Congress made overturning elections harder, but there are still loopholes | The Excerpt

On Tuesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi discusses the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act ahead of next month's election. Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris on swing state voters' confidence about navigating the U.S. through foreign wars, a new Wall Street Journal poll shows. USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer talks about threats against FEMA workers. Recent hurricanes brought infections, contamination and disease. Massachusetts may become the third state to legalize psychedelics. But the industry faces hurdles cannabis never did. The Europa Clipper has launched, searching for life on a Jupiter moon.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, October 15th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today we discuss congressional efforts that make it hard to overturn an election while loopholes still remain. Laws Polling shows Trump leads Harris in swing states when it comes to foreign wars and how threats against FEMA workers are hindering post-hurricane recovery efforts.

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Congress in 2022 made overturning elections harder, but there are still loopholes in the law. I spoke with USA TODAY, Justice Department Correspondent, Aysha Bagchi, to find out more.

Aysha, thanks for making the time as always.

Aysha Bagchi:

Thank you, Taylor. I'm happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Aysha, let's just start with this for folks who maybe weren't even aware that Congress tackled this issue: what is the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act, and what really sparked its passing?

Aysha Bagchi:

A bipartisan group of people in Congress got together to try to shore up what they saw as possible vulnerabilities in the presidential election process that were really exposed by the experience in 2020, especially the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, when Congress was in the process of counting presidential electoral votes. But also earlier in the process, where you saw some Trump allies try to put together basically slates of alternative presidential electors to come and potentially have their votes replace the votes that were approved for Joe Biden.

The new law did a few things to kind of shore up the process. One thing it made clear is that the Vice President's role is what's called ministerial. Basically, that means it's ceremonial; it's clarifying that someone in Mike Pence's position, that'll be Kamala Harris this time around, doesn't have the power to change the votes. And it also made clear that courts really have the power here to be figuring out things that are happening that that's not really something for legislators to be handling. And then it also raised the threshold for the Senate and for the House of Representatives to make objections. So now you need one fifth of both of those chambers in order to make the sort of objections in the process that could gum up things and make things more chaotic when it comes to January 6th.

Taylor Wilson:

Well, as you outline in the piece, Aysha, there are loopholes that still remain. I want to talk through some of those around deadlines to start. How did these factor in, and what are really some of the concerns here?

Aysha Bagchi:

I talked to a lot of election law experts for this story, and they all said that our system is more secure than it was in 2020. So they really highlighted that Congress did go a long way in strengthening the process, but it didn't account for all the vulnerabilities you could imagine that a candidate or a candidate's allies might try to exploit. And one thing they really highlighted is that you deal with some pretty early deadlines compared to when Congress has to actually count the presidential electoral votes. That's going to happen on January 6th, 2025 now, but before that, state executives, it's usually the state's governor, unless somebody else in the state has been appointed. They have a job of certifying who won the state's votes and who the presidential electors are going to be for that state by December 11th this year. And that's six days before the presidential electors have to get together and basically provide their votes of who's going to get the state's electoral votes in the overall process.

So you've got these deadlines, and they're not that long after the election, so you're really relying on states and courts to figure out who won the election by that deadline. And you can already see some efforts to try to attack these potential vulnerabilities in the process that have made some people worried that those deadlines might not be met. And what experts really brought to my attention is that you could have a couple of things not fully play out by that December 11th deadline. You could have someone who's certified by the governor of a state, but later on in the process a court says, "Hey, actually that person isn't really the person who should have won." Maybe there's something about how the election results were produced through the counties or the voting precincts that wasn't really accurate. And courts say you certified the wrong person, but now it might be too late under the Electoral Account Reform Act to kind of go back and fix that.

And another problem is if courts really haven't adjudicated the issue and come to an answer by December 11th, a governor might just not certify any slate of presidential electors. And if that happens, what basically happens is the winning candidate will be someone who needs fewer than the 270 electoral votes that currently you need under the system. And that could actually switch an entire election if the election is close. The country is in a somewhat fortunate position that a lot of election law experts have faith in the people who happen to be in power in the different states, especially swing states, that they will try to do what they can to combat attempts to circumvent the certification process and delay or block votes from coming out of different localities. But those are really the tension points where you could see attempts to strain the system.

Taylor Wilson:

And as you write, Aysha, courts may not know what to do because the Electoral Account Reform Act is relatively new. Can you talk through some of those potential issues?

Aysha Bagchi:

Congress didn't really spell out exactly how courts should be figuring out what the Electoral Account Reform Act actually means. You can think of those sorts of scenarios where someone misses a deadline or brings in an election result late or something like that, something that's never been tested in the courts because this is a new law. You just don't know how the courts are going to handle that. You've got these old laws on the books, like the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, and that's been a law that has been litigated for decades. So, courts have a lot to rely on; they look to old judicial opinions when they're trying to figure out a testy legal question. But here, courts are going to be figuring it out on the fly.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, fascinating breakdown as always, Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for USA TODAY. Thank you, Aysha.

Aysha Bagchi:

Thanks Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds an edge over democratic nominee Kamala Harris when it comes to swing state voters' confidence about navigating the US through foreign wars, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll. The survey of seven battleground states released Sunday finds Trump ahead of Harris 50 to 39%. When respondents were asked, "Who is best able to handle Russia's invasion of Ukraine?" Trump holds a larger 48 to 33% lead over Harris when those voters were asked about the Israel Hamas war. Trump has pulled the GOP in a more isolationist direction in recent years and has been skeptical of additional USA to Ukraine. Harris alleges Trump is weak on foreign policy and has leaned into the historic importance of America's international alliances. The Biden Administration has spent more than 100 billion dollars on aid and weapons toward Ukraine.

When it comes to the Middle East, both candidates share views on supporting Israel and its war against Hamas, which killed more than 1200 Israelis in an attack last year. But the two candidates hold different beliefs on how the US should help bring an end to the war. Israel and its Gaza offensive has killed some 42,000 Palestinians. Trump has offered few specifics on ending the Israel-Hamas war, but as of late, he has called for the US ally to "get it over with." When he was president, Trump made the decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and ended opposition to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the Biden Administration later reversed. Harris has walked a tightrope, saying she supports continued military aid to Israel while ducking questions on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a real close ally.

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A North Carolina man accused of threatening federal emergency management agency workers has been arrested on public terror charges, according to authorities yesterday. Officials said the man was armed with an AR-style rifle and two handguns and made a vague threat that he was going to go mess up some FEMA personnel. The arrest came amid a wave of misinformation about the agency that has hindered hurricane recovery efforts. I spoke with USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent, Josh Meyer for more.

Hey there, Josh.

Josh Meyer:

Hey Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So Josh, just starting here, it's a concerning story. What recent threats have we heard about against FEMA workers?

Josh Meyer:

So this has been going on for a couple of days now at least. There's been reports that FEMA workers have been threatened, that there were people with armed militias who were patrolling hard-hit parts of North Carolina and intimidating and threatening FEMA workers and other federal aid workers.

Taylor Wilson:

So Josh, I mean, this is a worrying story; I think it raises eyebrows. How is it that FEMA workers became targeted like this?

Josh Meyer:

Taylor, a lot of this came as a result of former President Donald Trump claiming that North Carolina officials, but also the White House, President Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris were withholding aid from the state's residents in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Helene. And Trump was going so far as to say that Harris was intentionally diverting aid money from hurricane victims and using it to fly in Haitian immigrants into the United States so they could vote for her against Trump for president. So, of course, none of that is true. But this really made the rounds, there was a lot of rumors, and unfortunately, FEMA workers bore the brunt of that and were the subject of threats and intimidation.

Taylor Wilson:

Josh, these storms were devastating. How are threats impacting really FEMA's ability to respond to these storms?

Josh Meyer:

It's had a real negative impact. I mean, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, various mayors and other officials within North Carolina, the FEMA director herself, and I'm talking, Republicans and Democrats alike have all sharply criticized Trump for making these claims, saying that there wasn't a shred of truth to them. But he keeps making them in public appearances, online, and so forth. So people are getting very frustrated about it. The FEMA director was saying that this has really undermined both FEMA's ability to do their job, but also residents' ability to get money that they deserve for this that FEMA is offering them. So it's really an unfortunate situation. Just in the past day, FEMA had to withdraw some of its workers from going door to door to protect them. And they've been working out of buildings with guarded facilities now instead of really trying to help people by going door to door. I don't remember this ever happening, and I've covered a lot of FEMA emergency responses going all the way back to Hurricane Katrina and even before that.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. All right. We'll be keeping an eye out for what's next for this response and some of these threats. Josh Meyer covers domestic security for USA TODAY. Thank you, Josh.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure. Taylor always.

Taylor Wilson:

Cleanup continues in areas slammed by hurricanes Helene and Milton this fall. And new concerns are rising. Communities and parts of North Carolina have been battling an array of public health challenges after Helene in late September, including residents risk of being exposed to sewage, toxic industrial waste, and mosquito-borne illnesses. And experts say a lack of drinkable water is the area's biggest concern in towns outside Asheville. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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As more and more states legalize recreational marijuana, new questions have begun to pop up on state ballots about another mind-altering drug, magic mushrooms. Voters in Oregon and Colorado have in recent years passed referendums legalizing psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound that's found in some fungi. And Massachusetts could soon become the third state to take the leap if voters there approve a ballot measure next month, permitting an old stage 21 and up to use five types of plant-based psychedelics.

But as a psychedelics industry begins to take shape, it's running into roadblocks that cannabis never did. Because psychedelics tend to be more potent than marijuana, states have so far opted to only allow commercial access to them through a service center model, where customers take the drugs under the supervision of a licensed guide. Research shows that psychedelics like psilocybin may help treat serious mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The designated therapeutic spaces are designed to help people process the at times extreme experiences they can have while under the influence of the hallucinogens. But some critics have argued that the strict regulatory approach has made accessing psychedelics unaffordable. In Oregon, a single trip or hallucinogenic experience can cost anywhere between $703,000. A gram of weed at a dispensary costs around 11 bucks. Consumer demand for psychedelics is also far less than for cannabis.

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The Europa Clipper launched yesterday afternoon aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which is designed to help propel the spacecraft on a six-year journey to reach its namesake Jupiter Moon. The journey will take some 1.8 billion miles on a trajectory, taking it past Mars and then Earth, using the planet's gravity as a slingshot to then add speed for the track. After journeying for more than five years, the Clipper will fire its engines to enter Jupiter's orbit in 2030. The fourth largest of Jupiter's 95 moons, Europa, is an icy celestial body that scientists have long suspected could hold the conditions necessary to support life beneath its surface. If those conditions do exist on Europa, NASA is hoping the Clipper will be able to discover them.

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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.