Mexico elects its first female president, Hunter Biden's felony trial starts | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Mexico has elected Claudia Sheinbaum as president. Paste BN Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen previews Hunter Biden's felony gun trial. LGBTQ+ communities and allies around the country are taking steps to promote safety at Pride events. Millions of children are now caregivers at home without any government recognition, pay or support. Paste BN Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn discusses whether companies have kept promises made to Black Americans after George Floyd's murder.
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 Monday, June 3rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Mexico has elected a new president. Plus, we take a look at Hunter Biden's gun trial which is set to begin today. And is corporate America keeping promises it made to Black Americans?
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Mexicans have elected their first woman president. Claudia Sheinbaum received between 58.3 and 60.7% of the vote according to preliminary results announced by Mexico's National Electoral Institute earlier today. On October 1st, she'll become the leader of a country that is the top trade partner of the US and the second-largest economy of Latin America. She'll also be overseeing a country slammed by violence tied to organized crime. With Sheinbaum's win, Mexico beat the United States in electing a female head of state. Sheinbaum is a scientist, engineer, and former mayor of Mexico City who shares the populist ideology of her political mentor, outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. For more on what's next across the border, check out our Saturday episode of The Excerpt when I spoke with Paste BN national reporter Lauren Villagran who put the election in context for us. You can find a link to that episode in today's show notes.
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Hunter Biden's felony gun trial is set to begin today following the collapse of a deal with federal investigators last year. I spoke with Paste BN Justice Department correspondent Bart Jansen for a look ahead. Bart, thanks for hopping on.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Bart, the build-up to this trial has really been kind of start, stop, start, stop for months. What's that issue here and what's happened leading up to this week?
Bart Jansen:
The government had tried to reach a plea agreement with Hunter Biden last July to resolve its multi-year investigation of tax and gun complaints, and it envisioned him pleading guilty to a couple of misdemeanors for tax charges and then getting put into a pretrial diversion program over gun charges so that if he completed the program, which meant two years of sobriety and no other crimes committed, that he could have those charges wiped out entirely. So it looked like last July, he was going to be able to walk away without any jail time and resolve this lengthy investigation. Well, the plea negotiations fell apart and so the prosecutor David Weiss, who is the US Attorney in Delaware and he was later appointed to special counsel to pursue this investigation further, he indicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges in September. And those are the charges that are coming to trial today finally in Delaware. A second set of nine tax charges are scheduled for trial in California on September 5th.
Taylor Wilson:
So what can we actually expect today and the rest of this week?
Bart Jansen:
Jury selection starts today. The trial overall is expected to last a couple of weeks. The charges against Hunter Biden focus on a form that he filled out where he was asked, "Are you the unlawful user or addicted to marijuana, depressant, stimulants, or a narcotic drug or other controlled substance?" And he marked an X on that page. But his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has suggested that he didn't know what the term addict or user meant at that time, and he had just completed an 11-day rehabilitation program and he was living with a sober companion so that he didn't view himself as a current user or addict.
Now, that will be something for the jury to decide. Prosecutors have said that they want to use federal definitions of what is a user or an addict. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms says that a user or an addict is somebody who used a controlled substance within the past year or had multiple arrests during the past five years. So they take a much more expansive view. Hunter Biden's lawyers have tried to rule out that view and disputed whether the jury will be instructed to consider the charges in that way. And so that's one of the key points that we're going to be seeing in this trial.
Taylor Wilson:
Bart, the timing here is interesting coming just days after former President Donald Trump was found guilty on all counts in his hush money trial, and half of Americans say they believe Hunter Biden received favorable treatment from prosecutors because he's the president's son. That's according to a Reuters Ipsos poll last summer. Bart, how are Americans viewing this trial in the wake of being so focused on the former president in recent weeks?
Bart Jansen:
Well, there's definitely a lot of skepticism about how Hunter Biden's investigation was handled because he is the son of the president. When the plea agreement was announced and the prospect of no jail time was revealed, House Republicans just blasted as a sweetheart deal. They said clearly he was giving favored treatment because he is the son of the president. Attorney General Merrick Garland has forcefully denied that. He said the investigation was carried out independently. They followed the facts and the law. And then as the plea agreement fell apart over basically a dispute between defense lawyers and prosecutors over whether Hunter Biden would be protected from potential future charges, ones that we don't even know about yet, when that deal fell apart, Garland named David Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware, as a special counsel so he would have even more independence to pursue charges. And Weiss then came back two separate indictments, one dealing with gun charges and one dealing with tax charges.
