- I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Tonight on Here and Now,
a first look at the balance of political power
in Wisconsin and how it is now in the hands
of the U.S. Supreme Court.
After that, a closer look at the reaction
from Wisconsin Congressional leaders
following the shooting rampage in Las Vegas.
Then in our inside look, see how the state's farm labor
landscape is changing over fears
of deportation for immigrant workers.
It's Here and Now for Friday, October 6th.
- Funding for Here and Now is provided,
in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
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- Our first look this week,
arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court
regarding Wisconsin's political boundaries.
This case started in 2010,
when Republicans gained complete control
of Wisconsin's government.
In 2011, Republicans redrew state Assembly district maps
to help them convert normally close elections
into legislative majorities.
The following year Republicans won only 48.6%
of the statewide vote for Assembly candidates,
but captured 60 of 99 seats.
In 2015, the case Gill versus Whitford
was filed as Democratic voters sued,
saying voting maps warped by politics
violated the Constitution.
This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed
to hear this case.
The Supreme Court has never struck down a redistricting map
based on whether it was drawn to benefit
one political party.
The court has, however, left open the possibility
that some political maneuvering may be too extreme.
The Wisconsin case is expected
to have national implications.
Wisconsin Public Radio's Capital Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson
just returned from the Supreme Court hearings
in Washington and he joins us from the state capitol,
where lawmakers are watching how it
could impact their elections.
Shawn, thanks a lot for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- Refresh our recollections
about the arguments on both sides of this.
- Yeah, I think this case in a nutshell
kind of boils down to when partisan redistricting
becomes too partisan to the point that it violates
the Constitutional rights of the party that wasn't in power.
The voters for the party that wasn't in power
when map lines get drawn.
And so that is what frames this case,
is democrats have said indeed Wisconsin's map
was too partisan.
We don't have a voice in our state government.
And so they not only want Wisconsin's map overturned.
It would also set a national standard
so that cases like these could be brought elsewhere
in the country.
- So having heard the oral arguments,
what can you ascertain about the position of the justices?
- Well, we went in kind of knowing that there was this
conservative block who we thought viewed the cases one way
and this liberal block who viewed them another way.
A lot of the justices reaffirmed those suspicions.
You had three conservatives speak during arguments
and express quite of bit of skepticism about
whether the court should step into cases like this.
I think you'd have to say the most outspoken critic
or skeptic at least of whether or not the Supreme Court
should get involved in partisan gerrymandering cases
was Chief Justice John Roberts.
He said that if partisan gerrymandering claims
like these become something that you can take to the court,
we will get every one of them.
And that even if we based our decisions on the
latest social science, on math,
that the average person in the street is going to view
the court as siding with Democrats or with Republicans.
He said that's going to damage the reputation of the court.
Here's Chief Justice John Roberts.
- And that's going to come out one case after
another, as these cases are brought in every state.
And that is going to cause very serious harm
to the status and integrity of the decisions
of this court in the eyes of the country.
- Now, on the other side of the court,
the other persuasion of the justices,
they suggest that these legislative boundaries
in Wisconsin result in predetermined results.
- And you had kind of the counterweight to Justice Roberts'
argument delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
who's one of the four justices on the court who were
appointed by Democratic presidents.
Justice Ginsburg said what happens when you have a
legislative map that has kind of stacked the lines
to such a degree that when it comes time for elections,
voters already know the outcome.
Here's Justice Ginsburg.
- What becomes of the precious right to vote?
Will we have that result when the individual citizen says,
"I have no choice.
"I'm in this district and we know how this district
"is going to come out."
I mean, that's something that the society
should be concerned about.
- And you also heard three of the other justices appointed
by Democratic presidents say,
"Look, the case here is pretty clear.
"We know that they drew the maps as partisan as they could.
"We also know that we can measure these things now.
"That social science has advanced to a degree now that even
"judges can figure out how these maps can be evaluated."
- Meanwhile, Justice Kennedy is described
as the swing vote on this.
Did you get that sense from his questions?
- Yeah, we went into arguments thinking that he
was the pivotal vote and everybody was wondering
what kind of hints he was going to send during arguments.
I think everybody left arguments thinking the same thing,
that while you had three of the four conservatives
who seemed to tip their hand a bit as to where
they were going and a fourth, Justice Thomas,
who everybody assumes is going to vote with them.
And you had the court's four liberals
tipping their hand as well.
You had Justice Kennedy playing his cards
pretty close to his vest.
- Yeah, no, go ahead.
I understood that, too, that he asked questions
mostly pertaining to standing.
