Who Writes Bills?

If you've learned about things like Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances, you know the tried and true notion that Congress makes the laws, the executive branch enforces them, and the judicial branch interprets them. But would it surprise you to hear that's not how it goes most of the time?

Today we explore who really writes the majority of legislation in the US, and how it got to be that way. We talk with Dan Cassino of Fairleigh Dickinson University, who breaks down that first step of the legislative process.

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Transcript

Schoolhouse Rock Archival: “When I started I was just an idea!”

Hannah McCarthy: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Nick, we already did this.

Nick Capodice: Yeah

Hannah McCarthy: We did “how a bill really becomes a law.” And I'm even putting a link to it in the show notes so that we can put the kibosh on the whole Schoolhouse Rock thing.

Nick Capodice: That's fair. That little hopeful 1970s animated scrap of paper has gotten a lot of airtime here on Civics 101. Fine. But [00:00:30] Hannah, I want to focus on that first step of the legislative process and just that first step. And to do it, I would like you to imagine a senator lying in bed, unable to sleep, tossing and turning all night.

Hannah McCarthy: What could be interrupting their slumber?

Nick Capodice: Well, over the weekend, the senator was in their home state and they went for a walk along the beach and they saw, to their abject horror, a flotilla of trash; bottles and [00:01:00] cans and plastic bags, carpeting the shore. And the vision of it haunts their sleep.

Hannah McCarthy: How awful. Something must be done.

Nick Capodice: Something must be done. Exactly. And just before dawn, inspiration strikes. The weary senator flies back to DC, takes out a pen, writes some words down, and silently hands it to the Senate clerk.

Hannah McCarthy: Sounds like a Frank Capra film.

Nick Capodice: And this bill goes through committee. It's voted on. Claude Rains shows up and [00:01:30] eventually it makes its way to the desk of the president to be signed into law. Our senator watching on with a tear in the eye.

Hannah McCarthy: It's a story that I would really love to watch on a cold night, you know, But it's not really how laws are written, is it not?

Nick Capodice: Not even remotely.

Hannah McCarthy: So how are they written?

Nick Capodice: Well, Hannah, hold on to your hat. You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: And today [00:02:00] we are talking about who actually writes the laws that govern our country.

Dan Cassino: So, Nick. Here's what I'd ask. Have you ever actually read a bill.

Nick Capodice: That is the voice of the person who is dandled me on his knee and explained government to me more than anyone else in my life; Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Hannah McCarthy: Well, have you, Nick, I mean, answer the man's question. Have you ever read a bill?

Nick Capodice: Well, I've tried. I mean, I've started to read a few, but honestly, whenever I've tried to, you know, look over [00:02:30] a substantive piece of federal legislation like an economic spending bill or whatever, I give up pretty quickly because they're often over a thousand pages. But to illustrate what a regular old everyday bill is like, Dan picked one for us to look at.

Dan Cassino: So let's take a look at a bill that I think has a pretty good chance of coming up. Was sponsored by Chuck Grassley. It's Senate bill right now. 223. It's a bill to amend the Controlled Substances Act and here's here's what the bill says. Section 1 or 2 of the Controlled Substances [00:03:00] Act. 21 USC 802 is amended number one by Redesignating, paragraph 58 as paragraph 59 two by Redesignating. The second paragraph designated paragraph 57 relating definitions here as drug felony as paragraph 58 three between paragraphs 5758 so as resized re-designated and 59 as so redesignated two m's to the left. Now, that is gibberish. That doesn't make any sense.

Hannah McCarthy: That is gibberish. What is this law even about?

Dan Cassino: So what it what it actually means is that there is [00:03:30] a technical problem with the way the paragraphs are set up. So there's there's a paragraph under what is a serious drug felony in the US code and there's supposed to be a bunch of subheadings like this is what a serious drug felony is, and one of the subheadings is off, but they have a section there about the indentation. It's not indented enough, so it's not clear if we say serious drug felony, if it includes this subsection below where it says serious drug felony, you're like, well, that's the wrong paragraph number. It's not indented. Is it supposed to be indented? So that's what that bill does. It changes the indentations and moves [00:04:00] around a paragraph.

Nick Capodice: That bill about paragraphs and indentation passed in the Senate on February 1st, 2023. And the question is, did Senator Chuck Grassley write it?

Dan Cassino: It is beyond the scope of my imagination to imagine that Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa sat down and said, let me just write this down. I think we need 57, needs to be 58. He doesn't know this. And why should he? That's not his job.

Hannah McCarthy: But [00:04:30] isn't that his job? Isn't the main job of members of Congress to write these bills?

Nick Capodice: Sort of? The main job of members of Congress is to listen to their constituents, the people they represent. But when it comes to the writing of the bills that become laws, that's not always in their wheelhouse.

Dan Cassino: I mean, if you read a bill like read the actual it's like looking at source code for a computer program. You're like, Oh, yeah. I mean, in theory this means something, but you can't figure out what it is because it has to refer to every part of the federal code that interacts [00:05:00] with.

Nick Capodice: Have you ever done any computer programing Hannah?

Hannah McCarthy: I have not, but I'm going to guess you have.

Nick Capodice: Yeah.

Three, two, one CONTACT!

Nick Capodice: Just a tiny bit. I used to subscribe to 3-2-1 Contact magazine, and they'd have these pages of code for a computer game that I would type into my apple, see. And I was terrible at it. And it never worked because the lines of code reference, other lines of code. And if any one of them had any mistakes at all, the whole thing would collapse like a house of cards. And if we're talking about proposed [00:05:30] bills, every line has to work with the federal code.

Dan Cassino: If you see an ad for a lawyer, they've got all those books by them. That's the federal code, right? It's huge. It's voluminous. You don't know what's in there. You've never read it. No one has ever read it. You couldn't read it if you wanted to read it.

Nick Capodice: To put it in perspective, Hannah; the federal code is 220 times longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy with nary a riddle or a boulder throwing tree in sight.

Hannah McCarthy: I will have no slights thrown against the Lord of the Rings today.

Nick Capodice: Fair enough.

Dan Cassino: So [00:06:00] how do you know how to write a law? Well, legislators often have an idea of what they want to put into a law. But even when they have an idea on their own or suggest to them by a constituent, they don't actually put that into law. So what they actually do is we have a staff in Congress of Ghostwriters for Laws. This is the Office of Legislative Counsels. And the Office of Legislative Counsels actually takes what the legislator says they want to do and puts it into a version of an actual passable law that can interact with all the other types of laws in there. And [00:06:30] this is important because if you just put a law in the middle of it, that's a bomb going off in the middle of federal code. It will probably interact with all these other parts of federal code. It won't make any sense.

Nick Capodice: As of right now, the Office of the Legislative Counsel, who helps members of Congress write laws that aren't spaghetti code, that don't screw up or other bazillion laws. This council has 76 full time staff, most of them attorneys, and they are as nonpartisan as you can get.

Dan Cassino: They are actually, for members of Congress. They are the most respected office. Members of Congress [00:07:00] love these guys. They are totally neutral.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So bills can be tough to write because they're intended to become laws. And laws are technical by necessity because they interact with thousands of other laws. So members of Congress write bills to benefit their constituents, and they do so with the help of the Office of the Legislative Counsel.

Nick Capodice: Ehhhhh

Hannah McCarthy: What?

Nick Capodice: Well, I mean. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought when I set out to make [00:07:30] this episode, I thought that because I knew my checks and balances that the legislative branch writes the laws, the executive branch enforces them and the judicial branch interprets them. But Dan, Dan laid a big one on me and I have been wrestling with it ever since He did.

Hannah McCarthy: Let me have it Capodice.

Dan Cassino: Congress doesn't write the majority of their own bills, even through the Office of Legislative Council's. Rather, about two thirds of the bills that pass through Congress are initially written and proposed [00:08:00] by the executive agencies themselves.

Hannah McCarthy: What?

Nick Capodice: I know.

Hannah McCarthy: You're telling me that the executive branch is responsible for writing two thirds of our laws.

Nick Capodice: That's what I'm saying. Executive agencies. There are 438 executive agencies and subagencies, and some are colossal, like the Department of Defense and some are not like the Marine Mammal Commission.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, you got to walk me through this. Can you give me an example?

