Here & Now

Here & Now for January 29, 2021

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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

Temperatures plunge outside, but things heat up at the state Capitol this week, as Republicans work to pass a COVID relief bill that Governor Tony Evers will sign, even as they’re forced to punt on striking down a statewide mask mandate.

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” the political battle over the state COVID relief bill and mask mandate. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is here as is Democratic Minority Leader Gordon Hintz. Analysis of the political standoffs in Washington D.C. and we go to Keshena to learn how vaccinations are going for the Menominee Nation. It’s “Here & Now” for January 29.

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

Frederica Freyberg:

What is going on with the Republican legislature’s move to overturn the governor’s emergency order that includes a mask mandate? Well, it’s a little messy. The state Senate this week voted to end the mask order but discovered that would result in Wisconsin losing nearly $50 million a month in supplemental FoodShare benefits. Those benefits coming from the feds for states that enact emergency safety orders. So the Senate tacked an amendment on the legislature’s COVID relief bill that would allow the governor to declare an emergency just for the purpose of getting the funding. When the Assembly was set to take all of this up Thursday, Speaker Robin Vos pulled back on a vote seeking time to study the matter. Speaker Vos joins us now to untangle all of this and thanks very much for being here.

Robin Vos:

Good evening.

Frederica Freyberg:

So why not vote on the resolution if the Senate amendment fixes the federal funding problem?

Robin Vos:

We sure hope it fixes it but we’re not certain it does and when something like that happens right before we’re going to vote on a bill, I certainly don’t want to rush something and do something that would be a mistake. So look, we have the support to be able to say that the governor does not have unilateral power. He should have been working with us for months to come up with other solutions that could work. We know at the end of the day local public health departments still have the ability to do what they will. But for our standpoint, this has never been and is not about masks. It is about whether or not the governor gets to follow the law. It is crystal clear in the statutes that you only get the chance to have one emergency and then after that it has to be reviewed by the legislature. So I think that we don’t want to sacrifice the $50 million a month in federal FoodShare for our seniors. So that’s why we took a pause to make sure that was the only ramifications of what we’re doing and assuming that it is and we can fix it, we’ll move ahead.

Frederica Freyberg:

At a time when we’re being told that it might be a good idea to double mask for protection of these new COVID variants and more than 30 health and business interests object to ending the mask order, people want to understand why you want to get rid of it at this time. You say it’s not about masks, but it is about masks.

Robin Vos:

Not for me. When I look at what has been happening in our state, when I go to mass on Sunday, when I go the hardware store or a restaurant, the vast, vast majority of people are wearing a mask. It’s not because the governor ordered it because frankly there’s been no enforcement whatsoever. We know that. There’s no sheriffs or police departments writing tickets. It’s because people know it’s the right thing to do. It’s why I did that commercial with Mark Pocan that some have said, on my side, have given me derision for because I do support wearing masks. I think the vast majority of our caucus feels the same way. That’s why in the Assembly, we’re specifically exempted from wearing a mask. You’ll see, I think, of the Assembly members all but a couple wear a mask because it’s the right thing to do in a large group. So I think this is much ado about Democrats trying to make it about masks, but the reality is this is about Governor Evers issuing an illegal order that should have been struck down by the courts. They haven’t acted yet which is why we’re going to do ours.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s look at that PSA that you cut with Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan telling people to wear a mask. He says if your objection is overreach from the governor, then the legislature should pass its own mask mandate. Why not pass your own?

Robin Vos:

Because, again, there’s no enforcement mechanism.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Pocan also says, “If this is simply about appealing to science deniers for political purposes, we cannot afford this kind of raw partisanship.” How do you respond to that?

Robin Vos:

Well, it’s not about that because again it’s not about masks. You will see that once we pass the repeal of the governor’s emergency authority, people around Wisconsin are still going to wear masks because they want to protect their kids and their grandparents. That’s exactly why I wear one. So I think the Democrats again trying to obfuscate and direct away from what the real issue is which is the fact that Governor Evers has an inability to work with others to be able to get this done. It’s all kind of a one size fits all solution written when he’s at the mansion by himself as opposed to being out there saying let’s work with the legislature. Let’s find ways we can get a deal done. I think at the end of the day now we are beyond that because public pressure is why people are wearing a mask, not because the governor mandated it.

Frederica Freyberg:

The latest version of the legislature’s COVID relief bill gives the Republican-controlled Budget Committee review over federal dollars to fight coronavirus. Is it because you don’t like how Governor Evers has managed that money?

Robin Vos:

Somewhat. I think that’s true. But it’s really just something that’s not all that abnormal. When Jim Doyle was in office and Mark Pocan was the chair of the Finance Committee they got a bunch of money under what’s called the ARRA, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Billions of dollars came to Wisconsin and legislature passed legislation signed by Governor Doyle saying they would have the ability to have legislative oversight. So this is not a partisan — it shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It should mean that the legislature, the ones who are supposed to appropriate money, have the ability to oversee it just like we do with every other dollar that comes into the state’s treasury.

