Today on AirTalk, we get the latest on Michael Cohen's testimony, unrest in Venezuela, the Trump-Kim Jong-Un summit and the resignation of Iran’s foreign minister. We also preview the legal debate behind a cross-shaped war memorial on public park land; and more.
News round-up: tomorrow’s Cohen hearing, plus the Trump-Kim summit and the latest from Venezuela and Iran
President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is expected to give a behind-the-scenes account of what he will claim is Trump's lying, racism and cheating, and possibly even criminal conduct, when he testifies publicly before a House committee on Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
We preview the hearing ahead of tomorrow.
Plus, there’s lots going on abroad: unrest in Venezuela, the Trump-Kim Jong-Un summit and the resignation of Iran’s foreign minister who helped hammer out the Iran nuclear deal.
We get the latest in international news.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Scott Horsley, NPR White House reporter; he tweets @HorselyScott
Farnaz Fassihi, senior writer at the Wall Street Journal; she tweets
Does a cross-shaped war memorial on park land violate Separation of Church and State?
Steven C. Lowe says he has always thought that a 40-foot-tall (12-meter-tall) concrete cross that stands on a large, grassy highway median near his home was odd.
For years, he says, he didn’t know that the cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, is a war memorial. A plaque on the cross’ base lists the names of 49 area residents who died in World War I, but it isn’t easily read from the road and getting to the monument requires dashing across traffic. Lowe said he felt the cross implied that the city where it stands favored Christians over others.
In 2014, Lowe, two other area residents and the District of Columbia-based American Humanist Association, a group that includes atheists and agnostics, sued to challenge the cross. They argue that the cross’ location on public land violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others.
The group lost the first round in court, but in 2017 an appeals court ruled the cross unconstitutional. Now, the cross’ supporters are asking the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling in a case the justices will hear Wednesday.
The memorial’s supporters would seem to have a good shot based on the court’s decision to take the case and the court’s more conservative makeup, seen as more likely to uphold such displays.
With the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments for this case tomorrow, we preview the legal debate.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Jeremy Dys, deputy general counsel with the First Liberty Institute, a non-profit legal organization that advocates for religious liberty, based in Texas
Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a non-profit that advocates for civil liberties and secular governance, based in D.C.
Facebook considers crowdsourced fact-checking amidst fake news criticisms
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the task of weeding through Facebook and picking out false news stories is too large a task for one company to handle.
So, he suggested Facebook could call on its users to act as a team of fact checkers. He argues that readers more safely could place their trust in an article backed by a large percentage of the community. But critics say it’s experts, not a large group of biased readers, that determine whether the information is true.
In the social media era, is there safety in numbers? Is it the job of experts to determine what information is true? Is bias eliminated with more data points, or do those extra data points encourage blind trust?
Guests:
Josh Constine, editor-at-large for TechCrunch; he’s been following the story; he tweets
James Surowiecki, journalist and former New Yorker columnist; author of “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations” (2004, Anchor); he tweets
Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota
Jeffrey McCall, professor of communication at DePauw University in Indiana and former journalist; he is a columnist for The Hill; he tweets
Halos on the water? City of Long Beach in early stages of pitching Angels on waterfront ballpark
As the Los Angeles Angels continue to work on figuring out where they’ll play baseball in 2021 after opting out of their lease at Angel stadium earlier this year, a new potential contender has emerged: Long Beach.
The Long Beach Post was first to report that the city of Long Beach had approached the Angels about potentially moving to the city into a new ballpark that would be built on a 13-acre waterfront lot in Downtown that is currently undeveloped but is locally referred to as the “elephant lot” from its days playing host to the Ringling Bros. Circus.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia confirmed in a statement that the city had approached the team and is exploring options, and officials with both the city and team say that the discussions are still in their very early stages. It’s also not clear that the Angels will even leave Anaheim, as they are currently working with the city to figure out options for a new or possibly renovated ballpark.
Long Beach State athletics have been pretty much the be-all, end-all of sports for Long Beach. The city has been home to the Long Beach Armada of the now-defunct Golden Baseball League and, for about 13 years between 1993 and 2007, the Long Beach Ice Dogs of the semi-pro East Coast Hockey League.
Shortly after their founding in 1961, the Angels looked into the possibility of going to Long Beach, but ultimately decided against it after team owner Gene Autry didn’t want to comply with the city’s request that the team be called the Long Beach Angels.
What do you think about the idea of the Angels moving to Long Beach? If you’re a Long Beach resident, would you support your tax dollars going to a project like this?
We reached out to the Angels for comment, and they sent us this statement from team president John Carpino:
“As we have stated from the beginning, we must explore all our options to secure a long-term future for the Angels and provide fans with a high-quality experience in a renovated or new ballpark.”
We also contacted the city of Long Beach and Mayor Robert Garcia, who sent us this statement:
“As part of our efforts to create a downtown waterfront development plan, we are exploring the feasibility of a downtown sports venue on the Convention Center parking lot. We are in the early stages of our due diligence and are exploring a variety of options for this property. We have approached the Angels to express our interest and discuss the possibilities of this opportunity. This is very preliminary and discussions are ongoing.”
Guests:
Jason Ruiz, reporter for the Long Beach Post who broke the story; he tweets
Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times reporter covering baseball and sports business who has been following the story; he tweets
United Methodist Church votes ‘No’ on inclusive LGBTQ proposal
On Tuesday, The United Methodist Church rejected a proposal to formally embrace same-sex weddings and gay clergy in a 449-374 vote.
The primary proposal, called the “One Church Plan,” was rebuffed in a separate preliminary vote, getting only 47 percent support. Backed by a majority of the church’s Council of Bishops in hopes of avoiding a schism, it would have left decisions about same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT clergy up to regional bodies and would remove language from the church’s law book asserting that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The church is teetering on the brink of a break up after more than half its delegates initially voted to maintain bans on same-sex weddings, driving supporters of LGBT inclusion to leave America’s second-largest Protestant denomination.
A final vote for the “Traditional Plan,” which calls for keeping the LGBT bans and enforcing them more strictly, is yet to take place today. More than 800 delegates are attending the three-day conference in St. Louis.
With files from the Associated Press
Guest:
Rev. Sandra Olewine, reverend at First United Methodist Church in Pasadena; she’s a voting delegate at the conference in St. Louis today
Can affirmative action increase Asian-Americans’ representation in professional jobs?
While Asian-Americans are largely represented in higher-education, they are significantly underrepresented in the managerial workforce.
That’s in part due to a phenomenon known as the “bamboo ceiling,” a term coined by Jane Hyun back in 2005 describing the invisible obstacle Asian-Americans face in the labor market despite outperforming other minorities and white people in education.
It’s also the topic of a forthcoming article in the Journal Ethnic and Racial Studies entitled “Revisiting the Asian second-generation advantage.” The study, conducted by three professors at Columbia University, found that Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese and Koreans are more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree than white Americans. Similarly, a Pew Research study in 2017 found 51% of Asian-Americans 25 years or older have a bachelor’s degree or more compared to 30% of all Americans in the same age group.
Yet, these numbers drop when Asian-Americans make their way into the labor market-- evidence of what the study identifies as an attainment gap. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, two of the study authors argued that affirmative action could be beneficial for bridging Asian-Americans’ limits in the workforce, despite recent anti-affirmative action sentiment spotlighted by a Harvard lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admission in 2014.
Larry discusses the study with two of its authors.
Guests:
Van C. Tran, assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University and lead author of the forthcoming article “Revisiting the Asian second-generation advantage” in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies
Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at Columbia University and co-author of the forthcoming article “Revisiting the Asian second-generation advantage” in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies