Harry Litman: Harry here. Just a quick note to tell you that the decision in the Chauvin case, giving the former officer a sentence of 22 and a half years for killing George Floyd occurred just after we finished taping this episode, but we have a Patreon up on it already at patreon.com/talkingfeds, where you can also find one-on-one discussions, as well as ad-free episodes. So check it out.
Harry: Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. It was a week illustrating the Von Bismarck adage that politics is the art of the possible. Largely stymied by a deadlocked Congress with no apparent will for reforming the filibuster, President Biden managed to push ahead with several measures that had discreet, but still substantial real-world impact. He worked out a potential trillion-dollar plus deal on infrastructure with the support of a key group of ten bipartisan senators. In an area of persistent stalemate in Congress, he unveiled a set of executive actions addressing gun violence. Nowhere near a full legislative fix, but some baby steps forward. And in the most polarized and important issue facing the country, voting rights, he worked the bully pulpit while the Department of Justice filed suit to block a new law in Georgia, that is among the most restrictive and suppressive in the country. And, the administration continued its full court press on COVID, including sending out Anthony Fauci, among others, to knock on doors to encourage vaccines. It remained clear, however, then even as most of the country puts the virus behind us, pockets of trouble remain, including the prospect that a new variant will resist the vaccine. And not long after we taped the episode, but too late to include in our discussion, a Minnesota judge sentenced former police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. The country seemed uncertain and divided over how to take the sentence, the longest ever handed down in an excessive force case against a Minnesota police officer, perhaps, because it was so hard to absorb that the wrenching national episode was at a likely end. To break down this eventful week in government and society, we have some of the most knowledgeable and experienced commentators around and they are Betsy Woodruff Swan, a reporter at Politico covering national security and federal law enforcement, including the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Betsy previously worked at the Daily Beast, as well as Slate, The Washington Examiner and National Review. It's her first appearance on Talking Feds. Betsy, thanks for joining.
Betsy Woodruff Swan: Thanks so much Harry.
Harry: Matt Miller, far from his first appearance on Talking Feds is a partner at Vianovo and former director of the Office of Public Affairs for the Department of Justice. He's also a justice and security analyst for MSNBC and a prolific author for various national publications. He's worked in leadership positions in both the US House and Senate. Matt, thanks as always for joining us.
Matt Miller: It’s great to be here.
Harry: And also a stalwart fed, Juliet Kayyem, the Senior Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she is faculty chair of the Homeland Security and Security and Global Health projects. She too is a National Security analyst at CNN, and she's a host of the Talking Feds podcast “Women at the Table.” Juliet served as President Obama's Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Juliet, thanks for being here.
Juliette Kayyem: Thanks for having me again.
Harry: Okay. I think you have to say that this week Biden's eking out a trillion dollar plus compromise on infrastructure, but also going his own way with executive branch regulation on the politically intractable topic of gun control, and also the Department of Justice announcing its own action in the vexing area of voting rights. Let's just canvas them briefly. So infrastructure. Biden has reached a deal, we're told, with a bipartisan group of senators, five Republicans, five Democrats, $1.2 trillion, not the 4 trillion he'd sought, but 1.2 would have seemed mind-boggling not long ago. So what did he have to give up? What was in that 2.8 trillion that is left on the floor? And why did each constituency buy into the agreement?
Betsy: Broadly, it's really hard getting any sort of deal done in a bipartisan manner in Washington. And the essential premise here is that this thing isn't actually done, they still have a long ways to go. Pelosi has made clear that she thinks there needs to be a companion package through the very technical process of reconciliation. Progressive Democrats, both in the House and Senate, are still frustrated and say that this grand bargain that has gotten a lot of fanfare is actually not much to crow about. And of course, one of the biggest challenges going forward, and one of the biggest gaps in this infrastructure bill, is the fact that there's not more on what Biden calls resiliency, namely helping prepare America's vital infrastructure for the impacts of climate change, which is a huge challenge. As we see by reports coming out today about water levels in the Florida Keys, just the most recent examples in the last couple of hours, even of the way that climate change is affecting this infrastructure.
