Here & Now

Here & Now for Feb. 15, 2019

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” controversy at the state Capitol over Black History Month. State Supreme Court Candidate Lisa Neubauer is here. How the state FoodShare program in tangled in Washington politics. And in Washington, the wall that created political borders. It’s “Here & Now” for February 15.

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

Frederica Freyberg:

A first look tonight at a tense debate in the State Legislature over Black History Month. Members of the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus were forced to exclude the name of a Wisconsin native they had hoped to honor because he was too controversial. Marisa Wojcik has the story.

David Crowley:

When I think about Black History Month, this is about honoring black leaders that the black community deemed as their leaders.

Marisa Wojcik:

February is Black History Month. And every year the State Legislature passes a resolution recognizing the month. Included in the resolution is a list of names of leaders in the black community.

Lena Taylor:

A resolution that was introduced by African-American legislators.

Marisa Wojcik:

But this year proved especially contentious.

Lena Taylor:

Because yesterday the Assembly Republicans removed the name of Colin Kaepernick.

Marisa Wojcik:

Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee but is best known for his short career as a quarter back in the NFL for the San Francisco 49ers.

David Crowley:

We had an issue with him mainly because of his method of protesting.

Lena Taylor:

I had one person say to me, “Because it’s political.”

Marisa Wojcik:

In 2016, Kaepernick began protesting against police violence against the African-American community by staying seated and then taking a kneel during the playing of the national anthem.

Lena Taylor:

It’s not political. It’s standing up for injustice, even if it was first a seat and second a kneel.

Marisa Wojcik:

Whether you call it political or a protest, Kaepernick’s actions sparked a national debate with support and condemnation coming from all sides.

Donald Trump:

You cannot have people disrespecting our national anthem, our flag, our country. And that’s what they’re doing.

Marisa Wojcik:

And eventually led to Kaepernick being dropped from the NFL. But the Black Caucus could not accept their white colleagues deciding who they choose to honor.

David Crowley:

And it’s kind of traumatizing to see what was going on. I mean this was a textbook version of white privilege in our opinion.

Marisa Wojcik:

Representative David Crowley of Milwaukee’s 17th District is the newest leader of the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus and authored the original resolution with Kaepernick’s name.

David Crowley:

So after we had that vote, the Black Caucus had a chance to actually talk. And one of the things that we felt had had happened is that we got railroaded and that we did not want to give up. So we decided that we were going to change all of our votes to no to symbolize that we are going to stand together.

Marisa Wojcik:

Assembly Democrats changing their vote to no was symbolic. But the next day, after four hours of floor discussion, the Senate Democrats had a chance to make their no vote official.

Legislative clerk:

There are 19 ayes, 14 nos.

Marisa Wojcik:

The resolution without Kaepernick’s name eventually passed the Senate along party lines.

David Crowley:

After we got off the floor, it was emotionally draining for many of us.

Marisa Wojcik:

But it was the lack of communication from Republican colleagues that exasperated members of the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus the most.

Lena Taylor:

And I promise you not one time did someone on the outer ring send a name.

David Crowley:

But other than Scott Allen, no other Republican legislator in this building has talked to me and I would probably go as far and say they have not talked to anybody in the Black Caucus.

Marisa Wojcik:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald were not available to comment on this story. But Speaker Vos indicated that there was not support for such a divisive figure. Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke called Kaepernick “too controversial.”

David Crowley:

When we think about Malcom X, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, they were controversial during their times as well. And when you’re making history, at that time that history is being made, it is controversial.

Frederica Freyberg:

That was Marisa Wojcik reporting. This afternoon, the NFL reached a settlement with Colin Kaepernick, an undisclosed one, in his complaint against the league. A complaint that claimed the NFL blacklisted him for kneeling as an act of protest during the national anthem at games.

