Paying for Schools, Debate Stage Racism, and Skill Games Are Back
IN THE NEWS:
A bunch of new polls in Virginia are showing Virginia is no longer a battleground state, if it ever was one. When Biden was the candidate, the polls indicated that Republicans would be targeting Virginia as a swing state. Now all that is slipping out of reach for Trump voters.
The funding formula for how public schools currently receive state money uses Census data to figure out the staffing levels needed for the school-age population in an area. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is considering a plan to move to a new formula that calculates money based on students.
Reporting for Richmonder.org, Graham Moomaw has a bombshell story revealing that skill games are back--three new machines at a sports bar in Henrico that are practically daring authorities to test their legal case.
At the Watercooler:
Lauren and Michael react to the racist lies peddled on the national debate stage targeting Haitian immigrants--and how it's part of a standard playbook.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Lauren Burke
I'm Lauren Burke.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia. A podcast that’s getting ready for the first day of voting. This week, Friday, is the first day of voting in person, absentee voting in Virginia. Plus, also on the calendar this week, Tuesday, which is Constitution Day. So get out your quill pen.
Lauren Burke
Constitution Day is celebrated on the anniversary of September 17, 1787, when the Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. This week, voters in Philly will be casting the earliest in person ballots this election cycle.
Michael Pope
Yeah, that's kind of a bummer. Lauren, Virginia, used to have the earliest in-person absentee voting, but now it's Pennsylvania. So voters there in Philadelphia they'll be celebrating Constitution Day on Tuesday, but a day before that, on Monday, today, voters in Philadelphia and all across Pennsylvania will be able to cast an in-person absentee ballot. Tomorrow is Constitution Day, so you can celebrate by putting on your 1700s outfit, grabbing your quill pen and going to cast an in-person absentee ballot tomorrow to celebrate Constitution Day. But you have to wait until Friday to do early in-person absentee voting in Virginia. I don't know, Lauren, what do you think? It's kind of a bummer that Virginia no longer has this first in the nation's status.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, I agree. I was hoping somebody in the Virginia General Assembly would’ve moved the Virginia date up ahead of Pennsylvania, so that so that Virginia is first. But we'll see if that happens.
Michael Pope
We'll see if that happens. All right, let's get to the news, poller-coaster ride. A bunch of new polls are showing Virginia is no longer a battleground state if it ever was won in the first place. When Biden was the candidate, two polls indicated that Republicans would be targeting Virginia as a swing state. Now, all of that is slipping out of reach for Trump voters.
Mark Rozell
Virginia is not a swing state this year.
Michael Pope
That's Mark Rozell, Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, which has a poll showing Harris with an 8-point lead over former President Donald Trump here in Virginia. That is a margin of error that's more than double the margin of error.
Mark Rozell
Eight points is a substantial lead at this point. There's really nothing in the breakdowns in the poll to suggest that Trump has a path in Virginia.
Lauren Burke
The survey also shows a large advantage for the vice president among women; 50% of women support Harris versus 42% for Trump.
Mark Rozell
There is an absolutely huge gender gap in this poll, 18 percentage points. Wow, and Trump has a marginal lead among men, which is lower than expected. But I would imagine much of that has to do with the issue of abortion.
Michael Pope
Yeah, these polls are really good for the Harris campaign. They've kind of taken Virginia off of the battleground map, you know, if Virginia was ever on the battleground map to begin with. Both the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign have staffers in Virginia; despite the fact Virginia is no longer targeted; the staffers are still around. Lauren, what do you think? How do you think this is going to play out here, in terms of the staffing levels that the Trump campaign maintains in Virginia, even though it's lost its battleground status?
