Outrage grows over Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Joe Biden and others speak out after a deadly Israeli strike on aid workers. Paste BN Border and Immigration Reporter Lauren Villagran discusses S.B. 4 ahead of a Wednesday hearing for the controversial Texas immigration law. 2023 was a record year for Islamophobia. LSU settles a lawsuit with ten women over sexual misconduct cases. Paste BN Congress, Campaigns and Democracy Reporter Sudiksha Kochi looks at the movement to ban private election funding.
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 Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, the fallout from deaths of humanitarian aid workers killed in Gaza. Plus an appeals court weighs a Texas immigration law, and we take a look at the movement to ban private election funding.
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President Joe Biden expressed outrage yesterday over the deaths of seven humanitarian aid workers in, including one American, for the nonprofit group, World Central Kitchen. They were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. In a statement, Biden said, "They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy." Biden called Chef Jose Andres, who founded the organization in 2010, to express his condolences. National security spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters at a briefing that the US is demanding accountability from Israel.
John Kirby:
Our expectation is, and we've made this clear to them, that they'll come clean about what they've learned. They'll be fully transparent, and if people need to be held accountable, that they'll be held accountable.
Taylor Wilson:
Kirby also called images of the carnage devastating, and confirmed more than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began. The group said it had coordinated its movements with Israel's military before the strike. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "The airstrike that killed the workers was unintended and tragic." Andres established the nonprofit organization in 2010 after he traveled to Haiti following an earthquake, according to the nonprofit's website. There he cooked alongside displaced families in camps. Since its founding, the group has provided meals to people who have been affected by humanitarian, climate and other disasters. You can read more about the workers who were killed with the link in today's show notes.
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A federal appeals court today will weigh a legal challenge to SB 4, the controversial Texas immigration law. I spoke with USA Today border and immigration reporter, Lauren Villagran for more. Lauren, it's always great having you on.
Lauren Villagran:
Hey Taylor. Thanks.
Taylor Wilson:
So Lauren, just refresh us here, what is SB 4 and what is a federal appeals court weighing later today?
Lauren Villagran:
So SB 4 is Texas Senate Bill 4 that makes it a state crime to cross the border illegally and gives the Texas Department of Public Safety, state troopers and other law enforcement the ability to question people about their immigration status, and even deport them to their country of origin if found to be in the country illegally. Today, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing a challenge to that law, brought by the Justice Department and also El Paso County, Texas, and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, among others, which are all challenging that the law is unconstitutional.
Taylor Wilson:
Lauren, how does SB 4 compare with measures we've seen in both California and Arizona over the years, and is SB 4 mobilizing immigrant communities around this issue in Texas, in similar ways to what we've seen in those other states?
Lauren Villagran:
The short answer is, yes. The longer answer is that it's complicated. So SB 4 is in a tradition of states, especially Republican-led states, trying to legislate around immigration or border enforcement. You can go all the way back to the mid-1990s in California when voters approved Proposition 187. It was a proposition that would have eliminated services, including healthcare and even education, for undocumented immigrants, including children, and required state agencies report people to the feds if they were found to be in the country illegally. That proposition ultimately galvanized a generation of immigrant voters, including in Latino communities, and is seen as a watershed moment in California politics in which the state went more reliably blue and Democrat. You saw in the early 2010s, Arizona passed its own law, SB 1070, that was known as the "show me your papers" law. That law was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court and now, over in Texas, you see something that's a little similar and that is also likely to wind its way to the Supreme Court.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, Lauren, I'm curious, how much support does SB 4 have in border communities at this point?
Lauren Villagran:
The law has not been allowed to take effect, except for a few hours in between court rulings on an injunction. So no one knows quite how it will work or how broad its impact will be on Texas immigrant communities. That being said, border communities are all different in Texas. Hispanic communities in Texas are incredibly diverse. So there are a range of political views in those communities, including along the border. You certainly see immigrant advocacy organizations mobilizing around this law, in a way that perhaps you hadn't seen before. This is what advocates are telling me, that they are coalescing around a common purpose to fight this law in a way that, maybe, Texas hadn't seen in the past. That being said, there are certainly people within border communities, including within majority Hispanic border communities, who are tired of what they see as federal inaction on the border and which are supportive of SB 4. So I think we're going to continue to see this law move through the federal court system. Whatever the appeals court decides, the likelihood that this gets appealed to the US Supreme Court is very high.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Lauren Villagran is a national news reporter covering immigration and the US-Mexico border for USA Today. Thank you, Lauren.
Lauren Villagran:
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
2023 was a record year for Islamophobia. The Council on American-Islamic Relations received more than 8,000 complaints, the most in its 30-year history, and nearly half of those complaints came in the final three months of the year. In its report, the organization reported that the main force behind a wave of heightened Islamophobia was the "escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine in October, 2023." Complaints include immigration and asylum cases, employment discrimination, education discrimination, and hate crimes and incidents.