Governor Tony Evers has his first piece of legislation to consider after Republican lawmakers passed a $500 million income tax cut this week. The bill would cover the cut at first by using a current cash balance in the state budget. Under the plan, the standard deduction for individual incomes up to $127,000 and family incomes up to $155,000 would be increased. For his part, Evers has his own $890 million tax cut plan, which would be partially paid for by a roughly $520 million increase in taxes on manufacturers. His plan would give a 10% tax credit to individuals earning below $80,000 and families earning below $125,000. Evers said he would not be taking immediate action on the Republican tax cut, but instead including his plan in his budget.

Now to election news and the race to fill the state supreme court seat of retiring Justice Shirley Abrahamson. Election Day is April 2. That’s when two appeals court judges will appear on the ballot, Waukesha Appeals Court Judge Brian Hagedorn and Wisconsin Court of Appeals Chief Judge Lisa Neubauer. We asked Judge Hagedorn to join us next week. Tonight we introduce you to Lisa Neubauer, who is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. She served as a law clerk for former U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb and was also a partner at Foley & Lardner law firm. Judge Neubauer was elected to the appeals court in 2008 and re-elected in 2014. The State Supreme Court first appointed her chief judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2015. Judge Neubauer joins us now from Milwaukee and thanks very much for being here.

Lisa Neubauer:

Oh, thank you for having me. I’m honored to have this opportunity to speak with you and the voters.

Frederica Freyberg:

Great. Well, we wanted to ask you first, why are you running for Supreme Court?

Lisa Neubauer:

I am running for the Supreme Court because I am fighting to protect an independent judiciary in our state. We have to have that true third branch that we all learned about in grade school civics: the independent, impartial, fair judiciary. And it starts at the top with our Supreme Court. So I am running because I have been that kind of judge now for over 11 years on the Court of Appeals, and I — and that is the kind of judge I will continue to be if I’m honored to be elected justice to the Supreme Court by the voters of our state.

Frederica Freyberg:

What specific experience do you bring to the job that would make you effective?

Lisa Neubauer:

I bring a lot of experiences to the job. I have over 31, 32 years in the law. As you said, I clerked for Judge Crabb for a year. And I was at Foley & Lardner for almost 20 years. I rose through the ranks. I was made partner. I had a lot of leadership positions at my firm. I was — I have now been on the Court of Appeals for 11 years, 11 years in January. And as you noted, I’m the chief judge of the court. I was appointed by the Supreme Court twice now. Again, leadership positions all along the way. I’ve had many leadership positions also on boards, a number of community-oriented boards, as well as state bar committees and other committees. I also bring collegiality to this court and that is something that one has to have as a successful lawyer, not only with your colleagues, with your clients and with your opposing counsel, but you also have to have it as a member of the court. And I’ve had 11 years of experience in trying to bring people together and to have good outcomes. And that’s really important for our Supreme Court.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to independence, you have Democratic family connections and have given money to Democratic candidates. Your opponent worked as Governor Walker’s chief legal counsel and has espoused very conservative views. Can you help our viewers understand how it is that for this nonpartisan office, we appear to have two partisan candidates?

Lisa Neubauer:

Well, I disagree with that when it comes to me. I have never given money to any political party or political candidate since I’ve been on the court, 11 years. And you can’t look at my decision-making over 11 years — and that’s literally thousands of cases — and say Lisa has any kind of an agenda, any kind of outcome in mind, any kind of ideology that drives her decision-making. Or, you know, again, any agenda. And that’s why I am so honored now to have the support of over 325 judges in this state. And that is judges from red counties, judges from blue counties. It is judges from, I think, over 62 counties in this state who trust me to continue to be the kind of judge I’ve been for 11 years and that is fair, impartial and independent.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, your opponent says that he believes he could put his views aside and be independent. Do you have any response to that?

Lisa Neubauer:

I don’t. I really think that there’s a lot of information out there now for voters to work with, in order to decide who they trust to be fair, impartial and independent. And that is going to be up to the voters to decide.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, there are conservative or liberal judicial philosophies that judges always reference. What is yours and how does that influence your decision-making?

Lisa Neubauer:

You know, as I travel around the state — and I have done so much of it. I’ve been to, you know, over 38 courthouse visits. I’ve been to many more counties than that. I’ve been to — I think at this point now — hundreds of events, thousands of phone calls. And people tell me what we want is we want a fair, impartial and independent judiciary. And they don’t want a liberal. They don’t want a conservative. They want to know that the person they’re electing is going to come to this position with an open mind, with no agenda, no ideology. And, as I said, that’s the kind of judge I’ve been and it’s not just that it’s the kind of judge I’ve been. It’s that I am so committed to that as a member of the judiciary because it’s so fundamental to our democracy. We have to have the people’s confidence that our court system is fair, impartial and independent. And when the people walk through the doors of our courts, they don’t have — you know, they’re not going to be met with some kind of thumb on the scale, some kind of, you know, an unlevel playing field. Our people have to have confidence that our judiciary is in its rightful place in our democracy. And that is the independent, impartial third branch.

Frederica Freyberg:

Which Supreme Court justice, past or present, do you most admire and why?

Lisa Neubauer:

Well, I’ll tell you, I get asked that question a lot. And what I like to say is that I literally have an 11-year track record. People ask that question because they want to have some insight into sort of where you will be. And I prefer, frankly, to be me. And I have, like I said, thousands of decisions out there. I have hundreds and hundreds of precedential decisions. So I really feel that that’s what I should be judged on in terms of how people look at me. Now, I realize that people don’t go out and read all of my decisions. But I think that the fact that I have 325 of the colleagues, in our state who are supporting me, tells you quite a bit. And, frankly, I have on our Court of Appeals, we have 16 judges currently, and I have 24 Court of Appeals judges. Those are both colleagues of my opponent and me. And these are the people who really know our work. And that’s current and future, 24 Court of Appeals judges supporting me.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there.

Lisa Neubauer:

Based on —

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Judge Lisa Neubauer, thanks very much for your time.

Lisa Neubauer:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ve invited Judge Neubauer’s opponent, Judge Brian Hagedorn to join us next Friday night.

The more than 600,000 people in Wisconsin who depend on food stamps or FoodShare benefits as they are known here have been stretching those dollars after the month-long government shutdown. The average benefit is about $120 a month. If uncertainty over recent funding wasn’t enough, more changes are coming as to who’s eligible to collect FoodShare. David Lee is Executive Director of Feeding Wisconsin and joins us now from Milwaukee. Thanks for being here.

David Lee:

So good to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

In the midst of the shutdown, the government gave roughly two months of benefits in January to last until March. Why does that represent a problem for people on FoodShare?

David Lee:

Sure, so when — typically when a family gets FoodShare benefits, they are — they use it throughout the course of the month, right? And so, in our state, our benefits get disbursed over the first two weeks of the month. So typically, if you’re on FoodShare, you get it between the 2nd and 15th. Now in January, due to the government shutdown, the USDA announced that states could disburse February benefits in the event of an extended government shutdown. So they disbursed February benefits in mid-January, which means that if we were to continue on this regular — this path of regular benefit disbursements, people wouldn’t have gotten their benefits, their March benefits, until potentially middle of March, right? So that’s what created this incredible gap of benefits, this benefit cliff, for folks to have to deal with in February.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet they got the same amount of money they would get. They just kind of got it all at once. And what is that like, from your experience, for people living, you know, on the edge kind of and depending on this money?

David Lee:

Sure. You know, when people get their benefits, they typically use them, right? And I think the other thing that’s really interesting is that it’s really hard to contact folks with information about these — about the changes in the program. And so when people magically get a disbursement of benefits on a time that is not their usual schedule, they perceive potentially this is a mistake or a miss — yeah, some sort of mistake, right, like those Monopoly cards, “bank error in your favor.” This is not what happened in February. The state obviously did not make a mistake in disbursing benefits early. So what the state has decided to do, in addition to many other states across the nation, is that they’ve decided to change the benefit disbursement in March from the regular disbursement schedule to March 1. So to sort of close that gap between what a FoodShare recipient would normally get their benefit at.

Frederica Freyberg:

So they’ll be back on track but meanwhile, starting in October, there are new eligibility requirements going into effect. What are those?

David Lee:

Sure. So as you may remember, the last time I was here, we talked a little bit about the special session welfare reform bills that the legislature passed and the governor signed into law. What that would do is that it would increase the arbitrary time limits for families with children who are not complying with a work requirement. So it would increase the amount of work hours that they would have to participate in from 20 to 30 and it actually increase the — it would also extend the work requirement to families with children. Currently the work requirement only applies to single adults without children, commonly known as “a-bods” which means able-bodied adults without dependents.

Frederica Freyberg:

Have those kind of work requirements that are already in place resulted in people dropping off FoodShare?

David Lee:

Yeah. So the work requirement or the time limit for the a-bods that have already been in place in our state since 2015, as we talked about the last time, has resulted in about 84,000 people losing benefits and the sanction for not complying with the work requirement is pretty intense. It’s limiting people to nutrition assistance to three months of benefits every three years. So let me say that again. Limiting people from nutrition benefits to three months every three years.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so with the new ones going into effect in October, I suppose people believe that more people may drop off because of those eligibility requirements.

David Lee:

Potentially. I think when we were doing some of our client engagement over the last year, what we’ve learned is that there are a lot of folks in communities across the state who are working, just not working enough hours to comply with the extended work hours, right? So you might have somebody working at a convenience store 20, 25 hours, 28 hours a week, but they can’t get those last two hours to comply with the 30-hour — with this new 30-hour work requirement.

Frederica Freyberg:

Could Governor Evers repeal the work requirement?

David Lee:

We believe that he had the opportunity until the legislature passed the lame duck session bills in December. We are watching the lawsuits that are continuing through the court system and we hope that if the courts find that he still has the power to do so that he will.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. David Lee, thanks very much.

David Lee:

Thank you so much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now to Washington and the walls dividing government over immigration. On Thursday a second government shutdown of the year was averted with the passing of a bill that partially funds President Trump’s wall at the southern border, but a billion short of what he asked for. Today the president signed the bill. He then, as expected, declared a national emergency to authorize more billions in funding for the wall. Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson had this to say about shutdown politics. “I continue to be amazed at the dysfunction of Washington D.C.,” he said. “I primarily voted for this bill to move us past the current appropriation impasse and avoid another shutdown. We must now devote our energy to a thorough and thoughtful process that addresses the complex problems of border security and both legal and illegal immigration.” Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin said, “Both Democrats and Republicans oppose the president declaring a national emergency and taking money from our military or anywhere else to pay for a wall that he promised Mexico would pay for. This is a bad idea. Doesn’t the president have enough legal problems already?” What to make of the border wall imbroglio in Washington. In tonight’s look ahead, we turn to UW-Madison Professor of Journalism Mike Wagner. Thanks very much for being here.

Mike Wagner:

It’s my pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is your reaction to the president declaring an emergency?

Mike Wagner:

Well I think it shows that he’s in a — he sees himself in a very weak position. Most research on the presidency says that when presidents are strong, they’re able to persuade members of Congress to do what they want. He completely failed there in terms of getting the border wall funding that he wanted from Congress. Presidents can be successful if they burnish their reputation in Washington. But by most accounts, that’s in tatters, as even his most powerful ally Majority Leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell has trouble trusting whether the president’s going to sign stuff that McConnell brings to the president’s desk from the Senate. Then the third is to get the public on his side and the president’s approval rating is underwater. He took heat for the shutdown. This shows the president in an extraordinarily weak position doing something that has been done maybe five dozen times since the ’70s, but virtually never for a purpose like this.