Juliette: So more money is better than no money. So this specific number I guess, is going to be worked through, but there's two key parts to the infrastructure bill that are unique and I think historic. Previous infrastructure bills, you're always going to give to transportation, yu're always going to give to the things that keep us moving roads and streets, but this has this particular focus in two areas. So one is just on defining our networks as infrastructure. So the cyber networks that connect us in all sorts of ways as being worthy of protection and also something to invest in. So that's the first. And then the second is this idea that Betsy was saying about resiliency, that it drives money in two ways. One is it's going to require climate change evaluations in ways that we haven't seen before for justification for states and localities to build something or invest in something, because remember the federal government's not building this stuff, it is giving to states and localities to build this stuff. The other is to support mitigation efforts. Should things come apart because of climate change. And we're speaking as they're looking for a hundred bodies, uh, still after a Miami apartment went down. We don't know the reasons for that, but certainly lots of engineers are speculating one contributing factor could be of course the changes to the soil and the ground in Florida around that area. So what the money will do, is it no longer says “Hey, Miami, sorry. This bad thing happened. We're going to give you money so you can rebuild exactly the same way.” That's a bad strategy for the future. It now says if you are going to rebuild the street, the road, whatever else, you better do it in a way that builds back better. And so those are exciting efforts across the board and sort of taking resiliency and saying, look, it's not just an idea about keep calm and carry on. It's actually investments in things that will survive the kind of climate impacts that we are seeing and going to see in the future.
Harry: And all this under the grand rubric of infrastructure, there's almost a social redefinition of the term that I think sticks going forward. Matt, what's your take about what's in it for everybody and why here, and not in other places, do we have at least the beginnings of a bipartisan effort?
Matt: I think to answer that you have to look at the entire package that the president wants. He wants $4 trillion in new spending, some of it in physical infrastructure, a lot of which is in this bill. And some of it in other things that you can stretch and call infrastructure by calling it human infrastructure, like say a child tax credit, but it's not really infrastructure, but it's valuable spending in my opinion, but it's not really infrastructure. And I think what's happened is the president has wanted a bipartisan deal because he ran on being able to be a bipartisan deal maker. The Republicans want a bipartisan deal because they have had an idea that if they can get a vote on this $1.2 trillion that they agree on and get a big sweeping passage of that, then the rest of the money, the stuff that they object to, maybe will collapse under its own weight, and the Democrats won't be able to get it through with just Democratic votes in a 50-50 Senate, and even in a close house where you have big disagreements. So you can already see the stress on the deal when the president came out yesterday and said, yes, this is a deal, and I want this, but I'm not going to sign it unless I get the rest of it too. And the Republicans throwing up in their hands, they were clearly trying to get stuff they wanted and hope and pray. And maybe with a little bit of sabotage, block the rest of the president's agenda from going forward. He made it clear that he's not up for that, and so you could see it fall apart, and then it comes back to the question of whether Manchin is willing to go on, you know, for a $4 trillion package that includes this stuff that he agreed with Republicans on and everything else.
Harry: Oh, that guy again, huh?
Matt: Yeah, that guy again.
Harry: But of course, in some ways, there's at least, it may be a baby step, but a kind of validation of his patient, bipartisan, et cetera. Let's quickly change directions though, in an area where in fact, there's no bipartisan headway, not an inch to be had, but he acted anyway this week, uh, gun control and gun violence. This is such a maddening area because the need for it screams out all the time in deafening tones every couple of weeks, when there's another terrible episode. So he can't get full legislation, but he came out with an overall package. Is it just window dressing or does the executive action here, auger some inroads on the overall problem.
Betsy: I would encourage people not to hold their breaths about anything that happens solely from the Executive Branch making a meaningful difference in levels of gun violence and gun crime in this country. Of course, it's completely understandable and makes perfect sense that the president is trying to do everything that he can do just with his pen and phone on this issue, but to make any sort of meaningful policy change, you have to get Congress involved. And part of the reason that it's so difficult to get Congress on board is that when it comes to gun rights groups, like the NRA, the incentives are always to resist any sort of legislative change. The important context here from the vantage point of the NRA, which I've written about in great detail for years now, which feels kind of crazy saying, the important context is that for that organization they're facing immense financial problems. First, anytime Republicans are in office NRA fundraising goes down because their base relaxes and gets less concerned about the status of the second amendment, and second, there's all sorts of self-inflicted legal problems that the association faces as well as external legal challenges, perhaps most substantially from the New York attorney general, Tish James, and the legal bills associated with all those problems, self-inflicted and otherwise, are immense. I mean, crazy legal bills. We're talking tens of millions of dollars for a nonprofit to spend on lawyers. Even compared to the level of legal trouble they’re in, the amount they're spending on lawyers is mind boggling. So for the NRA, one of their biggest concerns is making sure that they have enough funding to keep the lights on, which is, has literally become a problem for them. If you're the NRA, which do you think is going to raise more money when you send out a fundraising email to your small dollar donors and email with the subject line. We worked to develop bipartisan consensus on gun safety
Harry: That’s A, okay.