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10 women have settled a federal lawsuit against Louisiana State University in which they alleged that the school mishandled their sexual misconduct cases, according to court records. US District Court Judge Wendy Vitter closed the case on Thursday, three years after the lawsuit was filed. The judge previously denied the university's motion to dismiss several of the women's claims, in December. The suit accused the LSU Athletic Department of implementing a purposefully deficient sexual misconduct reporting scheme, separate from the LSU Title IX Office, to keep allegations against athletes in-house, in violation of federal and state law. Several women had accused former star LSU running back, Derrius Guice, of a range of sexual misconduct, including rape and taking and sharing illicit photos without consent. Former LSU tennis player, Jade Lewis, said football player, Drake Davis, physically assaulted her on multiple occasions. Other women said the school failed to appropriately respond to their Title IX complaints against students, in some cases unnecessarily delaying the investigation.
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Voters in Wisconsin passed a ballot initiative yesterday to ban the use of private funds for election administration, a measure championed by former President Donald Trump and Republican House lawmakers. I spoke with USA Today, Congress, campaigns and democracy reporter, Sudiksha Kochi, to learn more. Sudiksha, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Sudiksha Kochi:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Sudiksha, what did voters pass in Wisconsin yesterday on this ballot initiative?
Sudiksha Kochi:
Yeah, so the initiative in question that voters in Wisconsin passed would ban the use of private funds for election administration. This measure was championed by former President Donald Trump as well as Republican House lawmakers, including Representative Brian Steele of Wisconsin and Jim Jordan of Ohio. The initiative would prevent election offices from applying for private grants that are typically by nonprofit organizations to help administer elections or for any election needs such as equipment, infrastructure or any sort of staffing.
Taylor Wilson:
And how is this related to misinformation around Mark Zuckerberg?
Sudiksha Kochi:
It stems from misinformation surrounding a nearly $420 million donation, Zuckerberg and his wife had made to two nonpartisan nonprofits, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and The Center for Election Innovation & Research, in 2020. Those funds were later dispersed to local and state officials by the organizations. However, the donation, which some Republicans have coined Zuckerbucks, an anti-Semitic term, according to some watchdogs, became the eye of conspiracy theories that was basically pushed by Trump and his allies who falsely claimed that the funds benefited Democrats. There is no evidence to support that. Many judges and a bipartisan report by the Federal Election Commission have dismissed those claims.
Taylor Wilson:
So we mentioned this ballot initiative in Wisconsin. Have we seen similar laws or initiatives elsewhere, and just really how big of a national movement is this, Sudiksha?
Sudiksha Kochi:
So the misinformation around Zuckerberg's donation actually ignited this nationwide movement to ban private election grants altogether. So far, 27 states have passed laws or ballot initiatives that either prohibit or regulate private funding in elections. So experts expect this movement to grow more heading into the 2024 general election.
Taylor Wilson:
What do private grant bans mean, really functionally, for election workers?
Sudiksha Kochi:
Private grant bans actually leaves election workers in shambles, because it means that the funding that they would typically use from the grants is getting cut off. Specifically in 2020, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, one of the nonpartisan nonprofits that Zuckerberg donated to, actually provided nearly 2,500 election departments across 49 states with grants. But in states where bans have been adopted, other than in Pennsylvania, there have been no efforts to provide election offices with an increased local budget or any type of alternative sources of funding, which means that election offices are left being underfunded, under resourced and understaffed.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Sudiksha, what's next for this conversation around private grants, as we move deeper into 2024 and closer to this big general election?
Sudiksha Kochi:
One important thing to note is that misinformation around Mark Zuckerberg and the private grant really stemmed from former President Trump's false allegation that the 2020 election stolen, which is something that he's repeated on the campaign trail. He's repeated at rallies to his supporters, and so we expect to see misinformation around private grants grow, heading into the general election, surrounding that misinformation around 2020.
So the Center for Tech and Civic Life, one of the nonprofits actually launched an initiative in 2022 to distribute 80 million, over five years, to election departments across the country, to support election infrastructure. But there've actually also been misinformation surrounding that already, heading into 2024. So for instance, in January of last year, Georgia was awarded 2 million in grants, and a conservative website had falsely claimed that the funds were part of an operation by Democrats to privately take over election offices in the state, which USA Today debunked. It was false. Some of Trump's allies, like Steve Bannon, who's a former Trump adviser, has also made false claims about these grants. So we do expect this misinformation to grow heading into the general election.
Taylor Wilson:
Really interesting story. Sudiksha Kochi covers Congress, campaigns and democracy for USA Today. Thank you, Sudiksha.
Sudiksha Kochi:
Thank you so much, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
Be sure to stay tuned to The Excerpt later today when I'll be joined for a special episode by Patric Gagne, author of the book, Sociopath: A Memoir. We'll discuss her story and how she's had to come to terms with her own sociopathy. You can find the episode right here on this feed beginning at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. 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 USA Today.