Dan Cassino: Sure. All right. So one of the big things we [00:08:30] have to worry about, Congress supposed to worry about is interstate transit. Right. In the Constitution, you have to have interstate transportation. So we've got a problem. The Mississippi River.

Nick Capodice: Climb in the old paddle steamer Hannah and shout Mark Twain, because we're measuring the depth of the mighty Mississippi.

Dan Cassino: Now I'm going to take a flat bottom boat down the Mississippi River. And the problem I've got is that because of flooding and because of different levels of water in the Mississippi River, we have to change how much tonnage I can put on my flat [00:09:00] bottom boat going down the Mississippi River. Now, there's gonna be an agency whose job it is to regulate this. And Congress says we have no idea what the tonnage per square foot of hull space can be on a flat bottomed boat going down the Mississippi River, depending on the seasons. Of course, we have no idea what that's supposed to be. We're going to have an agency.

Nick Capodice: Congress knows very little about this, but they're the ones who pass laws according to the Constitution. So it sets up an executive agency. I'm just going to call it the FBBA Flat Bottom Boats Agency. [00:09:30] The president appoints the head of that agency and then the agency hires a ton of nonpolitical professional river and boat tonnage savvy folk to run it. They write rules that have the force of law, and things seem like they're going fine.

Dan Cassino: But we got a problem. We got a problem because there's all these other boats on the Mississippi. They're crowding things and Congress goes the agency, Hey, what is going on with you guys? You're supposed to be regulating the Mississippi River, regulating these flat bottom boats. We're having accidents. We're having delays. What is going on? And the agency goes, We can't help you, [00:10:00] man. We're just regulating the tonnage. We're regulating the boats. I can't regulate these other things that are going on in the river. So Congress says, fine, we're going to write a new law that will help you figure this out. So Congress does its oversight. It it hears from the agency that it needs a new law and the agency is then going to help Congress write the law. Now, the Office of Legislative Counsels is going to do the actual ghost writing on the law, But the agencies have their lawyers as well, and no one knows what is in [00:10:30] the law covering the agencies better than the agencies themselves do. It's about expertise. Congress created these agencies in order to give them in order to give Congress expertise to handle these problems. Congress doesn't want to deal with. Congratulations. These agencies now have more expertise than Congress does.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. I was surprised to hear that stat, that two thirds of laws are written by executive agencies and not Congress. But it does make a lot of sense, doesn't it? You want the people who actually know about something [00:11:00] to be the ones to write the laws. Was it always this way?

Nick Capodice: No, it wasn't. First off, 200 years ago. The federal government wouldn't get involved in things like flat bottom boats. And second, this idea that agencies should have professional staff and not political staff. That happened after a fateful morning in 1881.

Dan Cassino: This goes back to the assassination of James Garfield,

The murder of James Garfield...up On the scaffolf high... My [00:11:30] name is Charles Guiteau..

Hannah McCarthy: The assassination of James Garfield.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, well, before Charles Guiteau killed President Garfield, all the people in these agencies were hired at the whim of the president.

Dan Cassino: We have to understand in the mid 19th century, the first nine months to a year, all the president did was appoint people jobs. He had thousands of jobs to fill. And so anyone who helped him out during the election. They got a job. This was called the spoils system thanks to Andrew Jackson.

Nick Capodice: But the reason [00:12:00] Garfield was assassinated was that a man felt he was owed a job. And that man was Charles Guiteau.

Dan Cassino: Who thought because he wrote a speech that he thought had been used to help James Garfield, he should be secretary of state, but he would settle for ambassador to England. So he shot the president. The president eventually died and they reformed it.

Nick Capodice: So the VP, Chester Arthur becomes the new president and nobody wants this to happen again. So Arthur signs a bill that mandates that if someone wants to work in an agency, [00:12:30] they can't just be handed the job as a favor from the president. They need to prove they know what they're doing in the civil service.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, is this where we get the civil service exam?

Speaker7: It is!

Looking for a job with the state is a little different than looking for a job with the private sector. About 80% of state jobs are filled by people who have taken civil service exams. The exam process is made up of just three main steps...

Nick Capodice: If you want to work in the post office for the TSA, for the FBI, for customs, [00:13:00] for myriad agencies, you've got to take a test to prove you have a base understanding of that agency and its operations.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, so far, this is all pretty logical. People who know stuff help Congress make laws, and only people who prove they know stuff can get a job at those agencies. It's all about information.

Nick Capodice: Well, Hannah, I'm glad you said that. If you were in a particularly cynical mood and I asked you what the prime motivator was [00:13:30] for all political action, what would you say?

Hannah McCarthy: Honestly?

Nick Capodice: Yes.

Hannah McCarthy: Money. Lobbying. Outside interest groups spending tons of cash to influence politicians and to get their way.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, and I would tend to agree with you, but Dan changed my mind on this a little bit. He told me it's not necessarily about money. It's just about information. And I'll tell you what he means by that right after this break.

Hannah McCarthy: But first, before we talk about information, [00:14:00] Nick and I have an awful lot of it that we like to share with our listeners, If you like trivial, deep dives into the fun histories that make us the way we are, you will like our free newsletter, extra credit. It comes out every two weeks and you never know what's going to be in it. Sign up at our website civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: We're back. You're listening to Civics 101 and we are talking about who writes the bills that become laws in the United States. And Nick, before the break, you said that contrary to what many of us think, [00:14:30] it's not all about the money.

Nick Capodice: That's correct.

Dan Cassino: It's never about the money. What it's about is information.

Nick Capodice: Again, that's Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Dan Cassino: We often talk about this in terms of outside interest groups. And the thing we really worry about in political science is outside interest groups performing called legislative capture. That is a situation where the outside interest group has all the information and therefore can [00:15:00] tell Congress whatever they like. And Congress is going to wind up doing what the agency wants. People talk about this in terms of, oh, you know, the NRA gives money to Congress and that's what drives it. It's never about the money.

Nick Capodice: Legislative capture, as in these interest groups like the NRA, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the Christian Coalition, they capture the legislative branch because they hold all the cards. They know everything.

Dan Cassino: If the NRA has better information about gun laws [00:15:30] than Congress does, then they wind up being able to manipulate Congress and get Congress to whoever they want. The same thing is true of AARP. AARP knows more about Social Security and Medicare and problems with those programs than Congress does. And because of that, they can then dictate to Congress, Hey, you guys need to do this. We worry about this in terms of interest groups. But what people miss out on is that the most powerful interest groups are not the NRA and the AARP. The most powerful interest groups are, in fact, federal agencies, federal agencies advocating for themselves, saying we need more authority [00:16:00] to do something when those agencies are trusted. Their expertise gets trusted. So they are going to wind up having very influential in what bills get put forward and even writing what those laws actually are.

Nick Capodice: And I want to make this crystal clear, Hannah, because it's something I think everyone has been through in some way or another in their lives. We've worked together a long time, right?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I think maybe six years at this point.

Nick Capodice: And, you know, there have been times that I've been like this specific aspect of my job is very complicated. I can't really explain it all. Let me just [00:16:30] take care of it.

Hannah McCarthy: I do, though in some aspects I think we all do that. We all have a particular set of skills, right?

Nick Capodice: Skills I've acquired over a very long career.

Hannah McCarthy: And we kind of become experts at that one thing.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, we've become known at our organization as the go to person for that skill, and we're covetous of it sometimes because we continue to do things the way we like and people depend on that skill and they ask us to do that thing over and over again and it benefits us. And it's not just in our work lives. Like if [00:17:00] you're the best tank in your guild in World of Warcraft, you're going to get asked to tank a lot of raids and you get better loot because you do and better gear because you do, which means you're going to be even more in demand.

Hannah McCarthy: Is that the first World of Warcraft reference that we have used in this show?

Nick Capodice: I think it might be the first, but being the one who knows everything about a topic, be it in our jobs or in school or in Azeroth, is an enormous power.

Dan Cassino: And that's very problematic, right? Because we want members of Congress to be exercising independent judgment, [00:17:30] to be looking at these bills and saying what they really want. And we get this idea of legislative capture. That becomes a real problem because the members of Congress are not really looking at it themselves. They're just kind of saying, because this agency says they need it or this interest group says they need it.

Nick Capodice: And I'm going to bring this back to money. Now, Hannah, you know what an iron triangle is?

Hannah McCarthy: Absolutely. We have had teachers asking us to do an episode on iron triangles for years.

Nick Capodice: Do you want to break it down real quick?

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, I'll do my best. Three points in a triangle, you have an executive agency like the Department of Agriculture. [00:18:00] That is point one. They want to get farmers money because that's what they do. Point two is the Agriculture Committee in Congress who also want to get farmers money. And point three are special interest groups representing the farmers themselves who naturally want more money, who help elect members of Congress who pass bills giving farmers more money. And this triangle is iron because it's unbreakable.

Dan Cassino: Everyone's trying to get everyone more money. And so you just get out of control spending. That's [00:18:30] not the actual story here, because members of Congress are not really motivated by raising money. Hold on.

Hannah McCarthy: Hold on here. What does he mean, "Members of Congress aren't motivated by raising money?"

Dan Cassino: They don't care that much. Think about it. If I'm a member of Congress and I raise a bunch of money, what can I do with it? I can use it to run for reelection. Okay, that's good. But if I have a choice between doing something that's going to upset my constituents and doing something to raise [00:19:00] going to get me money, I'm going to avoid upsetting my constituents at all costs because the only thing I can do with that money is try and win back the constituents that I've just upset. So I'm not going to do something that upset my constituents. Oil companies don't give money to members of Congress to make them like oil companies. They give money to members of Congress who already like oil companies to try and make sure they stay in office. The money is not changing anyone's vote on anything. What matters is the information. So if I am a member of Congress, an oil company [00:19:30] comes to me or farmer, or the Department of Agriculture comes to me and says, Hey, we need you to do this. I know, oh, I trust those guys. If AARP comes to me and says, Hey, Social Security, we need this technical fix in Social Security, I go, Oh, cool. Well, you guys know about this, and I don't want AARP to put me on a list of people they want to get rid of. So therefore, I'm going to do what you say. Does it matter that AARP gives me gives me money? Not really.

Nick Capodice: When I did an episode on Citizens United, check it out. Dear listener, link in the show notes, et cetera, [00:20:00] the thing that surprised me the most was that in the grand scheme of things, corporations and special interest groups were not giving the staggering sums of money I had expected to political campaigns. It was mostly wealthy, very wealthy individuals.

Dan Cassino: The NRA has been fantastically successful for 50 years, despite actually giving very little in federal elections. They don't have to because people trust them. And that trust is what's so important.

Nick Capodice: Now, hold on. Just a quick [00:20:30] clarifier here, because I feel a few of our listeners might disagree with this; people out there who don't trust the NRA or the ACLU or AARP. It is not we, the public, who have to trust special interest groups or executive agencies. Dan's talking about members of Congress. And to use his example of the NRA, if you're a senator who wants to pass a pro gun bill, you might not even know where to start. The NRA is going to help you out. They're going to give [00:21:00] you rock solid data, legal advice, polling stats. They'll just take care of it for you.

Dan Cassino: The thing people worry about is, oh, what if these agencies what if these interest groups start lying to members of Congress saying there's a problem when there isn't really one? And that almost never happens? Because the thing these agencies have, the most important thing these agencies have is credibility. They go to members of Congress, say, hey, or more likely, their staff member, we need you to do this. This needs to happen. Here's our report on this. If they lose credibility and people stop believing what they say, [00:21:30] they've got no pull. They've got nothing. Okay, look, iron triangles are real, but they are not about money. They're about information. Number one. And number two, they're much more complicated than a triangle. It's not just three things. The version I've seen in politics is the iron sphere. Like it's a sphere. It's like a Dyson sphere. Because everyone is working together, but it's all about information flow. That's all it is. Like the money. People. This is what I hate when people say, Oh, but they give all this money. Like, yeah, the money is for access. [00:22:00] That's all the money is. The money is for access. So I can give you the report I wrote. Except in New Jersey, where it kind of is about money, but that's beside the point.

Nick Capodice: That’s who really writes the bills today on Civics 101, and don’t worry NJ I love you and so does Dan, he lives there. This episode was written and produced by me Nick Capodice with you Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Senior Producer Christina Phillips, Producer Jacqui Fulton, and Executive Producer Rebecca Lavoie. Music in this episode by Broke for Free, Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band who sang that traditional song about Charles Guitau, Eric Kilkenny, HoliznaCCO, Sarah the Illstrumentalist, Autohacker, Eden Avery, Margareta, SPring Gang, Kilokaz, Moore and Gardner, Scanglobe, Scott Gratton, the Green Orbs, and the executive agent in charge of music beds that move along briskly, Chris Zabriskie. There was NO music by Queen in this episode even though I feel Flat Bottom Boats make the rockin world go round. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

Nick Capodice:

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Paying Income Taxes

The idea that the more you have, the more you’re expected to contribute in taxes, is a foundation of our income tax system. And there is one government agency that oversees it all: the Internal Revenue Service. 

However, the tax code itself, and the IRS, are subject to the will of politicians - who might have special interests of their own. We talk about how politics, wealth, and power influence how people file for their taxes in the first place, how some of the wealthiest Americans have the lowest income tax rate, and who is held accountable for paying their "fair share."

We talk to Eric Toder, Institute fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute; Beverly Moran, Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on federal income taxation, including individuals, partnerships, tax-exempt organizations and corporate; and Joe Thorndike, Director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts.  

Curious about the history of the income tax? Check out our companion episode, Why Do We Have An Income Tax?

Also, check out The Secret IRS Files, ProPublica’s investigation into the tax records of the .001%.

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Transcript

Filing Taxes_HMPass.mp3

Hannah McCarthy: Hi, Nick.

Nick Capodice: Hey, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, Why do we pay income taxes? Why are we expected to give some of the money we earn to the government?

Nick Capodice: Whew. Well, I'm not a big time city lawyer, Hannah, but I feel like it's like the government is expected to do something for us in return for those taxes. Right. By making and enforcing laws, providing security and protection, [00:00:30] giving us ways to live and work and travel safely, and to help us access basic things like food or shelter.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, that's the idea. But there's also something really important about our tax system. We put a lot of emphasis on fairness.

Archival: How can you judge if a tax is fair to the taxpayer? Well, most people today accept the principle that a person should be taxed according to his ability to pay. As a result, we have a graduate [00:01:00] or progressive income tax.

Joe Thorndike: Look, I mean, no one likes paying taxes, right? We all have to do it because somebody has to pay the bills.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Joe Thorndike. He's the director of the Tax History Project. Civics 101 talked to him back in 2017.

Joe Thorndike: But that means that we want to make sure that everyone else is paying their fair share. Right? I mean, that's the that's the central trope of tax paying in America, their fair share.

Hannah McCarthy: The idea that the more you have, the more you are expected to contribute has been built into our income [00:01:30] taxes from the beginning. And there's supposed to be one government agency that oversees it all, the IRS.

Archival: The Internal Revenue Service, maintains a streamlined operating organization which handles yours.

Hannah McCarthy: And this idea might make sense on paper, but in practice.

Archival: It is tax season, a dreaded time for some Americans feeling burdened as they complete forms that many argue have become [00:02:00] too complicated.

Archival: The IRS kicked off this tax filing season with approximately 6 million unprocessed returns from last year.

Archival: This morning, an investigation reveals just how little some of the richest Americans pay in taxes. It's wealthy taxpayers with less transparent sources of income who are less likely to pay. They can hire lawyers and accountants to help sidestep the tax collector.

Archival: Many lower income people paid for tax filing when their returns should have been free.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. [00:02:30] I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And today we're talking about paying income taxes and how the system we designed built around everyone paying their fair share actually works when politics, wealth and power get involved. By the way, if you're curious about why we have an income tax in the first place, we have got a whole episode on that. You can find it at our website, [00:03:00] civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, Hannah, I'd love to actually start with the IRS itself. I feel like they kind of get the fuzzy end of the lollipop. They're the one government agency that everyone loves to hate.

Joe Thorndike: Well, you know, officially it's part of the Treasury Department. It is not the largest federal agency, but one of the largest. And more to the point, it's probably the most important for most regular Americans. This is the the main point of contact between Americans and the federal government. [00:03:30] I mean, if you think about it, what other agency touches your life so directly, you know, and threatens to put you in jail regularly? I mean, it's it's unusual, right?

Hannah McCarthy: And the Internal Revenue Service actually used to be called the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Nick Capodice: Huh. So why did they change their name?

Joe Thorndike: It was renamed in the 50 seconds, partly to just because they were in the middle of a big reorganization and wanted to communicate that, but also to try to say, hey, we're about service. You know, we're not all about putting people in jail. We're also about taxpayer service. And that is actually a big part of the agency's [00:04:00] job because you'll hear this sometimes we have a voluntary tax system that means that our compliance is done by us, not by the agency. So they've got to be they've got to be helpful to us.

Archival: It is only through your willingness to voluntarily fill out your personal and business returns and pay your taxes, that the job of collecting and processing is accomplished as quickly as it is.

Joe Thorndike: I call it, you know, like fiscal citizenship is a way to think about it. And the [00:04:30] IRS is the agency that that makes that real. It makes sure that we are all doing what we're supposed to do and that none of us are shirking our responsibilities.

Nick Capodice: Okay. Joe says voluntary, but that implies that you can choose not to do it. And yeah, sure, you can choose not to pay your taxes, but that is against the law.

Hannah McCarthy: It is.

Hannah McCarthy: Think of it this way Some of our taxes are compulsory. They are taken automatically out of a paycheck like the payroll tax, for example, or added to the price of something like a sales tax. [00:05:00] But our income tax is a little more complicated. You do have to pay it, but you have some freedom and responsibility about how much you pay and when you pay. All right.

Nick Capodice: So is this why our income taxes aren't just automatic like we actually have to fill out a tax return?

Hannah McCarthy: Tax returns are not exclusive to the United States, but they are unique here because of how complex they are. In some countries, income tax [00:05:30] is a simple compulsory tax, and most people do not have to think much about it at all. Employers and financial institutions automatically deduct taxes from people's income and send it directly to the government.

Nick Capodice: And that is withholding, right?

Hannah McCarthy: That's what it's called. And the taxpayer might get a receipt at the end of the year, but there's not much else they need to worry about.

Nick Capodice: But we have withholding here in the US.

Hannah McCarthy: We do. The IRS does have a lot of information already about how much money you earn and [00:06:00] how much you're paying in taxes right out of those earnings throughout the year.

Eric Toder: Now, they know a lot about what our income is because they get reports from our employers.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Eric Toder. He's an institute fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. He worked in tax policy for the Treasury Department, at the IRS and in the Congressional Budget Office.

Eric Toder: They get reports from our financial institutions about the interest and dividends we receive. We get reports about the retirement [00:06:30] pensions we get. So those numbers go to the government as well as to the taxpayer.

Nick Capodice: And then around tax season, we get a receipt for that.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, like the W-2, which comes from your employer and says, Hey, here's how much you made and here's how much you already paid in taxes.

Nick Capodice: Okay, So part of filing your tax return is confirming those numbers. And then if you owe more to the government, you pay it or sometimes sometimes you get money back.

Eric Toder: But there are a lot of pieces of information. [00:07:00] The government doesn't know if you're self-employed, if you run your own business, they don't know how much income you make. You get various deductions. Our tax system is very complicated. There's a lot of allowances. They don't know how much we gave to charity unless we tell them. So you can't claim that deduction. So there's a whole bunch of information that you need to supply.

Hannah McCarthy: And that gets us to the two other steps of the tax return. The first is incentives. Like if you donate it to charity or [00:07:30] bought an electric car, incentives usually make your tax bill go down and a lot of times they show up as a refund or a check straight from the government. You may also get a refund if you paid too much in taxes during the year.

Nick Capodice: All right. What's the second step?

Hannah McCarthy: The second step is to report any additional income you earned that should be taxed. This usually makes your tax bill go up.

Nick Capodice: All right. So when it comes to a voluntary tax, you don't have to apply for incentives, [00:08:00] but you can You do, though, have to report all of your taxable income, even if it doesn't show up on your W-2.

Hannah McCarthy: You do. And the IRS is supposed to help you do that correctly.

Beverly Moran: So the Internal Revenue Service really is tasked with three different things.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Beverly Moran. She's a professor of law and sociology at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on federal income taxation.

Beverly Moran: One thing is to get you those returns, get you to fill out those returns, [00:08:30] process those returns, get you your money, get the money from you. And about a third of its budget goes to that. Another is be a friend, a helper and a support to all the taxpayers who just want to comply. So be there to answer questions, provide lots of educational materials, and about a third of its budget goes to that. And then the other third is enforcement. Okay.

Nick Capodice: I want [00:09:00] to talk about enforcement for a little bit. Are Americans generally good about paying their taxes? Because I feel like the looming threat of an audit has been part of our pop culture. As long as I've been alive. And we hear all the time about people getting in trouble for not paying their taxes.

Joe Thorndike: You know, Americans are really remarkably good about paying their taxes. We have very high compliance rates relative to other countries. But that doesn't mean we would if no one was looking over our shoulder.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Joe Thorndike [00:09:30] again.

Joe Thorndike: It's a it's a delicate balance between enforcement and voluntary compliance, supported by the agency with help, you know, and information. The agency has to do both. It has to make sure that we understand the rules and that we, you know, are trying to comply with them as best we can. They also have to do, you know, the other side of that is the stick where they say, and if you don't do it, we're going to come for you.

Hannah McCarthy: And here's Eric Toder.

Eric Toder: As far as the compliance issues, our tax gap, according to IRS estimates, are roughly 15% [00:10:00] of of taxes owed are not paid in a timely manner. Some of that money is recovered later by enforcement.

Nick Capodice: So the tax gap just means the percentage of taxes that aren't actually paid. And how much money is that for 2021?

Hannah McCarthy: The estimate was about $600 billion. Put another way, this is 3% of the GDP, the gross domestic product.

Nick Capodice: That is not an insignificant amount, especially when entire government agencies are funded by [00:10:30] a lot less than that. So what does this look like?

Eric Toder: There are three components of the tax gap. There's people who have a responsibility to file but don't file in taxes and owe money. There's people who file their taxes or report their income or their tax liability incorrectly underreport how much they owe. And there's people who might report how much they owe but just don't pay.

Nick Capodice: Which one of these is the most common?

Eric Toder: Of those three components, about 80% is underreporting. [00:11:00] So that's the biggest component. The biggest source of underreporting is in the individual income tax system and the self-employment part of payroll taxes. And the biggest group of people who underreport are small business people. Why is that? Well, if you're a wage earner, the government withholds wages from your paycheck. And your employer sends a W-2 to the IRS. So the IRS knows what your wages [00:11:30] are. So the areas in which people can most easily avoid income is if they operate an independent business. They have self-employment income and don't get a 1099. And that's where, you know, especially if you're operating in cash, it's easy to hide your income.

Nick Capodice: What does he mean by hiding your income?

Hannah McCarthy: There are a lot of ways to hide your income. The most obvious example is simply not putting it into a financial institution [00:12:00] like a bank that will send that information to the IRS.

Nick Capodice: So like, instead of putting it in your bank account, you just keep it in a safe in the basement?

Hannah McCarthy: Sure. Or a metaphorical safe, like a trust or a company you set up that may provide goods or services, but its real business is holding your wealth or opening an offshore account in another country that does not report to the IRS.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, but the IRS still has ways of investigating that, right?

Hannah McCarthy: They do. And that's where enforcement [00:12:30] comes in. Checking in on how much people or corporations claimed they earned an income and how much they paid in income taxes and whether there is any discrepancy in between.

Nick Capodice: Like, hypothetically, if someone said they only made 50 grand a year, but they just bought a $5 million house and a new car.

Hannah McCarthy: That might be something to look into. Or if someone just does not fill out their taxes at all.

Eric Toder: You know exactly how much you owe. And those sources of income, how much you have to report. And [00:13:00] if you're at all savvy, you know, the government knows that, too. And they have computer matching programs that can check on you.

Nick Capodice: So an audit.

Hannah McCarthy: Sometimes it's not even officially called an audit. I think a lot of us have this idea in our minds that if there's an issue with our tax return, an IRS agent is going to show up at our door. But that's not the reality for a lot of people, especially when the issue is easy to fix. The IRS has ways of investigating your finances and then follows up if something does not seem right. [00:13:30]

Eric Toder: They don't have to send an IRS agent. They just can send you a letter. You reported this. Our records show you owe this. Please explain why you didn't pay. That's not even counted as an audit.

Hannah McCarthy: A tax return might require a lot of information. Meaning there are a lot of ways people can mess up their tax returns, intentionally or not. And the tax gap isn't just because of income taxes. There are other taxes like estate or gift taxes that contribute to that gap.

Nick Capodice: Okay, [00:14:00] So most of the tax gap is because of underreporting. And for someone like you or me, Hannah, this might not mean a full scale audit, but what about for like a corporation or someone who has millions or billions of dollars in income?

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So you are touching on an important distinction here, how tax enforcement like an audit, looks for the majority of Americans versus how tax enforcement looks for extremely wealthy people and corporations. About 28% [00:14:30] of the tax gap comes from the top 1% of taxpayers. So wealthy individuals and corporations contribute to the tax gap in slightly different ways. But they both have one advantage that I want you to keep in mind that we, the average taxpayer, do not political clout and influence.

Nick Capodice: All right. So how do the wealthiest Americans like Jeff Bezos, for example, the CEO of Amazon, one of the richest men in the world, [00:15:00] somehow end up paying basically nothing in income taxes? How does that happen?

Hannah McCarthy: They're really good at making their taxable income look smaller than it is.

Archival: Newsflash, John, the super rich, they're not like us. The tax code is designed to favor the investment income of the mega wealthy over the regular earnings of everyone else.

Hannah McCarthy: These individuals are more likely to have the type of wealth that is not subject to income tax in the first place, like stock and [00:15:30] property.

Nick Capodice: So they're making their billions in various ways that most of us aren't making money.

Hannah McCarthy: And on top of that, they can afford to hire teams of tax experts that help them maximize the benefits of all of those incentives that lower their tax burden. These are incentives that we have to donating to charity or putting money in a retirement account like an IRA.

Nick Capodice: Alright, so if one of us had an IRA, we might put 4% of our income into it every year, and that's probably a few thousands of dollars a year, if you're [00:16:00] lucky.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, but if you're someone like Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, you might put millions of dollars into that IRA.

Archival: Tech mogul Peter Thiel turned a Roth IRA account into a $5 Billion tax free piggy bank and not.

Hannah McCarthy: Pay income taxes on it. And then you can withdraw that money later on. You may pay some fees for doing so, but it is exponentially cheaper than paying income taxes in the first place.

Nick Capodice: And this is [00:16:30] something that's come up in Congress. I remember there was legislation about capping these IRAs back in 2022.

Hannah McCarthy: And that is the thing about taxes, right? They're political. Our tax policy is determined by elected officials. So when we find out that certain people might be exploiting tax policies in ways that go far beyond their intended purpose, it's up to politicians to patch the holes if they want to.

Beverly Moran: And there's a big incentive [00:17:00] for those people, the very wealthy people, not to have a strong IRS, because a third of what the IRS is supposed to do is let Congress know when this, you know, stuff is going on so that if it's legal, the law will be changed, pursue it. If it's not legal, Right. Expose it to punish it. So the fewer lawmen there are out there. Right. The [00:17:30] better for the gangsters to do what they want to do.

Eric Toder: Now, there's also an issue with corporations, with large corporations, but that's a completely different problem. Large corporations generally do not hide their income, but they do engage in transactions to avoid tax, many of which are legal, but some of which cross the line and some of which are arguably on one side of the line or the other side of the line. So [00:18:00] in some sense, audits of large corporations are kind of like a bargaining game that the return the corporation submits as an opening bid. The IRS agent comes in and says, No, no, you owe this. And often this stays in the courts for years.

Hannah McCarthy: So the IRS budget was a little less than $14 billion in 2022. But that money has to be split between collecting [00:18:30] taxes, helping people file their tax returns and enforcement. So only a fraction of that money can be spent investigating any one case. Now, put that up against an individual or corporation that has billions or even trillions of dollars.

Archival: When a formula or a computer code is registered abroad, say in Zug, a US company is allowed to claim that a lot of its taxable profits are there, even if most of its sales are in the US.

Hannah McCarthy: For [00:19:00] example, take a company like Microsoft. The IRS investigated Microsoft in 2012 for avoiding US taxes on $39 billion of profit that it had moved to Puerto Rico. And Microsoft was like, this was a business decision, not a tax evasion scheme. But the IRS wanted to prove that it was done to avoid taxes. So they launched the most expensive IRS investigation to date.

Nick Capodice: How'd it go?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, Microsoft suddenly [00:19:30] had IRS agents digging through their financials, but also emails the behavior of the executives.

Archival: Microsoft products are primarily developed in the United States. They benefit from US research and development tax credits. Every time, though, a microsoft product is sold, 47% of the sales price is sent to Puerto Rico.

Hannah McCarthy: The IRS was being aggressive. It knew that it had the power to investigate, and it put as many resources as it could into doing that. And [00:20:00] that scared Microsoft and other corporations like it that had not experienced the IRS investigating this aggressively.

Nick Capodice: So what did Microsoft do?

Hannah McCarthy: So Microsoft started lobbying Congress to remove some of the IRS investigative powers, and other corporations joined in.

Nick Capodice: And I got to just say, this is in 2012, just two years after the ruling in Citizens United, which gave corporations and wealthy individuals the ability to spend unlimited money on elections. [00:20:30]

Hannah McCarthy: Yep. And eight years later, while the IRS was still investigating Microsoft, Congress passed legislation that limited the IRS ability to conduct these investigations. And by the way, ProPublica has done some amazing reporting on this. And more broadly, how corporate and private interests impact our tax laws. You can find a link to that in our show notes at Civics101podcast.org.

Nick Capodice: And just going back to wealthy individuals for a minute, they also have the ability to put their hands on the legislative process. [00:21:00] Yes.

Hannah McCarthy: And indeed they do.

Archival: A new report finds the IRS is auditing people making more than $200,000 less than others.

Eric Toder: But the IRS is doing less audits of corporations than they used to. They're doing less audits of high income taxpayers. They're doing less audits of partnerships.

Nick Capodice: But what does that mean for you and me, the everyday people who just don't have a ton of wealth, who are just trying to follow the law, pay our taxes on time, and maybe, just [00:21:30] maybe get some of those incentives that we're entitled to.

Hannah McCarthy: We'll get to that right after the break. But before we do, you hear the term tax deductible donation quite a bit. And we're even talking about it on this particular episode. And I'm just here to remind you that you can make just that two Civics 101 anytime you want. You can go to our website, click the donate button, and you can skim a little bit off the top of your taxes at the end of the year. And you know, you'll be supporting [00:22:00] a show about democracy and American government that truly believes that people should know the truth about the place where they live. So what's wrong with that?

Nick Capodice: Nothing at all. You do it at Civics101podcast.org. All right, Hannah, so far we've talked about how the IRS is supposed to make sure everyone pays their taxes and help people do it, and that this idea of paying our fair share isn't quite as fair as it sounds, because wealthy individuals and corporations have been able to both [00:22:30] weaken the IRS and influence tax policies that benefit them. So what effect has that had on the IRS and us?

Hannah McCarthy: This is Eric Toder again.

Eric Toder: Over the last ten years, there's been a substantial reduction in the funding of the IRS and in the resources available to the IRS.

Hannah McCarthy: And funding cuts haven't just affected investigations. They've affected that other thing the IRS is supposed to do help people pay their taxes.

Archival: Fewer [00:23:00] than 15,000 employees handled over 240 million calls in the first half of last year. That's just one person. For every 16,000 calls.

Eric Toder: Taxpayers get much worse service when they try to call call the IRS for questioning and get the full answer.

Hannah McCarthy: Nearly everyone pays taxes, so our tax base is huge. That's a lot of people to worry about and a lot of complicated taxes. This is Beverly Moran.

Beverly Moran: You [00:23:30] know, you want to talk about stories. I used to do my taxes by an and I would do a lot of people's taxes by hand. And the reason why I would do it is because my job was to teach people about taxes. Right? So I felt like every year I should like, do my taxes, do some other people's taxes who are different situations, not rely on an accountant or software like actually [00:24:00] deal with the paperwork. This is how long ago it was in 1990. I lived and worked in three different states. I sold a house and I bought a house and my tax return was 58 pages long. And doing it by hand, I had to make sure that every time a transfer like a number from page five to page 32 or whatever, it had to be. Right. And and I just knew [00:24:30] and I'm proud of my ability to do like math in my head was like, no, I have to use software. And I felt defeated. Right now, if I have to use software. Why are you asking people who may not have access to computers, may not have access to a desk or a place where they can keep a whole bunch of paperwork, may be working 2 or 3 jobs. Why [00:25:00] does a person like that have to make a decision in their life? Am I going to do my own taxes or am I going to go to somebody else?

Nick Capodice: And the IRS is trying to oversee all of this while also dealing with political pressure and ups and downs in funding and resources.

Hannah McCarthy: And the millions of us who are just trying to file a tax return to comply with the law and get the deductions and tax credits we're entitled to. Those of us who don't necessarily have a tax expert on speed dial, [00:25:30] we feel the effects.

Beverly Moran: There's something called the Taxpayer's Advocate. And one of the things that they do is they produce a report. I think it's every six months sort of on what's the state of what's going on in terms of relationship between taxpayers and the IRS. Right. And they've reported that 90% of the phone calls that go into [00:26:00] the IRS are never answered. And then the 10% that are answered, that doesn't mean that you necessarily got the right department or you're not cut off in the middle of the phone call or you get the wrong answer. And on top of it, the IRS just recorded that they're looking into software because what they discovered was that tax preparers have been buying software that allows them to jump to the head of the line. [00:26:30] Like, you know, when you call at seven 35in the morning and you get told that, you know, there's a 30 minute wait and four hours later, you're still on the phone. It's because these tax affairs have paid for software and they jump to the front of the line. So if you're just sitting there, a taxpayer, you don't know what benefits. You have to you don't know if you've made a mistake. You can't get anybody on the phone.

Nick Capodice: So you could spend an entire day or [00:27:00] multiple days just trying to get help. And honestly, it just feels really unfair that it's so hard to be able to do something that you're legally obligated to do because there aren't enough resources to do it. The people at the.

Beverly Moran: Irs are not trying to hurt anybody. And yet you could understand why millions of people hate them and it's not their fault. It's the fault of this system that they're in.

Hannah McCarthy: 90% of taxpayers rely on the outside help of tax experts [00:27:30] or software. You don't have to rely on help. You can fill out your tax forms by mail or over the phone, but many people do not do that. This gets us to how we ended up with the prevalence of tax preparation software in the late 90 seconds and early 2000. Businesses offering tax software started popping up for anyone with access to a computer and the Internet, and they helped you fill out your tax return. And in 2001, the IRS was tasked with overseeing tax preparation software. This is something people are clearly [00:28:00] using, right? So the IRS should have some oversight. One of the mandates was to make sure the software was available and accessible for people who needed it.

Beverly Moran: Congress passed a law saying that the Internal Revenue Service had to make sure that taxpayers could file their returns for free. And from that time till now, the rule has been that people who are below a certain income level, [00:28:30] which I believe for 2022, was $73,000, should be able to go on line and file their taxes for free.

Hannah McCarthy: Basically, Congress passed a law that said that at least 70% of people had to have access to free tax preparation software. And to figure that out, the IRS calculates a max income that 70% of Americans fall under. That's where that $73,000 comes from. If your income was less than 73,000 in [00:29:00] 2022, you qualify for a free tax return.

Nick Capodice: Did the IRS develop its own software?

Hannah McCarthy: Not exactly.

Beverly Moran: What happened was that the IRS by that time was already being squeezed. Right. And so what it did was it made a contract with all these not all of them, but about ten companies so that those companies would provide the free filing.

Nick Capodice: All right. So the IRS outsourced it. They did. [00:29:30]

Hannah McCarthy: These companies, many of which offer tax preparation software for fee, normally agreed to have tax software that people could use for free, which people could find if they went to the IRS website. The problem is that these companies are just that, you know, they're businesses. They want to make money.

Nick Capodice: Okay. But if 70% of people could go to the IRS website and find free tax filing software, what do these companies get out of it?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, for one thing, they get name recognition. They get to [00:30:00] advertise as a company that offers free filing and that boosts the number of people who will seek them out without going through the IRS website, especially if they buy thousands of commercial spots, you might click on an ad or Google free Tax return and end up on their website that way. And once they have you on their website, they can try to make you pay for tax services instead.

Beverly Moran: And what happened? These companies, at least according to the Treasury Department, they [00:30:30] put algorithms in their software that constantly moved people from the free site to the paid site. And you can just imagine if you've done the whole return and now you see you're going to get a $2,000 refund, But all of a sudden this return that you thought was free is $50. And they're telling you, oh, you don't even have to pay the $50, we'll take it out of your refund. You might just throw up your hands and say, okay, take the $50, [00:31:00] You know, And that's what they're counting on.

Hannah McCarthy: And we've got to give credit to ProPublica. Again, they did an investigation into the major software companies that proved that they were making it very, very hard to find and stay on the free file program. For example, TurboTax even went as far as removing its free file page from Google's search results. So if you Googled TurboTax or TurboTax Free File, you would never get a result that actually took you directly to that page.

Nick Capodice: So basically, [00:31:30] there is absolutely no way to get to the free file software unless you went through the IRS. Even if you clicked on a link from TurboTax that said, hey, file your taxes for free.

Hannah McCarthy: Exactly.

Nick Capodice: Well, that that's like that sounds patently illegal. I mean, if you're going to offer a certain software, but make it basically impossible for people to get to that software, you're not really offering that software.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. And the inspector general of the Treasury and the taxpayer advocate called these companies out. [00:32:00] Congress investigated.

Beverly Moran: And so the the government was trying to force these companies to do. Right. What did they do? They left the program and then they went and did all sorts of. Advertising, which everybody's seen like that. Free, free, free, free, free, free, free.

Archival: That's right.

Archival: Turbotax Free is free, free, free, free, free.

Beverly Moran: And they did the same thing. So that's still 70% of people who file [00:32:30] taxes are not owned by companies or people. Right. Should be eligible for that program. And less than 3% get a free return each year.

Hannah McCarthy: By 2021, both H&R Block and TurboTax had pulled out of the Free File program, so they are no longer mandated by the government to provide free tax filing for anyone. They may have free filing software as part of their business and they may advertise it, but that does not mean it will be easy to find. [00:33:00]

Nick Capodice: But there are still other companies that are mandated to provide free filing software, right?

Hannah McCarthy: Yes. And Beverly has some advice for how to find these services and some general wisdom for all of us taxpayers who are just trying to file our taxes correctly.

Beverly Moran: Okay. So the first thing is people should know that for most people, really and truly, you can go on the IRS website, you can get a company that will [00:33:30] walk you through it. They give you two choices. One is they give you a return and you just fill it out yourself. And the other is it's it's like other software. They ask you questions and based on the answers to those questions, they fill in the amounts.

Nick Capodice: So one is a more hands on approach where you fill in the answers and then they file the return for you.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Or they give you the paperwork that you need to fill out by yourself.

Beverly Moran: It really is possible to get a free return, [00:34:00] so you should not allow yourself to be deterred in that, you know, if it pops up and you're supposed to pay, you're on the wrong software and you need to just move over to the next software. If you make less than $73,000 and you don't have like crazy things going on, like you just inherited $1 million, the chances are very high that you have a right to a free return.

Nick Capodice: Well, if I inherited $1 million, I think that my [00:34:30] first phone call would be to an accountant to figure that out. Anyways.

Beverly Moran: Number two, always go to the IRS website for the free file. Start at irs.gov. Do not do a search engine search because you will be guided to the wrong place.

Hannah McCarthy: Our producer googled free file taxes and the first two results were ads for tax preparation software from TurboTax and H&R Block that promised free online tax filing, which, as we just learned, they [00:35:00] have no obligation to provide anymore. However, the first non-ad result was irs.gov.

Beverly Moran: Number three, you should have all your quote unquote paperwork. And for most people, that paperwork is going to consist of W-2 forms. Don't be shocked if you only have a few pieces of paper. You're only supposed to have a few pieces of paper.

Nick Capodice: Okay. Have all your paperwork. [00:35:30] What else?

Beverly Moran: Also understand that if you're not John Dillinger.

Archival: This is John Dillinger, the greatest bank robber of all time.

Beverly Moran: You really don't need to be that afraid of an audit. I mean, most of what you need to fear about an audit comes from the fact that the IRS is underfunded, which means that you should always make sure you have the name and the identification number [00:36:00] of the person you talked to. You should keep track of phone numbers. If you put anything in the mail, you should make sure to keep a copy just because even though you're dealing with people of goodwill, all they're sort of in chaos over there and you don't want to get caught in the chaos or you don't want to add that to their chaos or have their chaos come into your life.