Betsy: Or an email with the subject line: Joe Biden is trying to take all your guns and melt them down and turn them into windmills. Send us $5 right now!
Harry: I know this one! I know this one!
Betsy: And then we'll save your second amendment. And so that's the incentives and that's how it's been for the NRA for years and years. And that's why at some point Republicans, if they want to see this change, have to decide if they're willing to take the political hit of breaking ranks with the NRA and potentially facing problems from their voting block. The other challenge is that the NRA, even though there's been immense amounts of reporting about problems in the association, when it comes to the way that it manages money, the way it manages donor funds, its efficacy, despite all that, the people who trust the NRA really trust it. And if the NRA says someone's good, they think that person's good. If the NRA says someone's bad, they think that person's bad. They're highly motivated. They're highly organized. They show up at the polls. They vote the way the NRA tells them to. So at the end of the day, that's why the association is so powerful and why I think the likelihood of there being meaningful gun laws at the federal level is as low as it's ever been.
Juliette: One of the things that is real is the increase in crime that we're seeing in 2021. It's not unlike the increase in border crossings that for a little while, lots of Democrats were saying “That's all BS and it's not really happening. Then you actually drill down on the numbers and the truth is it is greater.” These aren't, these aren't because of Biden or not us having borders, or because Democrats like criminals, these are complicated social phenomenons that are cyclical. And, and we came out of pandemics; we don't even know how to measure some of this stuff, but the crime rate appears to be increasing in a way, as I said, the sort of pandemic factor. Mental health issues, the isolation that people feel. And so that's the challenge for the Democrats that they can't ignore what is likely to be a crime wave. So not surprisingly, there's lots of talk about supporting police departments and supporting the police, which is just inconsistent with a part of where the party is. And then the things that one would want to do, you know, go after people who sell guns to bad people. But that is just one piece of it because the other piece is of course, the mass shootings. So we're at about what, like one a day now, or certainly a couple a week. Part of that is just because of the weaponry that's out on the street. That won't get solved by executive order. You can't penalize your way out of that problem. The capacity to kill lots of people quickly is the problem here. And these guns do that. No one survives these because that's not their intention and that doesn't get solved by anything but legislation, which is the fear tactics that the NRA is, is focused on.
Harry: Quick comment and then a question for you, Matt, and maybe this is my parochial vantage point, but it's true about this increase in crime and that's against a backdrop of a generally stunning, when it started, decline in violent crime over 20 years, roughly speaking. One of the things that Biden has ordered up are these initiatives in individual cities. It's a whole ‘nother topic, but having done one myself as US attorney, I do think there's been pretty good results in violent crime, within individual communities and where there's been a lot of leverage applied to the known, repeat violent offenders. But I want to follow up on Juliet. And so I think it's a little bit more with the whole “Big Lie” beginning to define the Republicans. I think the Democrats are bidding fair to become the party of law and order, et cetera. Is that a concerted strategy, do you think? And is it likely to succeed?
Matt: I think it's somewhat a concerted strategy by Democrats, but it won't succeed entirely because when Republicans talk about law and order, they're not talking about law and order for everyone they're talking about law and order to lock up Black people. That's always what they've meant by law and order. They're not talking about law and order for say, White collar criminals or people who invaded the Capitol, or basically what I'm saying is Republican criminals. So look, I think Democrats are in a stronger position than they've been in a long time. And partly because of Joe Biden's long history of criminal justice efforts to sort of capture where the American public is, which is we have to support the police and the work they do. At the same time, we have to reform police departments that are abusing the public trust, but that doesn't mean defunding the police, which is where Joe Biden and Merrick Garland are. But I wouldn't, even for a second, think that that is going to take the Republican party’s ability to demagogue about crime off the table because they will, and they will be effective with certain populations.
Betsy: Just to push back a teeny bit on the argument that the Democratic party is becoming the quote unquote, “the party of law and order.” I think it's important to note that there's a really broad diversity of opinion on the left today regarding police and how the White House and how government officials should talk about police, how police should be funded, whether alternatives to policing are a better use of municipal funds, and it's a genuine tension. And it's something that has materialized, particularly within the house democratic caucus, where shortly in the wake of the last election, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who's from a very tough district for her in central Virginia, it used to be Eric Cantor's district, really went on a major spiel on an internal Democratic caucus call saying that the discourse regarding defunding the police was potentially going to lose Democrats the House. And I think there can be a tendency anytime Republican's level of criticism for Democrats to say, Republicans are claiming something's true, therefore it's nonsense. But the reality is that among progressives, this is a serious policy proposal that's being seriously discussed by serious people. Major police departments have their budgets slashed substantially. And while Republicans obviously are going to capitalize on that discourse and try to use it to say that Biden and Merrick Garland want to fire all police officers. They're going to say that. You have to be able to differentiate between the mischaracterization that you hear from the Fox News folks of this argument and from the very serious argument happening within the Democratic party, where especially for many congressional progressive's, the idea of being the party of law and order or the idea of emphasizing Biden's history, supporting a criminal justice bill that fed into very high levels of incarceration in this country. That's not something where the democratic party is going to come together and have a kumbaya moment agreeing it needs to be the party of law and order. There are very real fissures on the left when it comes to law and order.
Harry: That's a really great point. All right. One more, very important and unilateral executive branch action happened at the end of the week with the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice, alleging that the voting law Georgia just passed violates the federal Voting Rights Act, and it violates section two of that, which basically requires the department to show some kind of purpose to actually diminish the vote of minorities. And just quickly to finish the background here, it's eight years ago today, in fact, that the Shelby County decision gutted section five of the same Voting Rights Act, which had been the department's most powerful tool. So this lawsuit is brought under section two. Okay. What do you think, how difficult will it be for the department to prevail against Georgia under section two of the Voting Rights Act?
Matt: I don't think we know the answer to that yet. Harry, I think the case they have is a strong one under the law as It stands today if you look at the suit they filed. They're able to point out a number of provisions of that law, the new restrictions, and point to how they will have a disproportionate impact on African Americans. They do have some, some pretty good stuff in the case around intent drawing on what legislators said during the debate. Where I think the real challenge might be, the Supreme Court is about to rule in the next few days, few weeks, on this very section, section two, that you referenced of the Voting Rights Act under which this case was brought. And, they may punt, they may issue a very narrow ruling as they did before they gutted the Voting Rights Act, they had had a previous chance to have gut it. They may punt again. Or they may gut section two or very severely restrict the rules of the road. Look, the department knows that decision is coming and they could have waited to see what the new rules of the road are going to be. I thought it was interesting that they filed now. I think partially to show they have a strong case. They want to get it filed, and if they have to come back and refile, fine they can do it and they'll have a stronger argument with Democrats in Congress that look, John Roberts did it again. Even the strong case we were going to bring in Georgia, we now can't bring because he's gutted the only remaining strong section of the Voting Rights Act. So I think the answer to your question is we don't yet know.
Betsy: I was at the Justice Department headquarters this morning for the press conference when they announced the litigation. And just talking about this from the perspective of Merrick Garland and his team, it was really interesting because it was his first time doing a press conference since he's been Attorney General. He's taken criticism for not being particularly media friendly, it very much goes against his disposition to do lots of backslapping with reporters. There was a big deal that his first time taking questions in that format was connected to this lawsuit. And he made a number of forward-leaning statements that apparently are also a little uncharacteristic. He said that. DOJ is sort of monitoring other state legislatures that are currently debating laws that would impact people's ability to vote. And he said that they are reviewing laws that have been passed, basically, you know, wink, wink, nod, nod, insinuating that there's more litigation like this to come from the department. And of course, two weeks ago, he said that the department doubled the size of its staff in the civil rights division that's focused on enforcing voting rights issues. So at the end of a couple of weeks that have been politically very uncomfortable for the fifth floor of the department in the wake of embarrassment, after embarrassment for them, from leftover Trump legacy landmines, this is something that Garland and the most powerful officials at DOJ are very enthusiastic to be talking about. And it's an important moment for them as a department, because it's something that are really brings together Garland's personal history on this issue, as well as being something that's politically useful to the White House, but also legally something that is near and dear to the hearts of the career prosecutors and litigators at DOJ’s, civil rights division.
Matt: I can't believe you linked all those things Betsy. The AGs never think about criticism they've taken when deciding to come out and before press conferences.
Harry: And deciding who's there. Did you see the phalanx of the progressive's, right, Kristin Clark, Vanita Gupta, Lisa Monaco. That was, we are here. You know, that was the progressive dream team for DOJ. So let's stick with just this point, cause it's not jocular, right? We have Merrick Garland taking, sometimes, real heat, but he's tried, I think, to toe the line between staying the course, even if it involves dubious, decisions under Trump, in litigated cases, because in part he is so adamant about letting the professionals have sway and they often decide to have pretty aggressive position just in their litigating interests, but trying to move in signal a more proactive approach on policy and new cases like Georgia. But you're right, he's taking some pretty big wallops in Washington among other places; Ruth Marcus a week ago, and then Jennifer Rubin came out with a “He's the wrong guy for the job” a couple days ago, that's really severe stuff. What do you guys think about the criticisms and taking up Matt's point? What impact, if any, will it have on the fifth floor of DOJ?
Juliette: You know, walk Garland off the plank editorials are a bit premature. For one, we don't know actually what investigations were occurring, what is legitimate and not legitimate. We don't know to what extent the fifth floor knew about some of these cases. And then upon learning about them because of reporters did actually do course corrections. And also as Garland is fighting off the, uh, left flank, he's also bringing from the outside view, a certain calmness. This is very Biden, like to the Department of Justice. You feel like smart people have thought through really difficult issues and they're going to bring a case, rather than the stuff you're hearing about Trump. But this is the same challenge that Obama faced, which is, are you the look forward president or the look back? And that's a really hard place to be. The Garland, or Biden, Justice department is quite comfortable having these investigations occur at the either US Attorney or State AG office. They don't need to bring everything to main justice. “I don't have to have an opinion about everything” is a good, good leadership lesson, Right? And I think Garland is sort of living by it. I do want to say on the Georgia thing, I really viewed these voting cases and the prosecutions against them also as a counter radicalization effort, I've come to believe in it, that violence and the threat of violence are now part of much of the GOP's strategy for victory in the future, whether that is real violence, as we saw on January 6th or even provisions say, of the Texas law, that are criminal in nature. In other words, You screw up in voting and you, it's not, you're getting a slap on the wrist its “you are going to jail.” The threat of that kind of taking away your freedom is a form of violence because this is about Back voters. So this is, this is not about Mississippi, right? We're not seeing lots of changes in Mississippi. Why? Because the Republicans are strong there. This is about the wrong people having voted. That is why you're seeing the movements in Georgia, in Texas, North Carolina. This is not about voting. This is about something bigger, which is the wrong people voted. And January 6th is part of that effort. I feel quite strongly about that, and I think that there's a through line between January 6th and what we saw this week.
Harry: And I want to move in a bit to January 6th, but an interesting point here is the really most aggressive pushback legislation in states, as you say, not in Mississippi, it's exactly the sort of blue/red line, Georgia for the first time goes blue, Arizona is spreading, even Texas, some people are saying is the next Democratic Georgia. So even though it's state by state and guys like Desantis, there's a feel of a national strategy directed at exactly the places where a little bit of marginal vote suppression could get the Rs back in the win column
Betsy: To Juliet's point about violence. That was something that Garland also discussed explicitly at the press conference this morning and something that would have been a headline if it had been the only thing they now announced, is that DOJ’s national security division, criminal division and civil rights division, along with the FBI, are starting a new nationwide task force to focus solely on violent threats against election officials all the way from poll workers, all the way up to the most senior election administrators. And Garland said, the reason for that is because the threats of violence against these officials have become so high. It's kind of a crazy thing to think about. It's the kind of thing that I think we tend to think of as sort of a developing world problem, not as an America problem, but it's acute and it's become a genuine safety issue for people who are literally at the front lines of democracy, to the extent where it's become a major focus for DOJ, because the risk is so high.