Frederica Freyberg:

Super quickly, it seems as though that might be one of those so-called poison pills that could result in an Evers’ veto of this COVID relief package. Then what?

Robin Vos:

I sure hope it isn’t. Because again if Jim Doyle and Mark Pocan can strike a deal and say it works for when Democrats are in charge, I don’t know why you wouldn’t certainly want it when you have divided government. I’m optimistic the governor’s going to sign it. It’s a good bill. It’s got lots of ideas in there. It’s got money for the pandemic. It’s got the ability for us to continue to make sure we have like an essential visitor program for people to visit their parents. We work on vaccinations. There’s a lot of good things in there. So it would be a real disappointment if Governor Evers chose to play politics and veto it.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ll see. Speaker Vos, thanks very much.

Robin Vos:

Thanks Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

The minority Democrats decried striking down the mask mandate in the first place, but then the potential that doing so would take food relief from people in need, that raised the roof. In the end, again, the Assembly speaker called off the vote to study how to make it work without losing that money. Tonight we are joined by the other side of the aisle, with Democratic leader the Assembly, Gordon Hintz. Thanks for being here.

Gordon Hintz:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Quite an unintended consequence in trying to overturn the mask mandate in the governor’s emergency order. What is your response to that almost happening and still being a risk?

Gordon Hintz:

The idea the first act to pass both the Senate and Assembly was going to be something that made our COVID problem worst at probably the most critical time where we’re over 80% in terms of ICU beds filled, hospitalizations rate over 80% and where we know the vaccine is going to take a while before it can make a difference, the idea that we’re going to go against the wishes of just about every major health organization in the state to repeal the mandate is contrary to what our role in government should be. And so having it scheduled as the first act was disappointing. But I can tell you certainly there are unintended consequences, such as the loss of FoodShare dollars. But the reality is thousands of Wisconsinites contacted us. Groups were registering against. I think there wasn’t 100% support in that Republican caucus over whether this was a good idea or not. We need to keep the pressure on and hopefully get them to not repeal the mandate.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what’s your position on the Senate amendment that would prevent the loss of federal funds by allowing the governor to declare an emergency just for the purpose of getting that federal money without the mask part of the order?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, look. If they are really going to go through with doing something that is going to infect more people, probably result in more lives lost in Wisconsin, make our recovery slower, I’m hopeful that we can at least find a way to keep the additional funding that we get from the federal government in FoodShare. That’s a secondary worry to the fact that they’re actually going to do something again that makes COVID worse in our state.

Frederica Freyberg:

But Speaker Vos regards, he says, wearing a mask as a social contract that should not in fact be a mandate. He even cut that public service announcement encouraging it. What about the idea of simply appealing to people’s kind of civic duty to wear a mask as opposed to an order?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, I think the success of it is going to be getting people to understand that wearing a mask is about looking out for others. It’s about looking out for each other. And we really need that collective rally. I think that was certainly a lost opportunity with our president sending the opposite message to people. At the end of the day, we know mask mandates work. There’s enough evidence out there between counties that have done it and counties that haven’t. 39 other states in the country have a mask mandate, including Republican states. So they do it because it works. The choice, I guess, being made by Republicans in the legislature is a political one or an ideological one that seems to sort of be contrary to the health and well-being of our state.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to other changes to the COVID relief bill that the governor had agreed on before Assembly revisions, how do you think the governor would regard the part of it that once again, requires a legislative review of any federal coronavirus funding?

Gordon Hintz:

I think he’ll veto it immediately. I mean it’s a nonstarter. Since Governor Evers was elected, the speaker and the Republican legislature seem to want to be governor. First they took away his powers. Then they sue him when he tries to do his job. There is an executive branch and they are charged with this exact task of managing something like the pandemic. The idea that we would give people that can’t even catch $50 million monthly loss in FoodShare or $25 million loss by delaying unemployment one week repeal in charge of managing federal aid is ridiculous. This is these guys trying to micromanage and continue to try to do Governor Evers’ job for him and I just think that’s a nonstarter.

Frederica Freyberg:

So it gets a veto in your expectation from the governor. Where does that leave the state then with any kind of COVID relief legislation?

Gordon Hintz:

Nowhere. I mean, and that’s the problem. The decision made by the Assembly the other day was essentially to keep doing nothing. They passed something that they knew was going to delay or disrupt the aid that Democrats have been asking for since last summer. It’s been over 290 days now since we’ve acted. And the decision the other day was to delay. Between that and the mask mandate, it’s pretty clear that our health, well-being, economic health, in-person school for our kids is simply not a priority right now for Republicans.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there. Representative Gordon Hintz, thanks joining us.

