Is Donald Trump rethinking his campaign promise to deport millions of people here illegally and how might such a move play with his core supporters? CA Senate Bill 1322 would change the way underage sex workers are charged; Plus, inside NPR's decision to drop reader comments from its website - have extreme comments made many comments sections unusable? And who benefits in the shift to social media?
AirTalk election 2016: Trump campaign’s post-Manafort plan, a look at CA voter registration, and the GOP response to Trump’s recent struggles
After Paul Manafort’s resignation as Donald Trump’s campaign manager last week, we’ll continue to gauge the fallout and take a closer look at Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News executive chairman who has taken over as chief of the Trump campaign.
Also, the California Secretary of State’s first voter registration report shows more than 18 million Golden State residents are registered to vote for the November elections. We’ll dive into some of the numbers to get a better sense of the who and where of registration increases and decreases.
Plus, it seems top GOP strategists are starting to test the idea of employing a “break glass in case of emergency” plan and what that might look like in response to Donald Trump’s recent struggles in the polls and within his campaign.
Guests:
David Folkenflik, Media Correspondent, NPR (National Public Radio); he tweets from
John Iadarola, co-creator and host of the daily infotainment talk show ‘ThinkTank,’ part of The Young Turks Network; he tweets
Pete Peterson, dean of the School of Public Policy and executive director of The Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University; he tweets
Cracking the enigma that is Donald Trump
The media has been heavily saturated with news and [mostly] sound bites from Donald Trump for the past year, but a new book takes us back several decades before Trump would be known for the entrepreneurial successes he has achieved today.
David Cay Johnston, an award-winning investigative reporter, spent nearly 30 years reporting on the personal and public life of the business mogul turned Republican presidential nominee. From the origins of Trump family’s real estate fortune to his recent career in politics, Johnston relied on decades of interviews, financial records, court documents and public statements to compose fullest picture yet of Trump’s extraordinary ascendency in just 27 days.
What questions do you have for Johnston about his newest book, “The Making of Donald Trump?”
Guest:
David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author; his newest book is, “The Making of Donald Trump” (Melville House, 2016); he tweets from
Rio Recap: Women on Team USA dominate Olympics medal count
In the pool, on the court and field, America's female Olympians clobbered the competition at the Rio Games.
The statistics piled up throughout the 16 days: the first American boxer to win back-to-back golds is Claressa Shields; of the top ten Americans with the most medals, six are women; Simone Biles is the first American gymnast to win four golds at a single Games; and the Women's Basketball, Rowing, Water Polo, Track Relay, and Gymnastics teams each scored firsts and broke records above and beyond their male counterparts.
It was not just American women making their nation proud. Puerto Rico, Iran, Bahrain, and India can thank their female athletes for a variety of special distinctions.
Overall, after much hand-wringing leading up to Rio's hosting of the Games amidst fears of the Zika virus, plus shoddy, slow construction and pollution, the actual days of competition at these Summer Olympics were as successful and as beleaguered as any modern event.
That being said, the Games are not over. The Paralympics are set to commence next month in Rio, but poor ticket sales and Brazil's recession have triggered budget cuts.
What are your biggest takeaways from watching events in Rio?
Guests:
Mary Hums, Professor of Sports Administration, University of Louisville; Hums has a special interest in women Olympians and the Paralympics; She has worked at a half dozen Games
David Wallechinsky, President of the International Society of Olympic Historians and author of “The Complete Book of the Olympics” (Aurum Press, 2012)
Debate: Under CA bill, minors would be shielded from prostitution charges
Two bills are going through the state legislature that would protect minors from being prosecuted for prostitution.
SB 1322 would forbid law enforcement from arresting or charging people under 18 for prostitution, while SB 1129 would eliminate minimum sentences for repeat offenders.
Proponents say minors are victims of sex trafficking and should not be punished for the crime, but opponents, including some district attorneys associations, argue that bills would disincentivize minors from testifying against human traffickers.
Jim Cooper is a former captain at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, who’s worked on a number of sex trafficking cases. He now represents District 9 in the state assembly, which includes Sacramento and the San Joaquin County communities of Elk Grove, Lodi and Galt.