Harry: It's reminiscent of the sixties and having to escort the little girls to school. I think this is a place actually where Republicans led with their chin mistakenly and all the sort of brash nasty talk about threatening the election officials backfired. Let's zero in on January six, we had the first conviction here, not jail time. It feels to me as if each time there's another appearance in court, the “Big Lie” gets squeezed a little bit drier that little by little. You saw the Michigan Republicans come out with a report that there was no election fraud. It feels that maybe as if air could be leaking out of the Trump balloon little by little, week by week, do you sense that, or is that just wishful thinking?
Matt: It's a very hard question to answer Harry, because there have been so many times during the rise of Donald Trump, where we thought, well, this will be the thing that will convince everyone that he's full of it. The air has come out of the balloon with anyone who has an open mind. And I think anyone who has an open mind and is willing to look at facts rationally realizes “The Big Lie” is a big lie. And then there's a certain, very large segment of the population that either don't have an open mind or because they're afraid of the political consequences of having an open mind, aren't there. It's still important that the justice department does this because there's kind of a link between what we were talking about with Merrick Garland and the problems that he has. The fundamental problem that Garland has is for four years, people watched a president and senior officials at the justice department act with impunity in, I think, violating the law, in the president's case, certainly violating the norms and the rules of how government has often operated, and there's been zero accountability for them. And the reason there's no accountability, it's not because of Merrick Garland. Most of the things he did weren't violations of law, and the same is true for Bill Barr, but you can't blame Mitch McConnell, getting mad at Mitch McConnell only goes so far, right, for progressives. So you focus on Merrick Garland. Where's the accountability. Well, there's going to be no accountability for Bill Barr. I hate to say it. There's going to be no criminal accountability for Donald Trump at the justice department level. But what the department can do is make sure that everyone that did commit a criminal act on January 6th is held accountable and they can do that as loudly as possible, push for the toughest sentences possible, and I think, try to send a message that this is still a country where the rule of law matters and the justice department can’t enforce norms and practices and make everyone believe the truth. But if you violate the law, We can prosecute you.
Betsy: It's also a reminder of why having an independent DOJ is obviously a good thing for society; for the Biden White House is a double-edged sword [00:32:00] because the sign that the DOJ is independent is that it's doing things that piss off and embarrass the White House or that upset the president’s space. And you can't have it both ways.
Harry: Or in fact that go too far, even here, one has the strong sense that the Biden White House is by no means looking to step on a hornet's nest and indict say, Donald Trump, but I don't disagree with you, Matt, except it is the sort of corollary of the heat that Garland has been taking on issues like Jean Carroll, where I think the true explanation is he's a letting a professional process run its course. That process, for January 6th, dictates some kind of full review and they can't stop. They're going to have to get up to the top, and let's say they really find a conspiracy liability at the Giuliani/Trump Jr./Trump level. It's inconceivable on the one hand, but on the other, it also seems like this is the Merrick Garland department of justice. You call them straight and put one foot in front of the other. It's at least going to be complicated.
Juliette: I think, you know, ‘cause there was a lot of criticism about the first sentencing that happened that the woman only got a slap on the wrist and a little bit of a fine. And I think what would be helpful is for people to realize the strategy makes a lot of sense if you take a long view. They're dividing these prosecutions into three pieces. So the first is the noisy boisterous trespassers. She was seen in the Capitol for about 12 minutes. She got carried away. She's allowed to support Trump below, she’s not allowed to go on Congress. So that's the first, that's going to be your majority of people. Then you're going to have the violent trespassers. These are the pictures that are now being released. And then you have the conspirators; people who had pre-planned that violence would be utilized. We are just getting to that stage. We have our first plea of a person who likely was a co-conspirator, that's an oath keeper. You'll get more. That's the kind of trajectory you want. But remember that part of this is not just about January 6th. Of course, it's controversial to compare this to, you know, what are these, insurrectionists, or terrorists, or whatever. But part of the goal of these prosecutions is you want a, “we're not screwing around anymore” attitude. And so even going after people like this woman; she'll have a criminal record for the rest of her life. The reason why you want to do that is just for recruitment purposes, because in the absence of doing that, these guys are able to raise money, organize and recruit because winning is a recruitment effort and all the data online and social media and people who track these groups suggest they are screwed. They are turning on each other. They are going after each other. They don't know who's in cahoots with the FBI. I love it. Being screwed is better than feeling vindicated, which is how they felt for four years with a president who was nurturing it.
