new laws that emanated from the lame duck session violates the judge’s earlier order concerning voter ID? Because there’s a portion of that in there as well.

Analiese Eicher:
So in the 2016 case, there were a number of concerns raised about the ID petition process, which is the process that people use to get their free ID for voting. And what Judge Peterson ruled in our case was that the voters who needed this free, who were going through this specific process, would be issued a receipt that would allow them to vote. Judge Peterson said that that receipt has to be valid for 180 days. What the law — or the language that was codified into law during the extraordinary lame duck session limited that to 60 days. And so that is, again, in violation of, you know, Judge Peterson’s order from 2016, and we’re simply asking, you know, him to enforce his 2016 order to restore that to the 180 days.

Frederica Freyberg:
And very briefly, when do you expect him to rule on this?

Analiese Eicher:
We are expecting some action and next steps in early January of 2019.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Analiese Eicher, thank you very much.

Analiese Eicher:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now to Washington, D.C. where outgoing First District Congressman House Speaker Paul Ryan bid farewell on Wednesday. He touted his tenure as a time that made great and lasting difference, but he also said the current political times were filled with broken politics.

Paul Ryan:
Outrage has become a brand, and as with anything that gets marketed, it gets scaled up. It becomes more industrialized, more cold, more unfeeling. And that’s the thing. For all the noise, there is actually less passion, less energy. We sort of default to lazy litmus tests and shopworn denunciations. It is just emotional pabulum fed from a trough of outrage. It’s exhausting. It zaps meaning from our politics. And, it discourages good people from pursuing public service.

Frederica Freyberg:
We move from national politics to local news. Local news in Wisconsin that is getting worldwide attention. In tonight’s closer look, we go to Baraboo, where a small community is dealing with the global fall-out after a photo of high school juniors allegedly making a Nazi salute went viral. More now from Marisa Wojcik, who heard from Baraboo leaders this week as they held an event to move the community forward.

Keri Olson:
As a Baraboo native, I’ve always been proud of our community and what it represents.

Marisa Wojcik:
The saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Keri Olson:
And all of a sudden, here was this photo surfacing that was disturbing at the very least and hurtful at some of the worst.

Marisa Wojcik:
But this prom photo has had more than 1,000 words written about it from around the world. That’s because this image of about 60 Baraboo high school juniors shows the group of students making what appears to be a Nazi salute.

Nanci Caflisch:
You know, when it initially came out, of course there was shock, there was question, but then it quickly became how do you deal with all of the media that wants a story.

Marisa Wojcik:
The photo, taken last spring and posted on a local photographer’s website, went largely unseen until months later, when a Twitter account named GoBaraboo posted the image. From there, it went viral.

Marcy Huffaker:
It was kind of terrifying the first time I saw the photo. It was just scary and horrifying to see that picture.

Marisa Wojcik:
Marcy Huffaker and her family are part of a very small minority who identify as Jewish in the Baraboo community.

Marcy Huffaker:
It’s a small town. We know many of the boys and their families in that photo so… it’s just shocking.

Marisa Wojcik:
Baraboo is a small city with a population of about 12,000. It’s not mystery as to who is pictured in the photo. But despite everybody knowing each other, there are still major questions that remain unanswered for many. What’s happening in the photo and who is to blame?

Marcy Huffaker:
It’s possible they feel like they’re blamed for, you know, everything that’s happened when in reality, there are a lot of parts to it. There’s the photographer who posted it on his website. There’s whoever posted it on social media and whoever re-posted it with the racial slur.

Nanci Caflisch:
Nobody knows what their intentions were, but it is a big deal to make that sign and to put the picture out there.

Marisa Wojcik:
But it’s it difficult not to search for students’ motives behind making such a gesture.

Keri Olson:
Because if they could at least hear it from the students, it would help them to find some level of closure or a better understanding as to how we best proceed.

Marisa Wojcik:
But one Baraboo high school senior is confident of the intentions.

Phillip Zolper:
Yeah, it was — it was definitely a joke. There was no malicious intent behind it. It does not excuse it. It does not pardon it. But there is a difference there. It’s something that needs to be out there when the difference is between being insensitive and callous and being an actual white supremacist.

Marisa Wojcik:
Upon the image’s initial release, some of the students pictured in the photo spoke out, but since then, threats have been made and for fear of retribution, many are now staying silent.

Keri Olson:
We’ve heard bits and pieces and stories from individuals, but it’s been a difficult thing to try to put those students back in the spotlight because of their safety. Many individuals in this community have found themselves threatened because of this.

Marisa Wojcik:
The Baraboo School District announced the students would not be punished for their actions, citing the First Amendment, freedom of speech. Additionally, the photo was taken prior to a school event and not on school property. Some have been disappointed in the reasons the school district gave for not disciplining the students. But there has been a backlash in the community.

Keri Olson:
An anti-Semitic video satirizing Baraboo’s controversial prom photo and warning viewers to stay home December 18th, tomorrow high school event.