Gordon Hintz:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

From the state Capitol to the nation’s Capitol where articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate floor Monday night. Five Republican Senators joined all Democratic members in a vote that rejected the idea that former President Trump’s impeachment was unconstitutional. Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson was not among them.

Ron Johnson:

Will a trial of a former president, of a private citizen, will it heal, will it unify? I think the answer is clearly it will not.

Frederica Freyberg:

We take up the impeachment efforts in the Senate as well as the mounting power struggles there with Michael Wagner, professor of journalism at UW-Madison and expert on American politics and political behavior. Thanks for being here.

Michael Wagner:

It’s my pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

Indications are the U.S. Senate will not vote to convict former President Trump for incitement of insurrection. Can most Republicans in Congress simply put what happened January 6 in the rear view, do you think?

Michael Wagner:

I think that’s their goal and I think that’s their hope. Whether voters continue to have a long memory about the coup attempt, which is what the Cline Center at the University of Illinois is now calling it that happened at the Capitol remains to be seen. So there may be a price to pay with voters, but it does not appear that there are enough Republicans to convict the president in the Senate.

Frederica Freyberg:

How formidable in your mind is Donald Trump politically, even after his supporters violently attacked the Capitol?

Michael Wagner:

Well, he does not seem to have the exact same pull that he had on the party while he was president and the longer he is out of the limelight and especially the longer that he’s off of social media, the harder it is for him to gain the kind of foothold he had when he had the trappings of the White House and the power of social media at the same time. But there are plenty of Republicans who don’t want to cross the president, the former president, especially because they don’t want to upset the core base of supporters that the former president continues to carry with him. So it’s an open question. I would say the Republican Party is in a civil war but there’s certainly in a struggle for their future direction.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to conspiracy theories like the Qanon group that believes the election was stolen from Donald Trump, are they quieted now or just regrouping, do you think?

Michael Wagner:

That’s a great question. Oftentimes when a conspiracy theory group has the thing they said was going to happen fail. Right so they said Donald Trump was going to find a way to stay president and then he didn’t, often you would think, well, that’s got to be the end of the conspiracy. But that’s usually not what happens. Usually the conspirators find a way to reason themselves into believing there’s some other conspiratorial reason for why the thing they predicted didn’t happen and sometimes even redouble their efforts to continue the behaviors they were engaged in before. So they’re regrouping and there’s certainly some disarray, but I wouldn’t say we should be confident that it’s over or anything like that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Alarmingly, the FBI is now warning about the continuing threat of domestic terror groups. Has all of this been bubbling under the surface largely undetected until it just blew into the open?

Michael Wagner:

Well, it’s been bubbling under the surface for a very long time and it’s been exploding over the surface for the last several years in a lot of respects. And so I don’t know that it was surprising that it happened. I think that people might have been caught off guard that it was so easy to storm the Capitol on the day that the House and the Senate were convening to certify the Electoral College votes. And it’s striking how in danger many of our leaders, including the vice president and speaker of the House, were in. That’s all deeply distressing. And these conversations aren’t going to be going away. People will always find a platform on which to have these. Although deplatforming does make it harder for them to organize.

Frederica Freyberg:

How insidious is the continuing belief on the part of some that there was widespread election fraud?

Michael Wagner:

It is an absolute stab in the heart of a democracy to continue to make these false allegations. There was a free and fair election. It’s a decentralized election, which makes it really hard to try to engage in widespread, systematic fraud since so many localities are in charge of how they do the ballot printing and the ballot counting and the ballot reporting. There was a counting. There was a recount. There were more than 60 lawsuits, all of which told us that Joe Biden won the election in a free and fair way. Anybody who can’t say that is not interested in the practice of democracy, but interested in their own power for their own reasons.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just very briefly with less than half a minute left, is President Biden’s call for unity in the midst of all of this naive?

Michael Wagner:

I think it depends on what we mean by unity. We’re certainly not all going to hold hands and sing a song of peace. But if we can realize and come together around simple facts, elections matter, if you lose, what you get to do in a democracy is try again the next time, not complain about the result and pretend that it wasn’t real, then there can be some unity. But there’s not going to be a magical healing across party lines anytime soon.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Michael Wagner, thanks for joining us.

Michael Wagner:

You bet.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now to COVID news and to Keshena, where the Menominee Nation in the midst of the tribal vaccination program. One Wisconsin tribe switched from state services to the federal Indian health service for vaccine supply. That’s the St. Croix Band of the Ojibwe. Others including the Menominee continue to work with state government for vaccine allocation. We check in now with the tribal public health officer for the Menominee Nation, Dr. Amy Slagle. Thanks very much for joining us.