Frederica Freyberg:

But still it seems like a strong move. Would his base declare that a winning move?

Mike Wagner:

I think his base is supportive of it. The public opinion research that I’ve seen on immigration issues and the president’s positions line up very well with what his base would like on this. He’s going to be able to — presuming that the emergency stays declared and that he is able to successfully move money, he’s going to be able to say to his base, I got this done. I said I wanted around $6 billion for a border wall and I ended up with $8 because I was so wise about how I did things, of course. But a lot of this is going to be facing scrutiny again from the House and potentially the Senate and almost certainly in the courts.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because why is it a deal that the president would declare an emergency?

Mike Wagner:

Well Congress passed a law, early 1970s, that related to when the president could do this and then also they put kind of a caveat in that law where the House and then the Senate could, by a majority vote, kind of disapprove or take back or undeclare the emergency. Now, at that time, they didn’t think the president would be able to veto that. But the Supreme Court later said that legislation has to have an opportunity for signature or veto. So it could be that the president declares emergency, the House and maybe even the Senate say, “Oh no, you can’t.” And then the president could then veto that and then send it back to the House and Senate where there probably isn’t two-thirds of the Senate willing to override that at present.

Frederica Freyberg:

Imbroglio indeed. So prior to this, how would you grade President Trump’s leadership and the turmoil that was the government shutdown and then its reopening?

Mike Wagner:

Well, the president — below average. So probably a “D.” The president went into the shutdown in a pretty weak position. He put his party in a weaker position because they kind of took the public blame along with him for the shutdown. And then when the bill — when the agreement got hammered out this week, there was less money for the border wall or border fencing I guess in this case, not the wall in the way that President Trump had originally wanted it. But there was less money for that than in the original offer. And so he hasn’t gotten what he’s wanted through the legislative process. I think what’s more to the point is that he had two years of a unified government and he couldn’t get 0.1% of his budget priority, which is $6 billion for the wall, passed by unified government. He’s certainly not getting that from the Democrats in the House.

Frederica Freyberg:

I was going to ask, with a Democratic House, should we expect to see more of these kind of executive power plays?

Mike Wagner:

I think we might expect to see more power plays from the president and I think we’ll start to see power plays from the House. I think we’ll see more aggressive pursuit of the president’s tax records, more hearings in the House, things that hold the president’s feet to the fire in ways that didn’t happen when the majority party was his own.

Frederica Freyberg:

In El Paso, President Trump declared that we’ve built a lot of the wall and what we should be saying now is finish that wall. Apparently the truth is that there were zero miles of this barrier, any barrier built under Donald Trump. What do you make of his kind of regular misstatements of fact?

Mike Wagner:

It’s a part of who he is, how he campaigned and how he governs. President Trump regularly says many things that are not true. And there’s a fatigue that comes with that from reporters covering him, from people listening to him. His supporters will often see this as, well, lots of politicians say things that aren’t true, why are you harping on President Trump? President Trump’s opponents say but President Trump says things that aren’t true in far greater number and about far more things than the average politician, especially the average president. And so I would say it’s important for reporters to keep on those issues and pointing out when the president says things that are demonstratively false.

Frederica Freyberg:

Mike Wagner, thanks very much.

Mike Wagner:

My pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

Turning back now to Wisconsin, with a new administration comes a new slogan. A little more than a month ago, the Evers’ Administration replaced the “open for business” line on Wisconsin’s border signs with Evers’ name. The change prompted some legislators to ask what would happen to the old signs. And this week, they got their answer. The Evers’ Administration wrote that they would convert the old ones into detour and other road signs. One Republican representative called the move “ironic,” saying a detour is exactly what Evers’ policies may produce. Evers responded, saying he wanted to return the welcome signs to their original design.

And that is our program for tonight. 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.