He opposes SB 1322 because he believes the best way to separate sex trafficking victims from their captors is to arrest them. He says there “absolutely” will be more underage prostitution if the bill passes.
What are your concerns about SB 1322?
Every legislator that stood up last week said [underage prostitutes] are victims. They are truly victims — I believe in that.
While the intent of the bill is good, the bill does more harm to at-risk minors because right now the big issue is getting those girls away from the pimp. Obviously a lot of them have been brainwashed, and they’ve been told a lot of things. We want to separate them, and we also want to prosecute that pimp.
The way the bill’s written now, there’s no crime. It’s not a crime punishable by anything. So, if law enforcement thinks somebody’s engaged in prostitution, we cannot detain them, because it’s not a chargeable offense. That’s the big issue we’re facing right now. They want us to refer the girls somewhere else. There are routes available for the young girls. What they don’t mention is that currently that charge can be expunged.
The big thing is getting the girls away from the pimp separating them and getting them the help they need. Pimps are going to hire underage girls because law enforcement cannot contain them.
Frank Mecca leads the County Welfare Directors' Association of California, a nonprofit representing human services directors in the state.
He says there are existing ways to protect victims of sex trafficking without criminalizing them.
“It is absolutely clear that police can continue to detain a victim of sex trafficking,” Mecca said. “They’re child abuse victims. Police, under the law, have not just the authority, but the responsibility, to detain victims of abuse.”
How can law enforcement protect victims without arresting them?
If law enforcement has the suspicion that the child is being trafficked — the same suspicion that would lead them to arrest the child — they can, as an alternative to arresting the child, detain them under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 305, and they call the child welfare systems. The child welfare system then engages and protects the child and treats the child. That’s the way we deal with every other form of abuse. I think this is a very important point. There’s no other child abuse that children suffer that we arrest them for and incarcerate them for.
He suggested that Los Angeles County, which doesn’t arrest underage sex workers, sets a good example for the rest of California. Mecca said the county has programs to connect victims with those who’ve “left the life” as well as high-quality therapy to break the bonds between victim and abuser.
How does Los Angeles County address underage sex work?
In Los Angeles County, your county, they don’t arrest child victims of sex trafficking. There’s an elaborate protocol that all the players in your county put into place, because your county believes there is no such thing as a child prostitute.
So, law enforcement does not arrest. They actually detain. They detain under the same laws that the Assemblyman Cooper says don’t apply. They absolutely apply. The county brings services to bear. The child welfare system tries to find suitable housing. The mental health system provides high-quality, trauma-informed mental health services. The education system is involved.
It is not necessary to arrest and incarcerate young children who are the victims of abuse in order to protect as serve them. All of the research says that children heal better when they are treated as victims, not as criminals.
Holly Mitchell is a state senator representing Culver City and parts of Los Angeles. She introduced SB 1322. Mitchell emphasized that victims of sex trafficking are not criminals, and the law should reflect that.
“It would never occur with us to take a victim of domestic violence or a rape victim and charge him or her with a crime and put them in jail for ‘their protection.’ It’s completely illogical.”
The bills are scheduled for a final vote.
Guests:
Frank Mecca, Executive Director of the County Welfare Directors' Association of California, a nonprofit representing human services director in the state
Jim Cooper, California State Assemblymember (D-Elk Grove), representing District 9 that includes Sacramento and San Joaquin County communities of Elk Grove, Lodi and Galt. He is a former captain at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, where he worked on a number of sex trafficking cases
This story has been updated.
No comment: NPR disables web commenting
Today’s the last day to put your impressions on NPR’s website before they shut down the commenting system and delete all previous audience input from their page.
For years NPR’s comment sections have suffered from the inflammatory and aggressive language that has become par for the course on public web forums.
The move to disable comments comes now because the service hasn’t been reaching that wide or that diverse an audience and, basically, it’s just not cost-effective anymore. NPR plans to continue conversations about their content on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. There’s a possibility NPR.org will eventually implement a new commenting system, but there’s nothing on the horizon for the foreseeable future.
Here at AirTalk we interact with our listeners and use their web comments all the time.
Do you see NPR’s move away from comments as a good thing? Is this part of a greater trend? How might getting rid of online comments affect your relationship with news outlets?
Guest:
Shan Wang, Staff writer at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab