Louisiana to require schools display Ten Commandments in the classroom | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Louisiana becomes the first state to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. Paste BN Deputy Washington Editor Dan Morrison discusses a flurry of bills aimed at honoring former President Donald Trump. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misses a deadline to meet criteria set by CNN to participate in this year's first presidential debate. Paste BN Democracy Reporter Erin Mansfield looks at how hundreds of officials in swing states have cast doubt on elections. Can a newly discovered genetic trait help delay Alzheimer's? 135 million Americans are baking under a massive heat wave. Plus, Tropical Storm Alberto has formed.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, June 20th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Louisiana becomes the first state to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms, plus, how some lawmakers are introducing a slew of bills honoring Donald Trump. And we look at how hundreds of public officials in swing states have undermined or cast out on elections.
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Louisiana Public schools will now be required to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom following a new law signed yesterday by Republican Governor Jeff Landry. It's the first state to take such action and Louisiana's legislation mandates a poster-sized display of the religious rules in large, easily readable font for kindergarten classrooms up to state-funded universities starting in 2025. In the Christian and Jewish faiths, God revealed the Ten Commandments to the Hebrew prophet Moses. Civil rights group ACLU and its Louisiana chapter, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religious Foundation announced they would file a lawsuit to challenge the law requiring the commandments be displayed.
Meanwhile, other measures would authorize the hiring of chaplains in school, restrict teachers from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity, and prevent schools from using a transgender student's preferred name or pronouns unless granted permission by parents. The governor also signed bills that would expand tutoring for underperforming students, help improve math skills, and place fewer curriculum mandates on teachers.
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Republicans have introduced a flurry of bills to honor former President Donald Trump in the heat of this year's presidential campaign. I spoke with Dan Morrison, a deputy editor in Paste BN's Washington bureau for more. Dan, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Dan Morrison:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Dan, let's just start here. You wrote about several bills that Republicans are pushing to honor former President Donald Trump. I want to start with the $500 bill, interesting stuff here. How did GOP lawmakers want to involve Trump on this?
Dan Morrison:
Well, Paul Gosar, who's a firebrand Republican from Arizona and a firm supporter of the former president, has put forward a bill to reissue the $500 bill, which hasn't been in circulation for nearly 80 years, and to boot former President William McKinley from the $500 bill and place Donald Trump on there.
He acknowledges the symbolic nature of this bill and says what he really wants to do is draw attention to inflation in the US under the Biden administration, and this is his way of doing so. Others might say he's also doing it to draw Trump's attention to his own fealty.
Taylor Wilson:
And, Dan, there are also efforts to get Trump the Congressional Gold Medal. Can you just remind us what is this medal and why do some Republicans argue Trump deserves it?
Dan Morrison:
The Gold Medal is just that, a gold medal that the US Congress can bestow onto eminences of different kinds. The hook here is his foreign policy successes while in office, the key one being mentioned by the representative from Florida who proposed it being the Abraham Accords, which was a number of peace agreements between Israel and different Arab states.
It's another way of members of Congress trying to bring Trump to the fore in what's proving to be a very hot election year. That's an effort by a Paulina Luna of Florida to have the former president receive this absolutely bipartisan prize that is usually awarded to non-controversial eminences by the US Congress.
Taylor Wilson:
And we're also hearing about a push to try and rename a major US airport after Trump. What do we know here, Dan?
Dan Morrison:
Dulles International Airport, it's a major airport in the Washington DC area named for a former Secretary of State, there's been a push to make that the Donald Trump International Airport. Like these other proposals, it's bound to fail, but it raises the proposer's profile in Trump world and maybe helps feed the constituents back home, something to chew on.
Airports are hard to rename. Ronald Reagan didn't get an airport named after him until nearly 10 years after he left office, and he was a very popular president who won two elections by very wide margins.
Taylor Wilson:
As you mentioned, Dan, these gestures do seem largely symbolic. I am curious what the greater significance is here and what lawmakers functionally are aiming to get out of these pushes for these bills?
Dan Morrison:
The congressional record is thick with symbolic measures, symbolic bills, symbolic resolutions. There are 435 members of Congress and they all have people back home they want to recognize. They have veterans, they have local service organizations that they want to talk up and get them entered into the record.
What's different here is that Donald Trump's a former president and he's a candidate for president and he's a convicted felon. And all of that's happening at once in this supercharged atmosphere in which he remains the absolute undisputed kingpin of the Republican Party. And so according to a former Republican member of Congress, this is a good way to catch his eye and let him know that you're thinking of him and supporting him.
Taylor Wilson:
And finally, are we hearing from Democrats at all in response to this flurry of bills?
Dan Morrison:
Futile symbolism goes both ways. After the proposal to rename Dulles International Airport, the Democrats put forward a proposal to rename a federal prison near Miami for Donald Trump, as a sort of jab at the three remaining criminal indictments he faces in addition to his conviction on fraud charges in New York.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Dan Morrison is an editor in the Washington bureau. Thanks for your time, Dan.
Dan Morrison:
Thanks for having me. Take care.