Hannah McCarthy: This [00:36:30] episode was produced by Christina Phillips with help from me, Hannah McCarthy, and Nick Capodice. Jacqui Fulton is our producer. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Baegel, Poddington Bear, Anemoia, Kesha, Mama Zula, 91Nova, [00:37:00] Metre and Arc du Soleil. If you liked this episode and even if you didn't consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We read them all. They really do help us. We love your feedback. Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Who owns the sky?

If you own land in the United States, do you own the air above it, too? Justine Paradis, Senior Producer at Outside/In from NHPR brings us the airy truth of property rights in air and space in this special collaboration. 

The answer will take us from Ancient Rome (as it occasionally does) to the United States courts, from a world when air travel was science fiction to the world where we know there are valuable resources on the moon... and we all want them.

Guests for this episode are Colin Jerolmack, Michael Heller, George Anthony Long, and Deondre Smiles.

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Transcript

Nate Hegyi: [00:00:00] I'm Nate Hegyi, joined today by Nick Capodice. And Hannah Mccarthy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:03] Hello.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:03] Hello, Nate.

Nate Hegyi: [00:00:04] Hi. So our episode begins with a tale which we might call the chicken and the airplane.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:14] Well, this sounds a little bit like a fable. Is the chicken going to get a thorn stuck in its paw?

Nate Hegyi: [00:00:19] I don't think chickens have paws. It's talent. Like I liked Paul better. It's 1942, well into the Second World War. It's been five years since Amelia Earhart disappeared into the Pacific Ocean.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:33] Okay. So airplanes are still a relatively new invention, but they're not brand new. You're not going to necessarily think it's like a dragon in the sky.

Nate Hegyi: [00:00:42] Exactly. So this guy, Thomas Lee Crosby, is this chicken farmer in South Carolina. He lives less than half a mile from a municipal airport, which wasn't a big deal until the US military leased the airport in 1942. And so this [00:01:00] is wartime. So we've got heavy bombers, transports, fighter planes. They're taking off. They're landing oftentimes right over Cosby's farm. And they are flying like low, like barely missing the tops of the trees.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:14] Wow, that sounds unlivable.

Nate Hegyi: [00:01:16] Well, yes, His family, they're losing sleep and his chickens are so freaked out by the lights and the noise that when the planes fly over. They literally throw themselves into the walls in fright and die.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:34] They die in fright.

Nate Hegyi: [00:01:36] Yeah. 150 of his chickens die this way. And eventually Cosby loses his poultry business. And so he decides to sue the United States. And he argues this. He says, I own this property, including the air right above my house. And you, the US military, you have trespassed. So what do you guys think? Do you think he's right, folks?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:56] Well, let me just say, I am fascinated to learn the answer to this [00:02:00] because we did an episode on whether or not Santa is a criminal. And a lot of that had to do with, you know, who controls or who owns the airspace above your home, above your property, what is trespassing. So I'm desperate to learn this.

Nate Hegyi: [00:02:13] Well, that is that is the question here. Who owns the skies? I'm Nate Hagee, host of the HPR podcast Outside in a show about the natural world and how we use it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:29] And I am Hannah McCarthy, and Nick Capodice and I are the co-hosts of Civics 101. Also from NHPR, ours is a podcast about how our democracy works.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:40] Yeah, or how it's supposed to work most of the time.

Nate Hegyi: [00:02:43] Today, we're teaming up to talk about a subject that connects both of our shows. Property from just above the ground to high in the sky, all the way to the dang moon, where nations are fighting over who gets to do what in outer space. Outside and producer Justine Paradise answered this one for us. So [00:03:00] I'm going to step out and let her take it from here. Make it so.

Justine Paradis: [00:03:11] So I want to start with a 1500 year old principle. Today, it's a principle about private property rights, and it comes from medieval Rome. It's called ad coelum. And it goes like this. Whoever owns the soil, it is theirs. Up to heaven and down to hell.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:31] Up to heaven and down to hell.

Justine Paradis: [00:03:33] Indeed. And by the way, ad coelum, I have heard this pronounced different ways. I don't speak Latin, but we're going to go with ad coelum. This was a principle articulated by a medieval Roman jurist, then absorbed into English common law. And then in the United States, English common law got adopted by many states, at least where it was, quote, not repugnant to the Constitution or laws of this state. Can you think of something that might be repugnant [00:04:00] to these United States of America?

Nick Capodice: [00:04:02] I sure can, Justine. Kings.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:04:05] The Founding Fathers were obsessed with preventing tyranny of government.

Justine Paradis: [00:04:09] This is Colin Jerolmack. Colin is a professor of sociology and environmental studies at NYU. And he explained to me that Thomas Jefferson especially saw owning property as a big part of democracy.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:04:21] He envisioned a democracy meaning that every sovereign citizen owns land and owns enough land that they are self-sufficient. And the idea of that was if you are self-sufficient, then you don't need the government to give you certain basic needs. And so land sovereignty was basically a way of checking government authority. And the Jeffersonian idea, which really won out, I should say won out for white males, was that you are really not a citizen if you don't own land.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:49] Right. And to reiterate what we've said in several episodes at the beginning of America's history, only white males with property could vote. And this idea [00:05:00] won the day, so to speak.

Justine Paradis: [00:05:02] Yeah. And so strong protections for private property were really a founding principle of this country. But the point is, for this particular story, and part of the reason why this was such a big deal here is because of how other countries had previously approached private property specifically of up to heaven and down to hell and that down to hell part. What we're really talking about is mineral rights.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:05:25] In every other country, more or less, to varying degrees. The government owns the mineral rights and so you own the surface. But if the government wants to mine, the government makes that decision and then the individual doesn't, you know, doesn't have a choice and the individual does not directly profit from that.

Justine Paradis: [00:05:43] In England, landowners did have mineral rights except for one maybe repugnant detail.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:05:49] There was a huge caveat to mineral rights ownership, which is that the Crown retained pretty much every valuable mineral. So you technically own the subsurface, but if there was oil [00:06:00] or silver or gold or diamonds in that subsurface and you obtain it, the government owned that.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:07] Aha. Oh, that's interesting. So the English crown gets your diamonds naturally.

Justine Paradis: [00:06:12] Whereas in America, if a company wants the mineral rights to your land, like to frack, for instance, they have to ask permission and probably pay you for the right to frack that methane. And that is why Colin's book about fracking is called.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:06:27] Up to Heaven and Down to Hell.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:29] Oh, there it is.

Colin Jerolmack: [00:06:30] The so called Founding Fathers. This was a very conscious decision. America is the only country in the world where the majority of land ownership, private land ownership, includes the mineral rights and the air above.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:44] And the air above.

Justine Paradis: [00:06:45] So let's turn our attention to the skies. This country boasts a rich history of property disputes, both large and small, over the 1800s and early 1900s. And for a while, cases [00:07:00] concerning ADD column are looking at disputes much closer to the ground than the heavens like overhanging branches. For example, the courts say ad coelum that's a trespass and a nuisance. Protruding eaves, cornices, windows, roofs, walls. You can't use them to get around a property line.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:19] All right. So you can't build your way over someone else's land. Their property is theirs.

Justine Paradis: [00:07:24] You cannot that's a trespass according to case law. You don't even have to be touching the ground in order to have trespassed. In 1925, Montana's Supreme Court held that shooting a duck over a neighbor's land is trespassing into their airspace, even though the trespass is temporary, even if you miss even if it does, no damage. In Iowa in 1902, there was a case disputing an arm extended over a property line to retrieve their own ladder.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:53] A guy reached over to grab his ladder. It strikes me that maybe there were some other issues going [00:08:00] on. If there is a case about that.

Justine Paradis: [00:08:02] These particular neighbors did not have a peaceful relationship in addition to the arm in question, bricks and, quote, opprobrium, epithets frequently cross the fence. And when these families went to court to settle the question of this arm extended in malice. Ad coelum.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:19] Oh.

Justine Paradis: [00:08:19] As one judge in Montana observed in 1925, quote, It seems to be the consensus of the holdings, the courts in this country that airspace, at least near the ground, is almost as inviolable as the soil itself. The reasoning in many of these rulings is that the landowner has a right for use and enjoyment of the land. In the case of airspace, that might even mean light and air. In other words, the enjoyment of a nice view. Do you remember how you can lease or sell the mineral rights below the ground on your property? Yeah. Yeah. So the [00:09:00] same is true of air rights. Let's take the example of New York City.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:04] All right? Now we're cooking.