Lauren Burke
I don't know if that'll change all that much. I think that Virginia was a battleground state before the vice president entered the race. Because three polls came out that had President Biden and former President Trump either tied or one or the other 1% ahead or behind, which, of course, is in the margin of error. That was clearly closer in Virginia than it is now. Then, more recently, we've seen three polls where vice president Harris had a commanding lead, but I don't know that would change the staffing all that much. I think part of the reason that the Trump campaign was focused on Virginia is that one of his senior advisors, Chris LaCivita, is a part of his campaign and a senior advisor. Once, we saw a little bit of a switch with Corey Lewandowski showing up in the Trump campaign, I think, less than a month ago, and all of a sudden, they're not talking about Virginia. But that also coincides with the fact that the polls are indicating that former President Trump is behind in the Commonwealth. All that put together, I still don't think it would lead to some sort of big drop in staffing. Obviously, they're going to be focusing on North Carolina a lot because he does have to have North Carolina and, above all, Pennsylvania. But I don't know that we'll see any changes. We haven't heard anything about staffing yet.
Michael Pope
We'll see, yeah. So poller-coaster as a title is already taken. I was trying to have a slightly different title for this segment, which was poller-coaster ride. So, let's hop on the polar coaster and take it for a ride. Take a look at all of these polls, including one from the Wason Center, which takes us on the poller-coaster all the way to Virginia Beach, in the 2nd congressional district, where Republican incumbent Jen Kiggans has a 5-point advantage over the Democratic candidate in that race, which is Missy Cotter Smasal, okay, a 5-point advantage for the Republican incumbent. Perhaps Republicans might be able to maintain control of that seat. But here's what it says about the election, Lauren, because Republicans have a +7.2 advantage in the 2nd congressional district. So for Jen Kiggans To have a 5-point advantage over the Democratic incumbent, that's actually kind of a good sign statewide for Democrats. Don't you think?
Lauren Burke
Well, it's a good sign that she's within striking distance. Missy Cotter Smasal is within striking distance. 5% points with 50 days left. Obviously, it's plenty of time for things to happen. Also, remember that the top of the ticket is going to matter in these races; as we saw in 2008 when President Obama was at the top ticket, he really did help out a lot of other folks. In this case, for the Democrats in the 7th and the 2nd with Vindman running. Frankly, I think the Republican in that race, Derek Anderson, is putting on a lively campaign against Eugene Vindman. I think that’s going to be closer than the Democrats would like. But getting back to Virginia Beach and the poll from the Wason center. The incumbent, Jen Kiggans, is going to be difficult to beat. But I do think that when the top of the ticket is having trouble and centering strange things by the Republican candidate and his running mate, which I'll deal with in the water cooler. That could lead to some sort of problem for the incumbents in those seats on the Republican side. But it isn't surprising; the point you’ve already made is that the seat is a lean red seat. It’s a Virginia Beach-based seat, so the Democrats are going to have a tough time taking that away from the Republicans.
Michael Pope
Yeah, by contrast, the 7th congressional district, which you were just talking about. That’s where we've got Republican Derek Anderson and Democrat candidate Eugene Vindman; the 7th is more competitive. If you look at the partisan leab, it's 0.1% for Republicans, which is to say, it’s basically tied 50/50. The Virginia 7th is your perfect open seat that is totally tied between Democrats and Republicans. Whereas that seat out in Virginia Beach in the 2nd congressional district, that's +7.2 for Republicans. These poll numbers give you an indication of where things are right now for the election season in 2024. Definitely stay tuned to Pod Virginia because we’ll continue to take a ride on the poller-coaster. All right, let's move on to our next story. Paying for schools. The funding formula for how public schools currently receive state money is based on a calculation that uses census data to figure out staffing levels needed for a school-aged population in an area. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is considering a plan to move to a new funding formula that calculates money based on students. Delegate Sam Rasoul of Roanoke is Chairman of the House Education Committee.
Sam Rasoul
What we're looking for is true equity in education and ensuring that regardless of your zip code, you should have an equal opportunity to succeed and ensure that the schools and teachers are receiving the support that they need, whether they be in Arlington or deep southwest Virginia.
Lauren Burke
Levi Goraen at the Commonwealth Institute says the important thing is not so much the funding formula as it is fixing a system that falls short of meeting the needs of the students who come from lower-income families, English language learners, or are living with disabilities.
Levi Goren
It matters a lot if we say that each student in Virginia requires $14,000 a year, as opposed to if they set that number far lower. I think it's important that we think not only about do we want to change the formula but also, if we do change the formula, what values we set.