- Yeah, right out of the gate, I mean,
when arguments started,
he cut off the Wisconsin Department of Justice attorney
relatively quickly and wanted to know,
you know, whether this case would be viewed differently
if it was a First Amendment case
versus a 14th Amendment case.
He was very interested in standing.
And so that's left people kind of scratching their heads
as to what he might be thinking
as he's looking at that standing.
What he did not get into is whether or not this case
has that kind of bright line metric
to measure partisan gerrymandering.
That's something that Kennedy said in 2004
he was looking for.
We presume he's still looking for it in 2017.
But he gave no hints as to whether or not
he thought this case had what it takes.
- Briefly, with less than a minute left,
what happens if the high court overturns these maps
and what happens if they don't?
- If the high court overturns these maps,
we don't exactly know.
The presumption is you'd have a legislative map
eventually in Wisconsin that's more competitive,
that leads to more Democrats being elected
and fewer Republicans.
But we don't know.
And we don't know when that's going to happen,
whether it be before 2018.
If the court decides not to strike down Wisconsin map;
that is, it upholds the map,
does not set a new standard nationwide,
this could be the last time the court revisits this issue
for years, a decade, a generation.
Could be a long time.
- Okay, very meaningful stuff.
Shawn Johnson, thanks very much for your reporting.
- You're welcome.
- This week, our partners at WisContext landed
in the middle of the gerrymandering lawsuit
before the high court
because Republicans filed an amicus brief in the case
citing analysis from the UW Applied Population Lab
that looked at the density of voters by county in Wisconsin.
But was that analysis published in a WisContext report
an apples-to-apples argument for justices to consider?
We ask its author, Malia Jones.
Thanks for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- How surprised were you that your research
and analysis ended up in this amicus brief
on the part of the RNC?
- We were very surprised.
That is certainly not something I expected to have
as an outcome and probably will never happen to me again.
- As we suggested, though, was this an apples-to-apples
application of your research to this gerrymandering case
in your opinion?
- It really was not because the amicus brief talks about
our report, which analyzed the population density
at the county level of Wisconsin,
and partisanship at the county level.
And this case is really about Assembly districts,
which are in some cases larger than counties,
and in other cases much smaller than counties.
So it really is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
- So what did your research show?
- So what we showed was that counties in Wisconsin,
like in many other places,
have become more concentrated in terms of partisanship
over time and especially urban counties
have become more and more Democratic-leaning over time.
Where rural counties, many of them remain mixed,
but overall becoming less Democratic over time.
- So that's what you showed.
How did the RNC use it?
- The RNC used this analysis to support their argument
that one of the two main processes that's used
to achieve gerrymandering, which is called packing,
is not something that the Republican majority
in the state legislature did on purpose,
but was just sort of a natural demographic process
related to how populations have changed over the course
of the decades.
And so they used our brief or our report
to support their argument that actually packing
is happening, happening sort of as a natural background
demographic process.
- Packing is happening as kind of a self-selection process?
- Exactly, so people are self-selecting
into urban places and that's why we see "packing"
in these urban legislative districts in places
like Milwaukee and Madison.
- But so how are these kind of political geographies
not equivalent, the county versus the legislative
boundary lines as drawn?
- So the main way that they are not equivalent
is that legislative boundaries are redrawn every 10 years,
specifically to respond to population change.
And we do that in order to maintain
the equal representation or the one person one vote rule.
So as urban places grow and rural places many times stay
the same in terms of population
or even decrease in terms of population,
the district boundaries have to be redrawn
in order to ensure that each person has about an equal
amount of representation in state government.
And so that, those Assembly district boundaries
are purposefully redrawn.
And they're done in this state by the party who is in power
at the time.
Whereas county boundaries in general,
they remain fixed except for exceptional cases
where something happens that changes the county boundary.
So they're just not at risk for manipulation
for political purposes.
- So did you have any discussions with either side
of this case about your analysis or the use of it?
- We did not have direct discussions with either side
of the case, but when we saw that the brief
had been filed by the RNC,
I really wanted to respond with my opinion
about whether that was appropriate.
And so we did publish a follow-up report
where we go into some detail about how equivalent
these two different kinds of geographies are
and why they really are not equivalent.
- And any response to that on your part?
Any response to your response?
- Not from anybody who's been involved in the case.
Although we've had a positive response from readers on it.
- So what do you expect to research
in regard to this issue coming up?
- Well, we'll be very interested to follow
the Supreme Court case outcome and see,
and especially see if we will be required
to draw new boundaries if the court upholds
the lower court's decision that
this was a case of gerrymandering.
- All right. Malia Jones, thanks very much for your work.
- Thanks for having me.
- In our closer look this week,
the fallout and reaction in the wake
of the Las Vegas shooting.
That shooting has put Republicans on the defensive
over their opposition to new gun restrictions
and their efforts to eliminate existing ones.
This week Republicans halted at least temporarily
a plan to advance legislation making it easier
to buy gun silencers.
The shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 dead
and hundreds injured magnified those efforts.
House Speaker Paul Ryan says the focus should be
on mental health rather than on gun restrictions.
- So I think it's important that as we see the dust settle
and we see what was behind some of these tragedies,
that mental health reform is a critical ingredient
to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these
things from happening in the past.
So that's just one example of the things that Congress
has done to make sure that we can try
and get ahead of these problems.
- Following the attack, Wisconsin Republican
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs
the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, said, "My committee will work to support the
"federal role in investigating this attack
"and protecting against further threats.
"As Americans", he says, "we must unite to defeat threats
"to our nation's security, both foreign and domestic."
Wisconsin's Democratic U.S. Senator, Tammy Baldwin,
said in a statement, "It's frankly hard to comprehend a
"tragedy of this magnitude.
"It's evil and senseless.
"So to my colleagues, let's move past thoughts and prayers.
"It's time", she says, "for action."
According to Wisconsin laws, machine guns
or any other fully automatic guns for the most part
are illegal.
Under federal law there are some exceptions.
You can purchase what's called a bump stock legally
in Wisconsin or online,
which can convert a single-fire semiautomatic gun
into a fully automatic weapon
that Fires 400 to 600 shots per minute.
However in Wisconsin, it's a felony to modify a weapon
to make it automatic using that device.
Senator Johnson and Speaker Ryan say they are open
to the idea of banning bump stocks.
This week Foxconn revealed the location
for its massive new technology factory.
The Racine County location is in
the Village of Mount Pleasant.
The Taiwan-based company is set to acquire
more than 2,500 acres for which includes the factory site,
additional land for future expansion and constructs staging.
Foxconn would be by far the largest manufacturing campus
in the state, with an estimated workforce of 13,000.
In addition to the $3 billion state incentive package,
the Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County will provide
Foxconn $764 million for development.
Local officials said all of it will be repaid by taxes
the project generates.
Our partners at WisContext have also learned
the city of Racine will provide water for the complex.
This week, our inside look examines a key labor market shift
in the state.
Wisconsin dairy farmers now depend on immigrant labor
to produce the amount of milk that ranks us
second in the nation.
But with immigration fears and an already short supply
of workers, farmers worry about who will help them
get the chores done and the milk to market
without breaking the bank.
This week we check in with
the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
which queried experts and farmers to ask what needs
to happen to stabilize the labor situation
on Wisconsin's dairy farms.
We started by asking Managing Editor Dee Hall
how fears of deportation have changed the landscape
for farmers and their immigrant workers.
- That's a big concern among the workers.
We're seeing some anecdotal evidence
that some of the workers are leaving
in anticipation of an immigration crackdown.
We haven't actually seen evidence
that there's a crackdown on farms
or in Wisconsin particularly,
but there is a fear because of the rhetoric surrounding
both the election and then the administration's talk
about getting rid of all illegal immigrants.
- So this would suggest that a certain number
at least of this immigrant labor are undocumented.
- Yes, it is not known in Wisconsin,
for example, how many people are undocumented.
We know numbers about immigrants
and it is pretty overwhelmingly immigrant labor
that produces most of the milk nationwide.
- One of your experts and that was kind
of the point of this overall coverage,
was to pick the brains of all these different people
in this regard.
But one of your experts said, "Immigration is really
"a symptom of a rural labor shortage."
What does your reporting show about that trend?
- We have actually at the Wisconsin Center
for Investigative Journalism,
we actually documented that several years ago,
that some of the most rural counties are facing
the largest depopulation, especially young people.
And these are the strong people that you would expect
to work on dairy farms.
So in fact there's no doubt that there is
a rural labor shortage of some type.
It's caused by many factors.
So there's a general rural labor shortage.
And then there's the specific one regarding dairy farms.
We have fewer family farms.
So that used to be a pipeline for people to come in
and work at farms.
A lot of those are closing.
They're consolidating and as a result you don't have
the people growing up on a dairy farm
who are ready to work on one when they grow up.
- Why can't this be mitigated by simply offering
higher wages, whether it's to local workers
or to immigrant workers?
- Well, that is a debate.
It is not known whether that would actually alleviate
the problem.
I know there are some experts who believe this simply
would not be enough.
American workers do not want to do some of
the really hard and dirty work of dairy farming.
It's 365 days a year, 24/7, erratic hours, long hours.
Others believe that if you did raise the wages
significantly enough that in fact at some point
American workers would be tempted to take the jobs.
- And yet that would be difficult according to
your reporting for the farmers and their businesses.
- Exactly, so the farmers cannot control the cost of milk.
It's a fixed price.
It's a very complicated formula.
Essentially they have to take what that price is
and use that to run their farms.
And what they're saying is sometimes they would be caught
very short if the price drops, which it tends to do.
It can be pretty erratic.
- And yet does immigrant labor drive
down the wages?
- That is one of the concerns as well.
Is that when you have immigrant labor,
people who are used to making significantly less money,
they will settle for lower wages
and that will become the market rate for those wages.
So that's another debate.
I can't answer it except that definitely there's
an opinion out there that this is happening.
And it's making these jobs even less attractive
to Americans.
- One of the people that you interviewed
talked about the need to automate on the dairy farm
to help this situation.
But can family farmers or even medium-size farms
afford this automation?
- That can be very expensive.
So that is the question, is what are you going to spend
on automation and will it replace enough labor
to make it worthwhile.
Some farms are finding that it does.
Some aspects of mechanization are working,
but others have not gone that direction yet.
- You also discussed changing
federal immigration law
because how are dairy workers treated now
under visa programs?
- Right now we have visa programs for temporary,
seasonal workers who come to the United States
to harvest crops for example.
We do not have a similar program for dairy workers
who need to be here year-round
because that's how dairies work.
There are some moves in Congress right now
to create a separate visa program that would meet
the needs of the farmers and the immigrants who are coming
here to work on the dairy farms.
I don't know what the chances of that passing are.
But there is a recognition I think now finally
that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
- The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism report
on immigrant dairy workers can be seen online
and in newspapers across the state.
In tonight's look ahead, the future of broadcast news,
specifically PBS.
I had the opportunity this week to interview
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger during her visit
to Madison.
We discussed the attacks on the mainstream media
and the challenges news organizations face.
I started by asking what she thinks explains
recent Gallup poll results showing
only 24% of Americans trust TV news.
- I think part of what has contributed to a mistrust
in media is what we observe in a number
of media organizations that blur news and point of view.
And I think one of the principles for us
in the work that we do in our news coverage
is we understand what's news,
we understand what's point of view.
I think both are important and relevant,
but you need to keep them separated and label them as such.
- In fact, you have said that innate to PBS' core
is to find common ground on even the most divisive issues
and that your network has a relentless quest
for getting at the truth.
But in this era where even demonstrable facts are fungible,
that they can be recast, how has the work
of getting at that truth changed?
- I think there is a significant need
in this country for media literacy.
And for people to understand, beginning with the work
that we do with kids, to really understand
in looking at any story how to figure out
the accuracy of the sources.
So many people if you talk to them, young people,
you talk to them, "Where did you get the information?"
"I got it from my phone."
They don't always pay attention to the source
of that information and is it coming from
a credible news source.
Or is it coming from, you know, someone's blog
or is it coming from a neighbor who's giving opinion.
And it is a collective effort,
both for kids as well as adults,
on really understanding where you're getting
your information and the accuracy of it.
- Now, PBS and public media in general often
has the rap of having a liberal bias.
What do you say to that?
- Well, people have leveled that from time to time.
I will tell you that as we look at different polls,
you know, we see that we are appealing to people
of all political stripes.
And so I think that there are people that I think
because of the nature of some of the stories
that we report on, may question whether there is some bias.
I've been in this job through three administrations
and question whether we're being too hard or not hard enough
on the president, you know.
The fact is the president is in a very different role
and is going to be written about critically,
whether it's a Republican president
or a Democratic president.
And people will see that and respond to it.
I also think that because of the fact that so many media
organizations are reflecting opinion alongside of news,
people are gravitating to places where they see
their own opinions reflected back.
And so for an organization like ours
that tries diligently every day to reflect the news
as it occurs, I think you're going to see some pressure
from those who would like to see their own point of view.
- We couldn't let the week pass without telling you
about a monumental shift at the state capitol
in a tradition that dates back to 1853.
That's when the first legislative Blue Book
was issued in Wisconsin.
It's a roadmap of information about every
state legislative district, lawmakers, state office holders
and a who's who and a what's what in Wisconsin politics.
The iconic blue-bound book takes on a different color
this year, however.
State law actually mandates that the spine be blue,
but the front and back cover this year are redesigned
with a granite pattern in celebration
of the state capitol's 100th anniversary.
Along with the redesign, the book itself is shortened,
shedding nearly 300 pages.
The chief of the Legislative Reference Bureau says
this is to make the book more accessible
to high school civics classes as well as reflecting
a citizenry more prone to looking things up online.
And that is our program for this week.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a great weekend.
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- Funding for Here and Now is provided,
in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.