 It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's March the 17th, 2021. I'm Tim Apachele, your host for What Now America. This title is called Jim Crow Laws Back by Popular GOP Demand. We've learned in the last few weeks that a number of states have introduced over 258 laws across 43 states. That is a direct response to what I call the big lie, Donald Trump's big lie that the election was stolen, that there were forces at work in all these states, especially the swing states, that the legitimacy of his reelection was thwarted and the election was stolen from him. And that's the background to why we are seeing an avalanche of new laws being introduced by GOP legislation. Many of these laws are being compared to the old Jim Crow laws. Well, I've looked at old Jim Crow laws, and to some degree, that might be possibly partly true, but on the most part it's not. Jim Crow laws back in the day, you had to have property rights. You had to own property in order to vote. You had to basically pass literacy tests. You, in some cases, had to have your ancestors vote, and if they didn't vote prior to 1869, then you weren't eligible to vote. Things like that were part of the Jim Crow laws. But the two that were Jim Crow laws that I think are applicable to where we're at today is one is the registration process and how that is now being complicated, particularly with state ID requirements and owner of state ID requirements. And then the other one is basically access to the ballot box. And we're going to talk about that, and many things more, including the new proposed HR one in the House of Representatives, a new bill that not only address voting rights, but also ethics and government. So we'll get to that. I'd like to introduce my guests. We have Jay Fidel, Stephanie Dalton, Winston Welch, and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to What Now America. Morning, Tim. So Jay, we have 258 laws that are being introduced. We're across 43 states. And a lot of these states are ruled by both the House and Senate of GOP and GOP Governor. Most likely these laws are going to pass. And then we have between now and 2022 election to either have them challenged in court, which you know that process is lengthy and the appeal process is lengthy until it works up into higher court systems. What do you think is going to happen? You know, I thought about it, but you're right about the lengthy part. If I'm a Republican legislature or governor, and I pass these laws, and you know, the ACLU or somebody interested in voting rights challenges the laws in my state, the Republican, you know, anti suppression of voting laws and so many of them different kinds, like we're in a civil war, you know, over voting now. Then what I do is I try to hold up. I try to delay it. I take every step I can to delay it so that it doesn't get into an appellate situation. That way I have pandemonium and chaos around the country, which is what they're shooting for. They want chaos by 2022. They want to be able to, you know, upset any democratic victories. And it's really, it's awful. I can't tell you how awful it is because everybody will say the same thing. You know, voting is at the core of our democracy. That's what it's built on. The majority rules, but the majority is being perverted as it was in 2016, in 2020. And although I don't want to sound paranoid about this, I believe that it's in Trump's best interest to create chaos, and he's behind it, his base is behind it. But more than that, I believe the Russians never stopped after 2016 and 2020. And they're busy, busy about trying to foment chaos on these Republican initiatives to suppress the voting. It is remarkable to think that so many people in the country would like to suppress the vote, recognizing that all of the patriotic ideals, everything we ever learned in school was about it's about the right to vote. So I think there's another set of factors working here. It's not just the Republican Party. It's not just Trump. Somebody out there is using propaganda and the social media to try to divide people on this and foment unrest on the issue. You know, there's a lot of other things to discuss today, but that is the primary, most high priority in the country as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, let's look at some of the specifics of what some of these states are doing. Georgia alone has introduced 22 bills. Arizona has also introduced 22 bills. And some of the ones that stand out as a glaring example of why they're scared. And remember, it's not just the big lie that they believed in Donald Trump, but they know that their ideas, their platform, which actually they don't have a platform anymore. They didn't have a platform in the last election, but they know by demographics that it's a losing situation for them to win elections. And until they adjust their platform and their ideas and their policies, they probably won't have the demographics to back up the vote to win the votes. And so what do you do to win an election? The only other equation as one politician said is it's a zero sum game. And if we can't win on the basis of merit and our ideas, we're going to have to win on the basis of keeping the other side from voting. And that's what they're trying to do. It's cheating, is what it is. If you can't win legitimately, then cheat. And Trump has always cheated in business and in the presidency. And his followers are following him on that. Okay, well, let's look at some of the examples of how they're trying to cheat, because I agree with that exact word. One bill says that you can only get an absentee ballot if you're over 65, you're disabled, or you're observing a religious holiday, or you... And that's it. That's the only basis now to get a mail-in ballot. Any other reason is not acceptable. You look at Georgia and some of the stuff and they want to restrict early voting. They want to reduce the time that a request, if you are going to request a mail-in ballot, they want to shorten that and truncate that time period in which you can get a ballot. They want to reduce the hours of the election on election day. They want to shorten that up. They want to eliminate Sunday, which is a huge thing in the southern states where there's a high African American population. And the old adage is souls to the polls. And after people go to church on Sunday, they go and rally to the voting booths. And they want to eliminate Sunday voting. They also want to ban state college voting for students. That typically is a more democratic vote category of students. So they want to eliminate on-campus voting. They want to stop and same-day registration for voting. They want to stop that. And they certainly, in some states, it's going to be a misdemeanor if you bring water to anyone standing in line or food. That's my favorite one, Tim. Yeah, they want to make it as uncomfortable as possible and they want to discourage people to churn out and vote. So yeah, it is cheating, Jane. I'm glad you said that word. If you take the sum total of this, this chaos, why it's not just that there are these various disparate, meticulous statutes being adopted across the country. And they may be just a few people submitting them, introducing them into the legislators and just a few Republican governors who are, you know, signing them. But they're getting through. And what troubles me is that the average citizen, especially, you know, the Black or Brown citizen, gets confused. What are my rights? Can I vote? Will I be permitted to vote or are these guys going to stand in the way? How do I chart a course through all these obstacles? And I think the result is, A, people won't know how. There's so much. It creates this information, right? And it's going to be hard to correct that, you know, in the public conversation. But B, I think it's going to turn a lot of people either off or radical, one or the other. I think we have a tinderbox, a racial tinderbox. I think in Georgia, in the last election, the Senate election, it motivated people. And thanks to Stacey Abrams and her organizations, it actually incentivized people to get out of their chair and vote because they were angry that this blockage was taking place. So you're right, it could go either way. Either they're just churning off or they get energized and do it. I'd like to add one other point, you know, I mentioned before, that this chaos is going to exist until some rational appellate courts, you know, strike these bills. But that may take a year, two years. Well, it's only a narrow second between now and 2022. And query, this is a big question, will it get to the Supreme Court in time to make a difference? And will the Supreme Court vote in favor of voting rights? It's not totally clear. Remember, it's a six to three Supreme Court that they did the right thing on Trump's attempts to overturn the election. But query A, whether they will do that again here, because these are all such outrageous bills, but B, will it be in time? If they decide shortly before the election, the damage will already be done. Good point. I'd like to take that point and direct that to Winston. There is a proposed HR one bill that is to address election security and these type of ridiculous things that these states have introduced. And HR one, a federal law will Trump, no pun intended, but will Trump some of these state laws if they pass. And one of them is to ensure security. The federal support of the voting system will oversight of election vendors and also address some of these laws that are prohibiting those who wish to vote. Do we have a chance of HR one passing the federal, the House of Representatives in the Senate? Interesting question. I saw that Joe Biden is reconsidering something to do with the, you know, filibuster, which I thought was interesting. Just the mention of it probably is, which has pluses and minuses for sure. Really, it's sad that we even have to have this conversation, isn't it? This is like Soviet tactics to try and cow your population into not voting, into not expressing just a basic fundamental right. Here in Hawaii, we don't have this. We live in a free state that encourages us. In fact, there's a bill before our legislature that says when you register for a state ID or driver's license, it is required that you opt out of being a voter unless you are somehow otherwise disqualified. I'm glad you bring that up, Winston. Winston, I'm glad you bring that up because that is a provision of HR one that there would be automatic registration across the nation and every state. Well, ideally it would. Who knows, the Supreme Court might take this and say, these are state's rights. They have the right to set their own thing. Or they might say, actually, this is a right that's guaranteed across the land. This has been an interesting court and it's ruling so far with what they did with Donald Trump. So while I don't expect them to fall on the liberal side of the spectrum, they very well may view this as a conservative principle that needs to be upheld and maintained. It'll be interesting to see if that happens or not. Just the fact that Joe Biden's introducing it is enough for the Republicans now to oppose it. It's a chicken in every pot, but it's also that they have stated that if they have people being able to vote freely, they will never win an election again. And I think what they really need to do is take the hard look within and say, how do we need to move our party so that we can gain back the electorate, so that we do have principle conservatism, so that we can regain the what are they called the Biden Republicans or folks that would be appealed to by some principle conservatism. And maybe that will happen as Donald Trump fades from our memories as much as possible and certainly airtime. So I would be interested to see if the H1 passes or the H, is it HR1 or? HR1, and then it's S1. Yeah, then it's S1 I think for the Senate. It's a no-brainer. It's basic for democracy. How we cannot do it is incredible, but yeah, I mean, and when you're talking about not giving out water to people in a line, we got more serious issues to deal with. Yes, we do. We have to address Dr. Seuss in those horrible books of Dr. Seuss. And Mr. Potato Head. Yes, Mr. Potato Head. Okay, thank you, Winston. Hey, Stephanie, I saw you react when I was talking about HR1. Particularly when we were talking about automatic registration, I saw you kind of react to that. What are your thoughts about HR1 or some of these crazy bills that some of these states are trying to get through on voting restriction and suppression? Well, I thought Winston's points were just excellent. And I mean, my extreme question is, is this a setup for, you know, getting back into Civil War stuff, the states right versus, you know, the feds? I don't know whether we would have, even though it's constitutional and a marker of democracy, I really wonder what will happen if that's pushed as a federal requirement. I mean, that's the question there. So that could really rise up and get serious. I know that there's concern about all this anarchism, but also going along with that is the Republicans, as I was reading some news articles this morning, are looking like they regret missing the boat here on the American Recovery Act. So it looks like they're thinking all of their shouting and hollering against it is not taken because, you know, over 60% of the population is delighted. So they're beginning to think, you know, and the Russians were, you know, chipping in on this and trying to present Biden as so irresponsible and still with all the problems that they brought up about him in the past. So I think that they're going to be changing their tact from that. And they may have actually been wounded by that. I mean, that may have been... Well, I think it was actually 70%. It was even higher on the Pew poll that 70% both Democrat and GOP loved the idea. So I think you're right. I think it's backfired on them horribly. Yeah. Well, I wanted to just mention on the state, on all of these voting rules that they're trying to put in new new statutes and legislation that they're trying to create. I have a North Carolina background and I'm the cousin, a Dalton was Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, then he was running for governor. And then the Republicans came in that year and just swept the whole North Carolina state into reticence. And I was so appalled, well, not just because there was a known person going into governance at that level and had been in as the Lieutenant Governor. But how could the people there, because when I was young going there, I was taught how to vote. They were about how to vote. You go and you vote a ticket and it's not a red ticket. But anyway, all of a sudden this whole thing was turned around. And so this comes up again in hearing of these new legislative ideas. At some point, the state population has got to respond. I mean, it can't all be the state, since the state government has got its control by Republicans, can they really misuse the people to that degree? And that's going to be okay. So we can come in and do all these Stacey Abrams thing and the DCC can come in and do all of its work and try, I mean, does anybody need educating on how you're not, you can't have water if you stand in line voting. These have gone to such ridiculousness that they reveal, they totally reveal themselves. They do, Stephanie. And the problem is, as Jay pointed out, 2022 may not be enough time for the courts to get involved and say, no, you can't do that. And so we may have an election that doesn't see an opinion from the Supreme Court. That's what I'm talking about. My point is, yes, we want the court in there, they'll do it. But the people need to stop and say, wait a minute, this isn't going to work. And how, I mean, that was a majority Democrat state. And in these couple of years, it's been transferred. But how can these people be left with no voice? Do they really have no voice in these states where the government is trying? Look at what they're doing too. May I just say, may I answer that quickly? Stephanie, if the only voice that people have, sort of going to the streets, is to vote. And if they, if they can't register, they can't get to the polls, they're gerrymandered out, whatever it is, they can't vote, they are made powerless. And a lot of people will be made powerless because of the confusion generated by these bills. That's my answer to your question. Okay, let me. Johnson Governor tried to pull a lot of this stuff on people and they had to start carting in just, you know, thousands and millions of signatures. It takes that, I guess that's a good point, Jay, because I guess it gets down to presentation. I want to get, I want to get, thank you, Stephanie. I want to get Cynthia in on one of the concepts here. And that is a lot of these laws are going to require stringent voter ID requirements. Now, this issue intersects with the immigration issue. And it's not just Republicans that feel it's not unwarranted to have a proper ID to verify you are who you are when you vote. And, but the problem is many people and particularly a lot of older seniors, they don't have their birth certificate to prove their identification, to get that state ID or to get that driver's license. You don't have to be a driver to get an ID from the state. Here's the problem though. In order to get your birth certificate, and I do a lot of genealogy, in some states you have to show your ID. So how do you get your ID if you don't have your birth certificate? There's the conundrum in a lot of states actually, and not just red states and a lot of blue states, they have an ID requirement to get your own birth certificate. So do you think it's unreasonable, Cynthia, for these states to require a recognized identification prior to vote? Well, I think that there are ways around that. Yeah, like when they register and they get their signature registered with the main office, then that signature can be checked against that other signature. So when they go to register, the county clerk could then issue them a voter ID card. It's not an ID card where they need all that stuff. They go, oh, what do you need? You just need stuff that shows you live there, right? Mail with your name on it, things like that. So why couldn't they do something else to get around that? I know here in Hawaii, because I work the polls every year, and I know here in Hawaii, we require ID. When people come to sign in, I take their ID and check it to see, make sure it's them. So I don't think it's that outrageous to expect the person voting to show that they are that person. That's a legitimate requirement, I think, but I don't know as it has to be a state ID, like a driver's license or like a state issued ID. Can it be a county clerk issued ID that's only used for voting? Good point. I'm glad you brought that up. I think that's an excellent point. And I'm actually thankful you had the experiences in the register business for voting, because I think that's an innovative way around this, because not only is it time and effort to get this birth certificate, but it's also money, and that could be perceived as almost like a poll tax that we had during the Jim Crow days, that you had to pay a certain amount of money just to vote. Right. And one of the things I'm the most worried about in all of this ID thing is for Native Americans. Our focus is often in the news and everywhere else on the African-American experience and being the Jim Crow stuff. What about the Native Americans that have to have an address, a street address to vote? Now wait a minute. A lot of the times on the reservations, they don't even have a street address or a street name for that matter. Good point. Good point. They're trying to really alienate Native Americans in all of this also, and it seems to me they should be able to make some sort of concession there also and let the reservation be their address. Right. All right. Good point. All right. Thank you. Great answers. Hey, switching gears here real quick. Jay, we don't have too much time left, but I want to get your opinion about how you think the vaccination process is going and how you think Joe Biden in the administration is doing with the help is here. Is he getting that message across and is it sticking? Will he get points for this as an accomplishment of his administration in 2024? I think he's doing a good job, best he could, getting the message across, but there's a countervailing propaganda going on against vaccinations. 30% of the military don't want to take it. I don't know why that's about. An enormous number of Republicans don't want to take it, and you know the lack of consideration for your fellow human being is extraordinary. It's not so much whether you get the disease, it's that you get it and then you infect others. Furthermore, I mean, it doesn't take a scientist to know that if you have a lot of COVID in your community, you're going to have a lot of variance in your community, and that's going to create a whole new problem. Europe has got that problem now. People didn't, you know, very reserved about taking the vaccines. A lot of people haven't taken the vaccines, so we get more cases, more cases equal more variance, I think, and I think Fauci thinks too, that this is going to result in another surge. So as hard as Biden is trying, he's working against that same sort of back channel thing that is happening in the voting rights issue. And they're fighting with him on something that is completely fundamental, fundamental, public health, fundamental, don't hurt your fellow human being. You know, before this show, you and I were discussing Fox, particularly Tucker Carlson, casting doubt on these vaccines and swatting Americans that maybe they're not, that's not the best thing for them. And the issue that you appropriately brought up was, you know, I said, hey, maybe the FCC needs to get involved here and say, stop it because you're passing on false information about the value of a vaccine and public health. We had Twitter kicked people off for spreading bad information about vaccines. We had Facebook do the same thing. And then you rightly so said, well, it's a First Amendment right issue. So how do we stop the Tucker Carlson's of this world from discouraging a known medical science fact that this is going to be effective against COVID? How do we stop these kind of people? And is there a way to do it? That's the problem with people like Tucker Carlson. I mean, he is testing the First Amendment. He's pushing it to its limit. And he's asking us, all of us and the government and the courts to change the First Amendment to stop him. Because it's disinformation. People are dying as a result of what he says. He has his own bully pulpit and query whether we are nimble enough to change the way the thing works. You know, what did the Tuckville say? He said democracy is tumultuous. Well, democracy allows Tucker Carlson to do this and it kills people. Is that what we want out of the First Amendment? I think there's a lot of pressure on the First Amendment for that reason. It's not only what he's saying, but it's the pushback to say, well, Tucker, you can't do that. You know, as Hugo Black of the Supreme Court said, you can't yell, fire in a crowded movie theater. How different is that from this? Good point. I like to take that exact point and direct that to you, Winston. What are your thoughts about the Tucker Carlson's in the world, discouraging the use of a vaccine and casting doubt on it? Should the FCC try to step in and maybe it gets challenged and goes to the courts and ultimately to the Supreme Court? But is it a worthwhile effort for the FCC to say knock it off or not? Or is it just the First Amendment right and let Tucker Carlson say and do what he wishes? You know, it gives it oxygen the more you oppose it. So I think, you know, I was kind of shocked to even say it and not that I would want much credence to what the Donald has to say when he came out and get the vaccine. It's a good thing to do. And I think it was a yesterday or the day before his news. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. It wasn't an absolute statement. It was like what he said in Charlottesville. Both sides have a point here is what he said. Well, that may be. I didn't read the article because I don't want to give him any oxygen either. But I think people are going to be coming around to this. You look at Israel. They said, that's fine if you don't want the vaccine. You just can't enter a hospital, a doctor's office, a restaurant, a theater, a bank or anything else. What about an airplane? Winston, what about an airplane? Until you agree to participate and not be, you know, a sociopath, essentially. Now, I understand people are afraid of this. They think it's going to, you know, make them brain eating zombies and it may. It may. But if that's the case, we'll all deal with it then. But for right now, it looks like what it's doing is keeping COVID at bay. It's keeping people out of the hospital and not dying and not transferring this disease where half a million Americans alone have died. And so, you know, do the math. How many people are dying from COVID shots? It's so small that it's, I don't even want to give it time. I understand people are leery of vaccines in general, but they were probably leery of electricity as well. So, you know, it's hard to answer that sort of thing without just saying, you know what, folks, just go get your shot. And that's the end of the day. If they want to participate in society, Costco will ban them, Sam's Club will ban them. And they'll have to get it eventually or they'll just bow at their while. I don't know. Okay. Okay. Hey, we've run out of time. So I want to go around the table and Stephanie, your last thoughts for this last week and the week to come or anything else you want to talk about? Just interested that Winston mentioned that Israel and maybe other countries, I haven't done the research on this, but I've found myself slipping into the no fly list, which is the no hospital list. If you don't have, if you have not followed the medical advice and recommendations, and it sounds like certainly commercial and corporations are doing that, they're requiring, like you say, Costco won't let you in or maybe Safeway won't let you in. And then also getting down to actually our medical people are exhausted and they're really starting to revolt in terms of trying to get some more pay raises and some credit for what they've done. They're not getting very far and they may just leave the profession. I've heard some threats like that coming away from them. And once there's not enough man or nurses and doctors to man, these are man and woman, you know, our medical facilities, we are really up the creek. But anyway, so I don't know if we get going to get that draconian or not because it does, it is a process and people usually move through it. And although they're always going to be diehards, you know, maybe with Biden and his, the work he's doing and getting around and talking about things is going to move everybody along. You know, maybe they understand the social cost of deaths and the impact of people's lives. Maybe they understand money more and it's cost $5 trillion thus far to, for these stimulus, COVID stimulus packages, and it's going to cost a lot more of this continues. So anyway, let's thank you, Stephanie. Let me, Cynthia. How about let's have the hospital bill. What's about that? Okay. That would be really interesting. Okay. Good point. Hey, Cynthia, last comments, last thoughts? I think it's important to have everybody make sure they go out and look into this joint statement from the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, assessing the impact of foreign interference in the 2020 election. Russia did it. China didn't. Good point. Thank you. There's a British intelligence report that just came out that I think is very important. And they have discovered a whole Russian disinformation campaign that is completely weaponizing health information to undermine vaccine security and to enhance the hesitancy. And it's totally just to, you know, separate people and to, you know, to further divide people. And so I think it's important for people to remember to look through everything, read it all. Right. Alrighty. I agree. We got to go. I'm getting the look. A long one minute. Okay, wait. This is a good lesson in leadership. You've just got to be completely honest. This is Dr. Fauci saying this. Okay. And I quote, you've just got to be completely honest and true to yourself and to your principles, even though you're going to have to tell people some things that might be inconvenient truths and inconvenient truths might put you at odds with people, but you've just got to be honest and true to yourself and not be afraid of the consequences. Once you're afraid of the consequences of telling the truth, you're done. Thank you, Cynthia. Jane. Yeah, I've been thinking about the filibuster. I've been thinking about the fact that HR1 cannot pass. None of Joe Biden's initiatives can pass. Short of that special procedure, you know, they negotiated procedure, but most of them don't fall in the category of that procedure. Most of them are going to have to have a vote. And under the filibuster, as it now exists, they won't pass because Republicans are sticking together. Mitch McConnell is keeping them together. Mitch McConnell threatened a huge war if anybody tried to knock off the filibuster. He's trying to intimidate Joe Biden about it. But you know, what I think is the filibuster should go. Otherwise, Biden won't get anything through and he will have this voting problem on his hands in 2022. And the Republicans may well take the majority, both houses, in 2022 and then where we would be. So he's got to get these programs through. It's more important than the filibuster. Knock off the filibuster. Joe Biden's idea about a talking filibuster is like, I'm not sure that's going to work. My point is it's got to go. The Democrats have got together on that. All right. Thank you, Jay, for your opinion. And point well made. Winston, you get the last word. It's a great point, Jay. And there needs to be some real structural changes. And if they can't be put in through getting 60 votes, but because it's just pure obstructionist rather than on principle, there may need to be more desperate times call for desperate measures. And if we're talking about the existential threat to our nation, we have to take that into consideration. The other thing, I looked at Deborah Birx in her interviews and after what Cynthia's quote just was, and as she was sitting there and she said, oh, I felt so like when the Donald was saying to inject the bleach and whatever, and I really wanted to say something, but I didn't know how to approach that. And I felt like she must be racked with an incredible amount of guilt. But I felt sorry for her, honestly. And there was one more very important thing that I wanted to say, which was happy St. Patrick's Day to everybody. We made it another year and enjoy the rest of your day. Pinch yourself if you're not wearing any green. Cynthia, you don't get to pinch yourself if you're wearing green. Thank you. Thank you, Winston. Thank you. We've run out of time. We're in fact, we've gone over our time. But we always do that because there's so much to talk about and so little time in which to do it. So thank you very much for joining us on What Now America? I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Join us next week, Wednesday, 11 o'clock. Aloha and happy St. Patrick's Day.