But so then on the flip side, Democrats are now criticizing the investigation, saying that it has now become too harsh that the gun charges at stake about lying on the federal form about whether you are an addict are rarely prosecuted and that basically Hunter Biden is being prosecuted just because he is the president's son. And so it is almost flipped to the other side, the accusations that the trial is too harsh. So it is absolutely viewed through a political lens from both sides, and there'll be a lot of attention paid to how the trial goes because of the implications for potentially having the first presidential child convicted of a crime while the president is in office. That would be a first.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Bart Jansen covers the Justice Department for Paste BN. Thanks, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
As Pride Month begins this week, LGBTQ+ communities and allies around the country are taking steps to promote safety at Pride events. In Colorado, organizers at the Pikes Peak Pride Festival are making plans to mark the event's 34th anniversary in Colorado Springs where a gunman killed five and injured 25 at the LGBTQ+ nightclub, Club Q, in 2022. Pikes Peak Pride board member Justin Burns said, "The importance of Pride and celebrating our identity is more important than any fear." At a time of continuing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and a spate of legislative measures targeting the trans community, LGBTQ+ groups and their advocates say it's more important than ever to maintain a proud sense of identity while remaining vigilant in the face of unknown threats.
Last month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a public service announcement to raise awareness of the potential targeting of LGBTQIA+ events like Pride by foreign terrorist organizations or their supporters. One national group hopes to provide the community a sense of security by training faith leaders and congregants to play a protective and calming role at Pride events around the country. Interfaith Alliance, an organization that promotes LGBTQ+ rights and inclusive faith communities, teamed with the Southern Poverty Law Center to offer the training as part of its third annual Faith for Pride initiative. You can read more about steps being taken to keep Pride safe this month with a link in today's show notes.
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An estimated 5.4 million children provided care to parents, grandparents, or siblings with chronic medical conditions or functional decline in 2019. That was up from just over a million in 2005 according to reports from the National Alliance for Caregiving and others. An aging population, more drug and alcohol use, mental health issues, shorter hospital stays, and long COVID have likely boosted the need for kids to help in the home according to experts. And in-home care and nursing homes are hard to find and unaffordable for most, especially if you're still relatively young.
President Joe Biden took executive action last year to expand care and raise wages, but none of them help youth caregivers. Other countries, including the UK and Australia, recognize young carers through legislation and policy and offer stipends. In the US, Medicare does not pay family members to provide care, and low income families on Medicaid can only get reimbursement for adults. Experts say help for now is left to nonprofits.
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Amid an anti-DEI backlash, is corporate America keeping the promises it made to Black Americans after George Floyd's murder? I spoke with Paste BN senior reporter Jessica Guynn for more. Jessica, thanks for hopping on.
Jessica Guynn:
Thanks so much for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Jessica, what did companies promise when it comes to diversity in the wake of George Floyd's murder?
Jessica Guynn:
Well, four years ago as a business journalist, I couldn't go a few minutes without a press release or a tweet from companies declaring that they were all in the fight against racial injustice and vowing to do their part after George Floyd's murder. And in these missives, they ponied up billions in financial commitments and they outlined pretty ambitious goals to make their workforces look more like America.
Taylor Wilson:
So are companies keeping those pledges?
Jessica Guynn:
For the last 10 years at Paste BN, I've been documenting the deep racial disparities in the nation's largest and most powerful companies. And these companies were certainly signaling that they were really ready to do something about it, but then they ran headlong into a conservative-led backlash that is hellbent on vilifying just the kind of diversity efforts that they were undertaking.
This what they call anti-woke movement gain momentum last year with the Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action in college admissions, and activists claim that DEI in the corporate world is handing women and people of color jobs and promotions at the expense of more qualified candidates. They also argue that corporate programs that exclude white people like a fellowship or an internship geared to racial minorities is just as illegal as a program that excludes Black people. What's more, there are now questions about the legality as some of these initiatives in the wake of that ruling, and that's put the business world on the defensive. They've began to scrutinize and walk back some policies and programs they adopted after Floyd was killed, such as hiring targets for Black executives. Critics say those hiring goals are illegal quotas in disguise.
Taylor Wilson:
So have Black workers made any gains since Floyd's murder?
Jessica Guynn:
Black Americans are making headway, and we've established that in our own data investigations here at Paste BN. For example, we reported last year that the nation's 100 largest companies had four Black CEOs and a growing number of top executives who were Black. But of course, that's just a small dent. Of the 533 top executive officers across these companies, white men were 7 in 10. And of those companies, about 1 in 7 had executive teams that were made up only of white men.
Taylor Wilson:
Jessica, DEI refers to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But what are some companies saying about shifting this conversation to refer to just the word inclusion instead?
Jessica Guynn:
Well, no one wants to be caught referring to DEI anymore. Companies are dropping that language from their shareholder reports and in earnings calls. Some companies are even listing DEI as a risk factor. Instead, increasingly we're seeing talk of inclusion, and that's an attempt to sidestep some of the controversy that's been created around DEI. The idea being that creating inclusive workplaces is less likely to get you in hot water with critics since you're stressing company initiatives that are for everyone, not just certain demographic groups.
Taylor Wilson:
Jessica Guynn is a senior reporter with Paste BN. Thank you, Jessica.
Jessica Guynn:
Thanks so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
And a happy first week of June, listeners, the unofficial start to summer for many. 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.