Harry: Yeah. So great point. And I would just add one thing to it, which is they should really go after an area that's normally just neglected, criminal fines. It's really good to make these guys pay up and probably go bankrupt. Well, let's talk briefly about COVID, a topic that feels as if it's been receding into the past, but maybe not. On the one hand, it feels like spring is busting out all over, but in fact, there are some worries, some aspects and pockets, certainly worldwide. And then we hear about the possible growth of the Delta variant and whether the vaccine will be effective against it. Juliet, you're been tracking this really carefully. What do you think is the state of play and how far are we from being truly out of the woods?
Juliette: We are having a false sense of comfort, but that's okay, we deserve it in some ways, especially if you're vaccinated. I think we, without saying, it, we've all come to, I think, two agreements. One is the vaccinated are done with the unvaccinated. In other words, we should, we need to do everything we can to make sure access is not an issue. So one of the things that the data is showing and the polling is showing is that a lot of people still think that it costs money. So if you can just get it out there that it's free and do much more tactical vaccination programs. So, in the doctor's office, at the CVS, at the local little league game, that is really key because you have to make it easy. The vaccine hesitant are often just like the vaccine lazy. So you just got to make it easy for them. And we can bad mouth them in the privacy of our home, but that's not going to get them vaccinated. We got to be much more sympathetic, and you're seeing some really creative stuff. We're trying to get out to communities because look, our anti-vaxxer numbers have basically been the same, between 9 and 11%.
I don't love it, but you can go far with 89% of your population vaccinated. We are not close. I am well aware of that, but we can get closer. So I think part of it is just, we are agreeing to move on. And part of that is that some number in our head, maybe it's less than 400 deaths a day is an acceptable, to use some military terms, an acceptable loss for living more freely
Harry: And by the way, are these fatalities almost all people who haven't been vaccinated?
Juliette: Every single one of them, I mean, that's what the CDC says. Every single one of them is the unvaccinated. And new pools, you know, more healthy pools than we saw obviously early on. No one's going to say that, but it seems like we can flatten the curve so to speak, but now we're talking about casualty rates. This is the kind of horrible things that people have to think about. It's a loss that will concern the public health community, but for mayors and governors, and I think presumably for a White House that has to think about a lot of things, including public health, it's going to be acceptable. And then we'll see what happens in September. We will get approval for our children under 12, probably just as we’re going back to school, so that's going to be a really quick pivot, but fingers crossed on what the timing looks like. And as a mother of three children, it is just not acceptable to think that our schools would re-close. Even if community spread is high, it's not sustainable anymore. I don't know about anyone else. My kids got about six weeks of full school this entire year at the very end.
Matt: Amen to that last part, Juliet.
Juliette: Yeah, it's just not acceptable.
Matt: The idea of them not being in school anymore, it's not acceptable. Look, it, it really does seem like we are, like everything else, heading to a place where there are two Americas, right? There is a vaccinated America that unfortunately will be to a great extent regional, right, or sub-regional in some cases, where, in certain communities, 95% or some very high percentage are vaccinated and there'll be places where 20 or 30% are vaccinated. And in those places, there will be outbreaks of COVID that are very serious and that people continue to die. And the hope for those of us that live in the vaccinated communities is that as it spreads and those unvaccinated communities, they don't develop variants that can pierce through the vaccines that we will have had for several months in a number of cases. I think Juliet makes a great point that the vaccine hesitant we can deal with, and I think the public health authorities in blue states and red states alike are being very creative in trying to deal with them. Look, you make the great point that if it's 11% that don't get vaccinated because they just refuse to do it, we can deal with that. But if it's say 30% or 40% or 50% in a certain region of a state, that state is going to have outbreaks. And so it gets back to that point where we just feel like a broken nation in some ways. COVID exposes that as much as anything else.
Betsy: It’s also important to remember how much income inequality contributes to people not getting vaccinated. One of my best friends works on the vaccination side, helping get people the COVID vaccine, and was telling me that part of the reason that a number of low-income folks, you know, particularly in the Hispanic community, haven't gotten vaccinated it's because many of these people work hourly jobs and have very low incomes. And the concern of having to risk multiple days of work because of side effects of the vaccines is a major financial hurdle for these folks. So, I think sometimes in the discourse, not here, but sometimes there can be a tendency to say, oh, these vaccine hesitant people, there are a bunch of rubes. They spend too much time on Facebook. Clearly, there are lots of vaccine hesitant rubes who spend too much time on Facebook, but there are also major economic, structural barriers that get in the way. And there's also, frankly, cultural competence problems that can make it more challenging to give vaccines to vulnerable communities. My friend was telling me about one vaccination site that was focused in large part on helping undocumented people get vaccinated. And they had a police car parked out front because of security concerns. My friend was like, well, you know, no kidding, no kidding, this isn't working. If you're undocumented, you're not going to walk past a cop to get a shot, because you're not crazy. And that's why having culturally competent public health professionals who understand vulnerable communities and can develop vaccination campaigns that reach them is so important. My friend was saying one of the most successful ways that they found to help people get vaccinated was by providing vaccinations at churches. You go to communities where people have close relationships and leaders that they trust. It makes a real difference in their comfort level with getting this care.
Juliette: I hear the same thing on the planning and response side, is this sort of sweeping generalization about what's happening, that, it is frustrating, and the red state/blue state is real, but even within blue states, those pockets still not vaccinated are often people who can't take time off from work. Access is a very different thing. And one of the things, when you look at this polling, and I recommend to anyone that sort of weekly polling that the Kaiser Family Foundation does, because it's just a helpful way of thinking about what's happening across the county. One of the consistent things that has propped up is not only people think it costs money. Fauci does not poll well, even in the vaccine hesitant crowd that may be blue. And so part of it is like, let's just get more sophisticated with how we're doing this, which is the priest polls well, the immigration services people poll really well. So we do have to get more creative about who our spokespeople are and they may not come from the public health community anymore. It may be that we are bumping up against a different kind of hesitancy that has less to do with health and more to do with economics and criminal fears of the police.
Harry: Yeah. Although ending up sort of where we started, at one form of unilateral action that the administration is doing is dispatching people, up to and including Fauci himself to knock on doors and say, hey, have you had your vaccine lately? All right, we'll have to wait with nervousness about the Delta variant. We've just got a minute or two left for our five words or fewer feature, where we take a question from a listener. And each of us has to answer in five words or fewer. Today it's from Oedipus Fray, who asks, “will Britney Spears be released from her conservatorship?” I'm going to call an audible here cause we haven't talked about her and no one else has. If you want to, preface it with any of your thoughts about Britney, feel free, but end up with a five word or fewer answers.
Betsy: I can actually do this in five words. I hope so. It's outrageous.
Matt: Yeah. I honestly have no idea.
Juliette: Oh come on, Matt!
Matt: But I don't, but I know I just, I agree with that. I totally agree with Betsy that it's outrageous and it seems like an abuse of the law.
Harry: Her father gets to say whom she can date, you know, a 39 year old woman.
Betsy: If she can have a baby?
Matt: But, but the reason I have no idea is because it seems like, outrageous that she's been in it this long and she hasn't been released from it yet. So, I’m, Reluctant to make predictions.
Harry: All right. I can go with exactly five words based on today's new guest. I'm with Betsy Woodruff Swan.
Thank you very much to Juliette, Matt, and Betsy. And thank you very much, listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter @talkingfedspod to find out about future episodes and other Feds related content. You can check us out on the web at talkingfeds.com, where we have full episode transcripts and you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics, exclusively for supporters. Keep your focus there for two full length discussions with the authors of recently published books. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com, whether it's for five words or fewer or general questions about the inner workings of the legal system for our sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle and Abby Meyer. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Our gratitude as always to the amazing Phillip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito LLC. I'm Harry Litman. See ya next time.