Michael Pope
The bipartisan group of lawmakers will be meeting starting this week. They're going to meet twice this Fall, including a meeting this week to talk about the funding formula, which is, Lauren, it's a very important decision. The funding formula; is it based on the staffing levels? Or is it based on the students that are actually there at the moment? Okay, very important discussion. What you heard, Levi Goren just say there was a great discussion. Let's really talk about how much money you're funding per student. Are we talking about $14,000 a year for each student, or is it something else?
Lauren Burke
Yeah, well, three cheers for Levi Goren because that's the whole thing. Most people argue that the money should follow the student. And in our world, what happens is education is paid for by the taxes on property owners. Effectively meaning that, if you are in a wealthy area, you have a good public school, and if you're not, you're not, and that's how it works. I'm not sure why. The Virginia General Assembly loves to have studies and discussions. Let's have a study and let's talk about it. And it comes down to what exactly this is leading to. What exact amount of money is going into the students? And when is that happening? Hopefully, we're arriving at that point. But this is a discussion that's been going on for a very long time.
Michael Pope
And it will continue. This bipartisan group of lawmakers that starts meeting this week will eventually come up with recommendations for the next General Assembly. So stay tuned to Pod VA and this issue of the funding formula for K-12 schools because you’ll definitely be hearing more about it in 2025. All right, let's move on to our final story of the day from Richmond. Exclusive skill games are back; reporting for The Richmonder.org, Graham Moomaw has a bombshell story revealing that skill games are making a comeback.
Lauren Burke
Three new machines out of sports bar and Henrico.
Michael Pope
Yeah, they're basically daring police and prosecutors to do something about it. The title of the skill game in question here is Queen of Virginia. That's what it says at the top of the machine, which kind of looks like a slot machine. But users no longer have to insert cash into the machine. A cashier or bartender acts as a middleman who does the cash transaction.
Lauren Burke
Graham Moomaw got his hands on correspondence from late August between a Pace-O-Matic executive and a lawyer who was asked to assess the legality of the new machines. He also got this statement from Pace-O-Matic, quote: Pace-O-Matic is never and will never operate outside the law of Virginia. Legal experts have thoroughly reviewed our new product and have confirmed that the games fully comply with the current statute.
Michael Pope
Well, that's quite a statement, Lauren.
Lauren Burke
Well, if Pace-O-Matic says it fully complies, it must fully comply. I mean, are you kidding me? It shows you how much money is involved in skill games, to the point where a company is willing to place them without fully knowing whether they're legal. I think, it is a sort of, let's see what happens, type of posture.
Michael Pope
Yeah, from the story, it kind of sounds like the lawyers for Pace-O-Matic have this theory about it not being a skill game because you don't insert cash directly into the machine, which ties directly to language in the Virginia code. Which they actually lobbied in support of. You kind of get the sense that the lawyers feel like they're on solid ground by having these machines in the sports bar in Henrico, which is daring the police department in Henrico to do something about it. It’s daring the Commonwealth's Attorney in Henrico to do something about it. It’s setting a precedent, which I think is kind of funny, because in a way. We used to call these things gray machines because they existed in a gray area of the law. So, these machines can exist legally because the bartender is a middleman; is that, are we? Are you returning to an era when these machines actually are gray machines because they exist in a gray area of the law?
Lauren Burke
One of the gray areas here is whether or not these machines are actually mandated to pay out any money on a victory. In other words, you could theoretically put a machine out that never has the user win any money. That’s one of the open questions here. Whether or not the machine is required in any way to have a percentage of winning returns, it'll be interesting to see how the General Assembly deals with this. Based on the few comments from members of the Virginia General Assembly, I'm guessing they're not amused at this moment by Pace-O-Matic. That’s a very interesting report by Graham Moomaw and The Richmonder.
Michael Pope
Definitely, hopefully we can have Graham on to talk about it. All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to have a trivia question about the capitol rotunda. We're also going to head over to the water cooler, where we'll hear about racist hatred towards Haitians.
Michael Pope
All right, it's time to play some trivia. Last week, we asked you who was the famous sculptor who created the famous statue of George Washington at the capitol rotunda.