Amy Slagle:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

How many vaccinations do you need to give and how many have been given to date?

Amy Slagle:

We plan to give around 9,000 if we meet our goals. And so far we’ve given a little over 700.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow. So —

Amy Slagle:

As of this morning.

Frederica Freyberg:

We know that the state health department reports having trouble getting enough vaccine. What is happening with availability for you?

Amy Slagle:

Well, it’s been — I would call it — the best way to describe it is variable. We have gotten as many as 200 vaccine in a week and we have had as little as one vial in a week, which was last week, ten doses. So it’s been a little bit all over the map. But in general what we’re expecting now is to get 200 to 300 a week, including our second doses. So it’s been a little anxiety-provoking because we don’t know which day it’s coming and we don’t know how much we’re getting until the last minute, making it very difficult to schedule people ahead of time.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. Absolutely. But presumably, you, like others, would like to see just a lot more of it coming your way.

Amy Slagle:

We sure would. We would like to get our very high-risk population vaccinated as quickly as possible. We have some advantages. The state has allowed us some leeway with sovereignty issues. So we are a little ahead of phase 1B compared to other areas. We’re vaccinating 70 and older right now and we are well into our essential workers. So that’s why we’re 710 plus vaccines in with already all our health care done, first responders and many elders. But we’ve got a large group of people 40 to 65 years old with multiple health problems that are quite vulnerable and at risk for COVID and we’d like to get them vaccinated as soon as possible.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did you have to overcome mistrust of the vaccine?

Amy Slagle:

There are issues particular to the Menominee Tribe that do bring mistrust into the equation. It may be different than what we’re seeing nationally. It has to do with historical problems with smallpox and broken treaties and failures of the government to come through for Native Americans and other public health calamities. So the political issues are not really part of our problem. It’s convincing people that the government really does mean to deliver the good thing and the right thing and the life-saving thing here. So the historical perspective is really important here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yeah. And very real. So I know that you just spoke to the fact that you had a high-risk population even among the younger age groups. How has COVID-19 impacted the community where you practice?

Amy Slagle:

Well, we’ve had about 30 deaths total. Half of those are Menominees on the reservation. Half live off the reservation either in contiguous areas or a few remotely in the state. We’ve had 950 COVID cases, which doesn’t sound a lot compared to Menominee or Madison, but when you look at that on a per capita basis, Menominee has had the greatest case burden per capita up until a few weeks ago and we had that spot for many months. So per capita, we’ve had a very high burden of COVID and we’ve had plenty of deaths.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are people heeding safety guidance around distancing and masking?

Amy Slagle:

Publicly and in workplaces, it’s very good. I think people take the recommendations seriously. The tribe has had emergency orders in place which fortunately we’re able to supersede whatever the government is currently doing with approving or disapproving those. But the tribe takes it very seriously and they want to protect each other and they have been strong with that message. The problem where we’ve seen the safety come is — or problems with it is in homes, where it’s multigenerational. That’s one of the beautiful things about the Menominee, is their love for family and their connections. So there’s lots of visiting and there’s over-crowding in homes and that’s where we’ve seen a lot of spread. The other place we’ve seen is people who work outside the area, where safety measures aren’t enforced and they bring it home because they work in a place where masks weren’t enforced.

Frederica Freyberg:

Doctor, we wish you well with this and we will continue to check in. Dr. Amy Slagle, thank you very much.

Amy Slagle:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

More than half of Wisconsin’s 20,000 prison inmates have contracted COVID-19 and 25 of them have died from the disease. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin has called the state’s response to outbreaks in prisons a “failure” and has called for decarceration. “Here & Now” reporter Marisa Wojcik sat down with Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr earlier this week for his take on COVID-19 spreading among those incarcerated.

Kevin Carr:

Let’s say we’ve got 20,000 folks in custody and we want to accomplish social distancing. The number of people that we would have to release from prison in order to just achieve that objective, I don’t even know what it is, but I speculate that it would be half. You got to remember that our facilities were designed and intended to be congregate living settings where two people lived in one cell and that dormitories were, you know, used as the routine way to house individuals. Those types of situations are not conducive to mitigation strategies unless you have an extremely low population. So I’ve talked to the governor about a number of these things, and no option is off the table. There has been no decisions made one way or the other. But I can certainly tell you that we hear the ACLU and the advocates about reducing the overall prison population. But, again, I’d like to remind those folks and your viewers that we’ve reduced our population in our system by over 3500 folks since the beginning of this pandemic. And we look to do more.

Frederica Freyberg:

The Department of Health Services announced this week that prisoners are set to be part of the next phase of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out along with teachers, child care workers, transit drivers, food workers. That starts in March.

You can watch the full interview with Secretary Carr on our website at PBSwisconsin.org.

That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. 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.