Marisa Wojcik:
The school district declined to be interviewed after multiple requests, saying besides their press releases, they’re unable to comment with an ongoing investigation into retaliatory acts. Despite the global commentary and condemnation, the Baraboo community decided to look inward and take the approach of restorative justice, not punitive. Over the last six weeks since the photo surfaced, members of the community have come together to organize multiple public discussions around what to do next.

Keri Olson:
Citizens had the opportunity to make recommendations, and then we distilled them down currently into a list of 12 points as a starting place.

Marisa Wojcik:
The Baraboo public forums culminated into a series called “Baraboo Acts.” Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist and Pardeep Singh Kaleka, a Sikh whose father died at the hands of a shooter recruited by Michaelis, spoke to Baraboo community members on how to heal and grow together.

Arno Michaelis:
Some people were like, “Find me the kids in this photo. And being like, that’s Jim Smith. He goes to this college. He should be kicked out of school.” It was a very putative approach. That alarmed me greatly because there’s nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose.

Marisa Wojcik:
Some Baraboo community members are just trying to see the good from all of this.

Keri Olson:
It created an opportunity…

Audience member:
I’m a queer and transgender person.

Keri Olson:
…to all of a sudden feel brave enough to share some of their own stories when they didn’t feel welcomed.

Audience member:
And I have been a target of harassment

Keri Olson:
Or they felt different.

Audience member:
of people who identify with the neo-Nazi movement.

Keri Olson:
Or they felt marginalized. So I looked at it then as a much bigger conversation. We still have a great community here, and there are many good things happening. But as with any person or group of people, there’s always room for improvement, and room for learning and for growing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is Wisconsin on the verge of a modern-day gold rush by way of an old crop that’s new again? President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law on Thursday, a bill that paves the way for a resurgence of industrial hemp, from which cannabidiol or CBD can be extracted. Not to be confused with extracts in marijuana, CBD is non-intoxicating and touted as helping with everything from anxiety to seizures to insomnia. We are joined now by the director of governmental relations for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, Rob Richards. Thanks very much for being here.

Rob Richards:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
How does the new farm bill change the rules for industrial hemp production in Wisconsin?

Rob Richards:
There are four main things, but the big one is it removes hemp from the definition under the Controlled Substances Act. That is the game changer for the industry right there. No longer will the D.E.A. be in the hemp business. It now goes to USDA and FDA regulatory authority, but that’s the big one for the industry. Secondly, it makes hemp eligible for crop insurance. So those farmers who have taken huge risk this past year growing now have some insurance and can use some risk management tools with regard to growing hemp.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now in your mind, does industrial hemp represent, as we kind of just suggested, a new gold rush given that the CBD oil can be extracted from it?

Rob Richards:
It has the potential. There is a lot of excitement out there in rural Wisconsin, even urban Wisconsin, for the possibilities of utilizing hemp not only for the grain and seed and fiber component but CBD is kind of the sexy thing that everybody’s talking about right now, and there is some good profitability to be made for farmers.

Frederica Freyberg:
I was going to ask, how valuable could those crops end up being?

Rob Richards:
It depends what you’re growing but right now, the profitability is on the organic grain side and CBD. So a farmer that’s growing for CBD, they’re going to produce like a kilo, you could get paid anywhere from probably $4 to $10,000 for that kilo producing that flower. It’s much less for the grain side of it, but you’re still making more money than you would be on corn or soy beans right now.

Frederica Freyberg:
Absolutely. How much would you have to plant or harvest to make that kind of money like you were just talking about?

Rob Richards:
When you’re doing CBD, it’s a little bit more intensive. I like to compare it to growing tobacco or something like that. So you’re not going to have the hundreds of acres that I think a farmer would plant for grain or seed. But for those farmers that want to try it and do the 10, 15, 20 acres, there’s room for some money here.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet again, it’s rather hard to cultivate?

Rob Richards:
It can be tricky. I mean, for CBD, I know of some farmers that have harvested like they would grain, and then they just — they process it and seal it so it doesn’t rot or go rancid, so there’s different processing ways to do it. The most common one right now is that people would hand-pick it and pretty much store it like they would tobacco to dry.

Frederica Freyberg:
How well suited is Wisconsin to growing hemp?

Rob Richards:
I think we’re very well suited. We have a very long history with it. We thrived in the 1930s and 40s. We were the leader in the country in growing it. So I think we have to re-learn some of those practices, but we have a lot of information out there. We have experiences from people growing in Canada. And they’ve been growing in other states for four, five years, in Kentucky, Colorado. So there’s a lot of information to share but we still have a lot to learn.

Frederica Freyberg:
Aren’t some producers growing hemp under a pilot program with the State Department of Ag right now?

Rob Richards:
Right now they are because they have to. Under the ’14 Farm Bill, that authorized states to set up a hemp pilot program. That’s what Wisconsin is operating under right now. The ’18 Farm Bill changes that. We will no longer have to have a hemp pilot program for research purposes. So we need to work with the state legislature in doing another hemp bill to try to mirror what the federal government has allowed us to do now.