Lauren Burke
The answer is Jean-Antoine Houdon, a famous French sculptor who is also known for his bust of enlightenment figures like Rousseau and Voltaire. He also did sculptures of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Michael Pope
Yeah, Houdon was a famous sculpture. Not Houdini, but kind of close. Maybe we could get Eminem on the podcast to talk about Houdini. All right, we've got some winners in our trivia contest about Houdon. They're all likely suspects, obviously super fans. The winners of our trivia contest this week are Jay Speer, Zach Lincoln, Lauren Kaiser, and Matthew Montgomery.
Lauren Burke
Our super fans.
Michael Pope
Yeah, definitely. These are our most dedicated listeners. We really appreciate you listening. Hey, listen, if Houdon were around today, we'd have him make busts of all of you.
Lauren Burke
So, what's our trivia question for next week?
Michael Pope
All right, on the topic of busts, our question this week is about the busts at the Capitol building. Suppose you think about the rotunda where you’ve got that statue of George Washington in the center. Around the edge, there are all those nooks that have busts, mostly of presidents. There are seven, to be exact, seven Virginia presidents who have busts in the capitol rotunda.
Lauren Burke
But you said there were eight nooks and eight busts?
Michael Pope
Yes, that's right, one bust is not a US President. In fact, he's not even of Virginia. Here's our trivia question for this week: who is the non-presidential bust in the rotunda at the Capitol building?
Lauren Burke
If you think you know the answer, hit us up on social media. You might even win a prize.
Michael Pope
Let's head over to the water cooler. Lauren, what's the latest you're hearing around the water cooler?
Lauren Burke
Oh, well, the latest we're hearing around the water cooler is the discussion going on on the presidential level. I love to keep it, Virginia, but man, this is kind of unavoidable because we have former President Trump, who, during the first and maybe only presidential debate with Vice President Harris, trafficked a big fat slur directed at Haitian immigrants, specifically, in Springfield, Ohio. We have around 700,000 people in the United States who have immigrated from Haiti. That thing he said, which I'm not going to repeat because part of what I'm going to say here has to do with how the media should deal with people who are purposefully lying and trafficking disinformation. Part of my theory on that is to not repeat it; the lying at any rate. We saw the former President have a very tough time during the debate with Vice President Harris. Many have said, and many Republicans made the point that he lost. He took the bait on so much of what she strategically did. Then he brings up, out of nowhere, this attack that was trafficked on 4chan, you know, the great authority 4chan, where all information is true. That somehow or another, Haitian immigrants were doing something related to people's pets in Springfield, Ohio. Then, of course, we get the owner of X, Elon Musk re-tweeting that and promoting that. That thing was not true, the lie that was not true about Haitian immigrants. Even further, we had former President Trump's running mate, JD Vance, repeat the same thing in the spin room after the debate in Philadelphia. I want to bring this up to say that this is the challenge the media has. We sit here with 50 days till election day, we can expect this to get worse. And over this weekend, we had CNN and NBC have JD Vance on; Dana Bash at CNN did a pretty good job at challenging him and pushing back, but at the end of the day, what's actually happening is they're filling the box with misinformation. They're repeating it, and they're winning every time it gets repeated, even if you push back, even if you have a huge disclaimer, even if you say they're lying, which they are, it really doesn't matter. Because they understand that a certain percentage of people listening are going to believe it, and that is the game that Donald Trump has played since the moment he arrived on the political scene in 2015, with a big lie that President Obama was not born in the United States. Obviously, Hawaii is part of the United States, and he was born there, but Donald Trump kept repeating that he wasn't, and he got a certain percentage of people to believe that lie. Now we have a situation where JD Vance, a resident of Delray, the section of Alexandria, Virginia, that is very popular. Unfortunately, he is not very popular in that section, but that's where he is. He keeps saying these this thing about Haitians, and now we have the governor, the Republican governor of Ohio, saying it's not true. We have a sheriff in Springfield, Ohio, and the police are saying it's not true. Then we have the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, saying it's not true. The police in Springfield actually went and got very specific and said, Look, we have gotten no evidence of anything that the Vice President candidate is saying. This is very deliberate, trying to keep the immigration issue front and center in a negative way. This has been done before in the United States to other immigrant groups around the turn of the century. The difference here is that the power of our technology and social media and our ability to traffic information is a lot quicker. It means something when people are deliberately lying. Lying, in fact, is dangerous, as we found out in 2019 in El Paso. At Mother Emanuel church in 2015 and the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh in 2018, when we had three white supremacist mass murders happen. Today, the 16th of September, actually happens to be the day after the September 15, 1963, anniversary of the Ku Klux Klans bombing at the 16th Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. These things have consequences. They have meaning. Everybody saw the attack on the US Capitol in 2021. But this Republican Party, run by Donald Trump, is committed to lying. They are committed to chaos, and I think they're committed to violence. I think the national media should push back a little bit harder on their deliberate attempts to sow the seeds of violence in this country.
Michael Pope
I want to encourage our listeners to check out Lauren Burke's substack Black Virginia News because, over the weekend, Lauren had a post about this; you included a photograph that I want our listeners to see. I would describe it as a piece of paper that, in the old days, you would call this sort of thing a handbill. This is literature that's left on windshields and maybe there’s a stack of them at the library, that sort of thing. A lot of the stuff is kind of crazy and a little bit like 4chan. It's interestingly, I think of it as a hard copy version of 4chan. Lauren, you have a photo, a graph of a piece of paper that comes to us from the Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and it's about Haitians. The headline on the handbill is Foreigners and Haitians Out. Then here's the text of this racist piece of paper that was probably left on somebody's windshield. Quote: there is no place in America for this filth; we don't need any more police officers. We need mass deportation. One-quarter of Springfield is already in poverty now. 2 million more are being used to care for these beasts of the fields. America First, join us and stand against forced immigration, end quote. Then there are some symbols on this piece of paper that kind of look like a KKK symbol. They do all this mumbo jumbo with their rituals and everything. Lauren, tell me about this photograph here, this piece of paper that says Foreigners and Haitians Out.
Lauren Burke
Well, there's really nothing new. As you know, Michael, history repeats itself over and over again. We’ve seen the same thing in the early 1900s. The only thing that's changing is the immigrant groups that are targeted. The Ku Klux Klan was always based on the great replacement theory ideology and everything. People from other places with different skin tones. Then, whites are going to be endangered and are going to take over. Unfortunately, the modern Republican Party that we're watching right now is running openly and loudly on great replacement theory right in front of everybody's faces. By the way, if Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares can speak out on hate crimes for other groups. I'm wondering where they are right now. If we can watch, Dick Cheney and George will endorse vice president Harris, knowing full well that former President Trump is a dangerous individual. I'm wondering where our elected leaders in Virginia are on these issues. Because this is the modern Republican Party, Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. You have to wonder, does Glenn Youngkin agree with this? Does he agree with what he is seeing right now? Because they're out in the open now, he used to pretend and play word games. But now, when you target a specific immigrant group in the United States, and then we watch Governor Youngkin and Buena Vista, or wherever he might be talking about immigration, or Chesapeake, Virginia, when he was at the Trump rally, talking about immigration in much the same way. You have to wonder, do they agree with this? The bat signal has been sent out to the Republicans that we are only going to be talking about, or primarily going to be talking about, how dangerous immigrants are. Generally speaking, they are doing that across the country. I have a hard time believing that you can square this type of rhetoric with what you say you believe in. We're always hearing from Glenn Youngkin on so many things. To me, I think this is where he punks out and decides that he's not going to say anything. I think that’s hugely problematic, particularly in Virginia, where we just had a Unite the Right rally in 2017. Everybody saw that, of course, Donald Trump had this big struggle talking out against it's problematic. The silence of some of these elected leaders, particularly in the Republican Party, is a problem. They are normalizing this type of thing, and it's dangerous. Again, as we found out at the US Capitol in January of 2021, it is dangerous.
Michael Pope
Lauren, you say they're sending out the bat signal. Part of the bat signal is this piece of paper that you've got the photograph of. Which, I said, in the old days, you would call this a handbill. Today, in our modern language, we might call it a grip card. It's a hard copy piece of paper that you might hand to somebody who you think shares your racist views about Haitians. Tell me about this photograph here. Where did you find this piece of paper?
Lauren Burke
Like most things you find, I found it on social media. Right alongside the video of the Proud Boys showing up in Springfield, Ohio. Interestingly, more evidence that there is white supremacy in Springfield, Ohio, caused by this whole thing that was built up by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and JD Vance against Haitian immigrants. More evidence of that than any evidence of the slur that they're putting out there against Haitian immigrants. There is no evidence of that. When you have the governor and law enforcement in Ohio, in that community telling you that there's no evidence, over and over again, of course, that didn't stop JD Vance from getting on Meet the Press and CNN and repeating it. Because, again, the game is won by the republican party to amplify the line; that's all it is. They win the minute it gets broadcast. I think CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and everybody else, CBS, ABC, they have to think carefully about putting these people on, knowing full well what their strategy is. The strategy is to adjudicate a question of truth in the public sphere that is clearly false. It's really not about a question of truth. It's about repeating something that is not true, where there's no evidence for it over and over and over again. And they're right; you're going to get a certain percentage of people who will believe it, and that's the game that they've been playing now since 2016. The media needs to wake up to that. It's called misinformation and disinformation. They need to get a strategy for that because, for the next 50 days, you can bet that they're going to try it again. And we've seen it before, and it's worked before.
Michael Pope
That's them trying to do it again. Right now, you're getting a text about them trying to do it again.
Lauren Burke
Right. What about you, Michael? What do you get for the water cooler?
Michael Pope
ICE. Local officials are working with federal immigration officials and with ICE. It’s a very controversial topic, and in some ways, it mirrors your discussion about racist hatred towards immigrants. Because the immigrants at issue in this Ohio story are Haitians, and they're actually legal immigrants. If we're talking about a policy discussion about illegal immigration, Haitians are not a part of that discussion. Because they are legal immigrants, but are we really having a conversation about immigration? I don't know. But that's on the Haitian side of the story. I was interested in talking about local officials working with federal government officials for immigration. This has been an issue with sheriffs because they often detain people who are wanted by ICE. ICE can make requests to your local sheriff to detain somebody. But a lot of sheriffs might not want to cooperate with federal immigration officials. A lot of voters and sheriffs are elected officials. A lot of voters might not want their local government to participate with federal government officials. What I was interested in talking about is your local city council and your local board of supervisors. What's their level of comfort in cooperating with federal immigration authorities? This is an election cycle where we've got a lot of local people on the ballot across Virginia. Where I live in Alexandria, all six city council members are on the ballot this year, and I was working with another journalist to interview all of them on a number of topics, one of which was whether or not they want to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. We asked all nine candidates should the city of Alexandria should cooperate with federal immigration authorities. All six of the Democrats said no. Alexandria should not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The four independents basically gave non-answers. They were non-responsive to the question. They had things that they said, but they didn't respond one way or the other in terms of yes or no. Which I thought was kind of interesting. At one level, you could read that as being unprepared. As a city council candidate, you're going to be asked about zoning and all those sorts of things. Perhaps they were unaware of the need for them to have an opinion about this. Frankly, the local city councils are going to have to make these decisions about whether or not they want to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Lauren, I thought the interesting part of this was the partisan tilt here. All six Democrats had a solid answer: no, we do not want to work with the federal government. Then, the four independents basically either hadn't thought about it or didn't bother crafting an answer about it. What I was interested in was how the politics of immigration are actually playing out at the local level. In some of the local elections this year; we’ve got city elections and local elections, elections for sheriff, elections for even things like the clerk of court. All of this has a very important influence on the immigration topic that’s really at the center of a lot of our political discourse right now.
Lauren Burke
Yeah. I mean, the reason that there is a partisan tilt is because one of our major political parties is unmoored from truth and fact. To quote Larry Sabato, of course, he's not the first to say it, but he did happen to say it this weekend quote: we are post-factual, and when you become post-factual, you make things that just go along with your ideological beliefs and what you want to market during a political campaign, rather than deal with actual, factual information, that's problematic, unquote. It doesn't surprise me that six Democrats said, No, I don't want to have to deal with the federal government. Because if, in fact, former President Trump ends up as president again, then they have to quote, work with him. He is not even referring to the facts we talked about immigration. President Trump is this sort of stem-winder, saying racist things all the time about immigrants. That’s what he is doing. He's not talking about any deep, specific policy. Then, he'll throw out something like, Yeah, let's deport all the immigrants. And when I get to the office, I'm going to deport hundreds of thousands of people. I don't know that you're operating in good faith when you're not talking about policy details that aren’t based on something factual. The Republican Party is constituted right now and is controlled by the MAGA wing. The person they have nominated to be President of the United States is not talking in any sort of policy detail. I'm not sure how anybody could work with that, even the Republicans, who are not MAGA; I don't think they can work with that. That's a difficult question, to say, Well, yeah, we don't want to work with the federal government on immigration when this is what's going on.
Michael Pope
Lauren, I would disagree with you that we live in a post-factual society or a post-factual age. I think facts are still important. I would argue that people still want to know the facts. As evidence of that, I will submit to you this week, Thursday, September 19, that the Alexandria Gazette will publish this voter guide that I'm talking about. I worked with James, a journalist, James Libresco, who interviewed all nine city council candidates. Voters in the city of Alexandria will have access to this Alexandria Gazette voter guide that lays out the facts. I think people want to live in a Fact-Free universe, but I think controversial statement; I think we're still here on Earth one.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, I agree with you. When you say that people care about the facts, there's no doubt that people, in fact, care about the facts. The problem is, when I watch the New York Times, for example. And we've used this example several times. But it’s a great example because it changed the course of history in the United States. When the New York Times published, there was something wrong with Hillary Clinton's email content and the way she used email when she was at the State Department. They do that over and over without checking to see if it is factually true. Then James Comey comes out and makes a statement, and they publish that without checking to see if that was factually true. That was back in 2016; let's do something more recent. We just watched CNN tell everybody that, oh my goodness, we're going to do a debate, but we're not going to have fact-checking. We're going to agree with the Trump campaign that there shouldn't be fact-checking in a debate. In a conversation with a guy who wants to be the most powerful person in the world, we're not going to check facts. Then we saw the National Association of Black Journalists have Donald Trump as a guest, and oh, we're not fact-checking. There's a big argument in the background about whether or not we should fact-check him when he's speaking. These are journalists. These are the people who are in charge of protecting the truth. That's problematic. So, to Larry Sabato's point, I agree with a lot of it. Because what ends up happening is there's too much discussion in the media, and the media is the first draft of history, whether we like it or not. When we see people in the media who are in charge of putting information out to the public, that the public needs to make a good decision, not care about whether or not these things are factual, that you're publishing or airing on the national airways to millions of people, that's a problem.
Michael Pope
Well, I would fact-check that a little bit by saying fact-checking is still going on. Lots of people do lots of fact-checking. The New Yorker is famous for their fact-checking. I fact-check everything on our script multiple times. People are still wanting to live on Earth one, where we do fact checks and the truth is important. I know many of our listeners probably share that sense that, facts still do matter, and that's probably why a lot of our listeners listen to this podcast. We are going to conclude this particular podcast by celebrating some birthdays this week.
Lauren Burke
Today, Monday, September 16, is the birthday of Republican Delegate Anne Ferrell-Tata of Virginia Beach.
Michael Pope
Today, September 17, is the birthday of Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera.
Lauren Burke
Wednesday, September 18, is the birthday of Delegate Tony Wilt of Rockingham.
Michael Pope
Thursday, September 19, is the birthday of Senator Jeremy McPike of Prince William.
Lauren Burke
Thursday, September 19, is also the birthday of Delegate Jed Arnold of Smyth County.
Michael Pope
And Friday, September 20, is the birthday of Delegate Candi Mundon-King
Lauren Burke
Tuesday is Constitution Day. That's it for this episode of Pod Virginia.