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Taylor Wilson:
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. missed a deadline last night to meet criteria set by CNN to participate in this year's first presidential debate. Conditions included appearing on enough state ballots to potentially win the presidency and also garnering at least 15% of voter support in four separate national polls. Kennedy had received at least 15% and only three accepted polls to date, and by CNN's count had qualified for the ballot in just six states, not enough to win the presidency.
Kennedy had argued the TV network's standards were being applied unfairly. His campaign asked that the Federal Election Commission take action and keep CNN, President Joe Biden, and former President Donald Trump from holding the June 27th debate unless it makes changes. CNN previously said only Biden and Trump had met its conditions to take part ahead of last night's midnight deadline.
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More than 300 public officials in five swing states have undermined or cast doubt on elections. I spoke with Paste BN Democracy Reporter Erin Mansfield to learn more. Erin, thanks for hopping on.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Erin, let's just start here, what is this new study and what did it find as it pertains to these officials and elections?
Erin Mansfield:
An organization called Public Wise, they advocate on a representative democracy, they're a little bit left-leaning. They created an index that they call Election Threat. They also use the term "election denier." And basically they looked at people who may have cast doubt on the 2020 election, maybe they cast doubt on 2022. Maybe they have a role where they certify votes and they voted against it, although a lot of these people are state lawmakers who signed on to legislation that the organization says would be anti-Democratic would alter an election outcome.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So you mentioned this a bit, but who exactly are these officials and are there any names or positions that stood out to you?
Erin Mansfield:
There are officials 334 in five swing states, all the big swing states except Nevada. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, over 300 of them. They range from the lieutenant governor of Georgia all the way down to some local officials in Detroit and Charlotte, North Carolina.
They all have varying amounts of power over elections. There are these canvassing boards in Michigan where one of the members, who's a Republican in the Detroit area, says he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election. Well, that man is going to need to vote to certify the 2024 election, so that's something that this group says they're sounding the alarm on.
There are two folks in North Carolina in the Charlotte area who voted against certifying a separate election. Now certifying an election is very much just an administrative sign-off. "Hey, we had 354 votes and then we did our count and we had to count the provisional and we got one more. Now let's certify it." And that's it. But prior to 2020, it had really never been a controversial process the way it is now.
And so what you have here are folks who served as fake electors. The lieutenant governor in Georgia was a fake elector in that state for Donald Trump. One of the folks on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which elections for that state, was a fake elector in 2020. So what you have are a lot of people with doubts about whether it's the 2020 election or various elections, and they're in positions of power to influence elections.
Taylor Wilson:
Are officials mentioned in this study responding at all to it?
Erin Mansfield:
I reached out to anyone we mentioned and I was not able to get a response. In general, I would say the Republican Party, they have put what they call election integrity front and center on their agenda this year. It's a big thing, you hear Trump talk about it. The local Republican Party in North Carolina, where those two folks I mentioned are located, said it's something that ensures the people's will is accurately reflected. And some people have qualified what they've said in other interviews, but unfortunately, no, they didn't talk to me. I always wish they would.
Taylor Wilson:
Erin, for folks wondering what's the big deal here, how worrying is this really for this fall's election?
Erin Mansfield:
We at Paste BN, we've been monitoring all kinds of changes that are happening to voting processes and election law because what happened in 2020 was really unprecedented. We're watching to see what might happen in 2024. And what we're definitely seeing and what the study really proves is that you have people in influential election roles in influential states who are casting some of the same kind of doubts you might've heard from members of Congress or the former president.
Taylor Wilson:
Erin Mansfield covers democracy for Paste BN. Thanks as always, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Researchers have discovered a rare genetic trait that could delay the onset of Alzheimer's in people who face an overwhelming risk of developing the mind-robbing disease. A study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 27 people from an extended Columbian family who carried a genetic variant called Christchurch, developed Alzheimer's disease several years later than expected. The findings build on early research in 2019 from a unique family predisposed to pass on the disease. The researchers found that a woman who had the same genetic trait delayed the onset of Alzheimer's by about three decades. Scientists from Mass General Brigham believed the evidence could be used to develop an Alzheimer's drug that replicates the protective effects of the Christchurch genetic variant. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Meteorologists warned yesterday that an ongoing heat wave scorching parts of the country is expected to intensify in the coming days, potentially breaking records and impacting more than 135 million people. According to AccuWeather, from the Ohio Valley, to the Mid-Atlantic, to New England, temperatures will reach the 90s and some places could see temperatures into the triple digits. That includes in areas not used to extreme heat like parts of Maine. Meanwhile, daytime temperatures around Pittsburgh are expected to feel like 110 degrees through Saturday. Elsewhere, an enormous storm system sweeping across the Gulf of Mexico strengthened yesterday into tropical storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
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Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, marking the precise moment when the sun is at its highest point in the sky each year and the day with the most daylight. It's also the earliest summer solstice since 1796 when George Washington was president. For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, it's the opposite. Today is the winter solstice.
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Gene editing is allowing for scientists to develop breakthrough treatments for some of our most challenging diseases. Tune into The Excerpt later today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, when my co-host Dana Taylor talks with the principal investigator of the Department of Hematology at St. Jude's Hospital, Shengdar Tsai, about his work in genome editing and how it could shape the future of medicine.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.