Frederica Freyberg:
What kind of interest are you hearing from producers and others wanting to get in on this particular crop?

Rob Richards:
There is a lot of interest. Unfortunately with the way milk and commodity prices are right now, farmers are looking for anything to diversify and make some income, and this is one way that I think they can do it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you have any idea what the ramp-up would be to this or can people start putting this in the ground this spring?

Rob Richards:
They can start putting it in the ground. I highly recommend that they contact people that know what they’re doing, that maybe contracts would be involved so they know they have a buyer at the end of the day, very important thing, but there’s a lot of information that’s going to be shared. I think the UW-Extension is going to up their game and get information out there to ag agents across the state. I’m hoping the UW gets involved with research in helping our farmers. So I think there’s a lot of room here for people to make money and for a lot of education to occur.

Frederica Freyberg:
Rob Richards, Farm Bureau. Thanks very much.

Rob Richards:
Thank you very much.

Frederica Freyberg:
“We can use the past as a yardstick to understand the future, which is so different from anything we have experienced in our lifetime.” So says one of the authors of a new study on climate change from UW-Madison. In tonight’s look ahead, what this study tells us about how fast the earth is warming and how it compares to conditions dating back tens of millions of years ago. Lead author Kevin Burke, a Ph.D. candidate at the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies joins us now with more. Kevin, thanks very much for being here.

Kevin Burke:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what are the results of this study, broadly?

Kevin Burke:
So we recently authored a study that was published looking at projections of future climates and comparing them to simulations of past climates. And in doing so, we found that by the year 2030, if we follow a high- end sort of emissions pathway, we may see climates that resemble those of the mid-Pliocene, a geologic period we’re 3 million years removed from. If we continue warming down centuries into the future, by the year 2150, we may see climates that resemble those of the Eocene, a geologic period we’re 50 million years removed from.

Frederica Freyberg:
And how would the climate change? How much warmer would it get?

Kevin Burke:
So there’s certainly some uncertainty depending on the emissions pathways that we follow, but we looked at a couple different ones that have been major parts of the past IPCC reports. And looking at the high-end scenario, we would see warming that may be upwards on a high end of 4 1/2 to 5 degrees by the end of the century. And our results suggest that by the middle of this century, it may resemble the Pliocene which was a period where it was globally on average about 2 to 4 degrees warmer Celsius than present.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are the implications of such warming trends?

Kevin Burke:
Certainly that it’s happening a lot quicker now than it has in the past. And we’d see changes in patterns of temperature, in broad terms of warming, but there would also be changes in precipitation patterns. Some areas would get warmer, some areas would get wetter, and that would have effects on ecosystems in cities worldwide.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about specific to Wisconsin, did you look at that?

Kevin Burke:
So Wisconsin, we didn’t focus particular attention on that over any other region. Our study was global in nature. But our results suggest that we would certainly see warmer temperatures on average over the course of the entire year. And the climate that we see in the future would likely resemble locations that may be southwest of where we are at present. I know some other work done by researchers at the University of Wisconsin has suggested that future climates over the coming century may resemble locations hundreds of kilometers to the south to southwest of where we are at present.

Frederica Freyberg:
Why did you use geologic past to predict the future in this way?

Kevin Burke:
So this was a really interesting study, and we know that — or its history in the past, even the not-so-distant past has been comparable in temperature or even warmer than present. And with projections of the future being warmer than now, we wanted to see if those past Earth warm periods could offer additional insights into what the future may hold. We looked at some time periods like the last interglacial, which was about 125,000 years before present and then the Pliocene, 3 million years before present, which as I mentioned, was 2 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer. And the early Eocene, a time period about 50 million years into the past where globally, it may have been as much as 13 degrees Celsius warmer than present.

Frederica Freyberg:
And this is happening very fast compared to geologic history?

Kevin Burke:
That’s right. If you look back over the course of climate, in our paper we show a graphic that looks at basically temperature over the course of the past 65 million years or so, and we see that in general terms, we followed a pattern of cooling. And our projections for the future suggest warming at a very rapid rate. So the warming trends of the future would be over the course of the coming centuries, whereas these cooling trends that the planet has followed in the past have happened over the course of tens of millions of years.

Frederica Freyberg:
Can this warming trend be reversed?

Kevin Burke:
It can certainly be slowed down and to the point, it could be reversed, but a lot of that would depend on our actions for the future. So we looked at a couple different scenarios for future emissions pathways, and it’s possible to follow one and adhere to more of a climate stabilization scenario, where we would only find a future that was similar to that of the Pliocene, but if we do not take action, we do not slow things down, we may see some of those more temporally-distant much warmer climates.

Frederica Freyberg:
Thank you for your work, Congratulations, Kevin Burke.

Kevin Burke:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
For more reporting on climate change, go to our partner’s page at WisContext.org. That is all for tonight’s program. Next week, a special edition of “Here & Now.” We’ll take a look at youth homelessness through the eyes of one young man who has experienced it. And from the perspective of a youth advocate who helps those in need. That’s next Friday night. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

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