Michael Heller: [00:09:05] The rules are actually quite complicated for how tall you can build and for where you can transfer those air rights to and from.

Justine Paradis: [00:09:11] This is Michael Heller. He's a professor of property law at Columbia University and coauthor of a book called Mine How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives.

Michael Heller: [00:09:21] In New York and many states, air rights are a piece of property, just like a cup of coffee that can be bought and sold and traded and mortgaged. And they're understood by real estate developers as property just as solid in some sense as the ground on which they hover above.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:37] This doesn't surprise me at all, having lived in New York, actually.

Justine Paradis: [00:09:41] Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:42] Oh, yeah. I mean, space is so precious. So precious. A parking spot costs like 800 bucks a month, you know?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:49] So I used to give walking tours in New York, and I would see these really tall buildings in sort of much lower neighborhoods. And I was always like, How could they build that tall when everyone else is clearly forbidden [00:10:00] to stop above five floors? And I found out that they could just buy the air from other buildings and put it on top of their own. And it blew my mind.

Justine Paradis: [00:10:09] Yeah. And that's how developers get around these height restrictions in certain neighborhoods. And there's, of course, a big money colored reason they might be motivated to do that.

Michael Heller: [00:10:18] Each story that you go up in New York is increasingly valuable. It's not just one more story, but it's 1.5 x or two x. The tallest unblockable views have an enormous premium, so it's that premium which actually helps turbocharge the air rights market in New York City.

Justine Paradis: [00:10:45] So backing up a bit, going back to our story of ad coelum. Courts have been ruling in favor of this doctrine for over a century. But this idea of up to heaven that's challenged when something happens that the Romans maybe [00:11:00] did not anticipate.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:02] Oh, flight. Right?

Nick Capodice: [00:11:03] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:04] Sky Dragon.

Michael Heller: [00:11:07] Airplanes caused problems that literally at all different levels. If the US were to have decided which was possible 100 years ago, that the ADD column doctrine actually did continue all the way up until we had outer space, then air travel wouldn't have been possible, right? It would have taken too many negotiations to have a single airway from New Hampshire to New York. That would have been an impossible flight.

Justine Paradis: [00:11:31] So by the 1920s, the U.S. government is trying to start to put air traffic regulations in place like the 1926 Air Commerce Act passed by Congress, which authorized the secretary of Commerce to establish an altitude. So an actual number that basically put a cap on the rights ofad coelum.

Nate Hegyi: [00:11:51] There were different legal routes that we could have used, but the one that we settled on was to say that as a legislative matter above 1000 feet [00:12:00] simply isn't your space to clarify.

Justine Paradis: [00:12:02] That's a thousand feet over cities and towns and settled areas. It drops to 500 feet everywhere else. But this act failed to address a very important part of Flight two actually taking off and landing. Which brings us back. To our chicken farmer. So where are we in this story? Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:26] All right. We started out with the chicken farmer, Thomas Cosby. He sued the United States. He said, you know, you completely ruined my poultry farm. My chickens died of fright. You owe me money. And the United States says, no, we can use the airspace. You can't. You can't come at us for that. That's perfectly legal.

Justine Paradis: [00:12:43] Yes. And so Cosby, again, who lives right next to an airport where U.S. military planes are gliding in way lower than 500 feet. His case is based on an important part of the constitution.

Michael Heller: [00:12:58] The chicken farmers protection was grounded [00:13:00] in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. It was grounded in what's called the takings clause.

Justine Paradis: [00:13:05] All right. You two are journalists on that American history beat. Can you give us some insight here, Nick? What is the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment?

Nick Capodice: [00:13:13] So basically, the takings clause is kind of tied to what we think of as eminent domain. Basically, the government can't take something from you for its own use without giving you compensation for it. You know, the government can say, hey, we need this land or we need this thing. We're going to take it. But they have to give something in return.

Justine Paradis: [00:13:35] And here's how the Supreme Court ruled. It said by flying their planes in this manner, the United States had effectively confiscated Cosby's property. And according to the Fifth Amendment, he was due just compensation, effectively confiscated.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:47] That is fascinating. I love law. So he was due money?

Justine Paradis: [00:13:51] Yeah. He got 2000 bucks at the time. That was the kind of money that could buy a house. The Supreme Court wrote in the majority opinion that they must rule this way because [00:14:00] if they did not, quote, the owner's right to possess and exploit, the land would be destroyed. But even though they ruled that Cosby was due damages, the court also explicitly wrote that ad column, The idea that those land rights go infinitely upward. That has no place in the modern world.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:21] So, Justine, the Supreme Court's ruling says that legislation that had been on the books, on a basic level, it is constitutional to make the air a public highway. You don't you, as an American, do not get enjoyment of your property all the way to heaven.

Justine Paradis: [00:14:40] You got it.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:50] So this was in the 1940s, Justine.

Justine Paradis: [00:14:53] Yes.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:54] It's so interesting that so many years later we kind of are coming back to where we started with our founding with this [00:15:00] principle, you know, which made it to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But it was based on an idea of life, liberty and the pursuit of property. That's where we got that expression. So we're coming back to our founders kind of principles of property being the thing that is yours in the United States.

Justine Paradis: [00:15:17] Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:17] Yeah, But of course, you know, it's not that straightforward. Like, if you look back to what our framers were doing there, they're tying citizenship and property together, but they're barring so many people from that mechanism. Right. Enslaved people, women who were themselves considered property. And then later on in American history, the government continues to block people from owning property, especially black people in America. I mean, this carried throughout the 20th century. So it's really not that pure.

Justine Paradis: [00:15:46] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think when I asked Colin, Gerald Mack, that professor who wrote the book on fracking earlier, you know, do you think that this worked? Do you think that property helping us be more free as a society, as a nation, did that work? And [00:16:00] he was like, absolutely not. You know, so I'm very happy that the Declaration of Independence says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You know what I mean?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:09] I think it is hilarious that the founders saw life, liberty and the pursuit of property and they just sort of took well crossed that one out. They agreed. You know, let's not say it like that, thank goodness. Or that's how the story goes anyway.

Justine Paradis: [00:16:35] All right. So that's the sky's in the sense of the earthly atmosphere. Next up.

Tim Curry: [00:16:40] I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism. Space.

Justine Paradis: [00:16:52] That's after the break.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:07] Before [00:17:00] the break. This is just a friendly reminder that although we tried to pack as much as we can into Civics 101 episodes and invite our friends from shows like Outside/In to give you even more. There's a lot that doesn't make it into this show. If you want to hear about everything else we research that ends up on the cutting room floor, we have a place for that. It's called the Extra Credit Newsletter. It is super easy to sign up at Civics101podcast.org and it's one of those, in my mind, fairly rare fun things that you find in your inbox. It's free. It's genuinely a pleasure to read and there's just so much I need to tell you about. Again, you can sign up at Civics101podcast.org. We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. And today's episode [00:18:00] is very special because it's a collaboration with our friends at Outside In. And just before the break, producer Justine Paradis was telling us all about the rules and regulations that govern who owns the skies. And now we're going even higher to the final frontier.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:18] Justine, have you heard my Worf impression?

Justine Paradis: [00:18:21] No.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:22] It's basically just me blowing out of my nose going, sir. That's all I got. Sir.

Justine Paradis: [00:18:32] All right, we're back. Nick Capodice. Hannah McCarthy of Civics 101.Hello.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:36] Hello.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:37] Hello.

Justine Paradis: [00:18:39] A few minutes ago, we talked about the altitude where navigable airspace begins, according to the United States. There are actual numbers here. Do you remember?

Nick Capodice: [00:18:48] Yes, they do. Basically 500 feet or a thousand feet, depending on if you're in like a city or a town or whatever.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:54] But what about where outer space begins? You know, when does it stop being sky and [00:19:00] start being space?

Justine Paradis: [00:19:02] Glad you. Asked.

George Anthony Long: [00:19:03] Well, that's an unresolved question.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:05] Of course it is.

Justine Paradis: [00:19:06] Of course. It's an unresolved question. By the way, this is George Anthony Long. George is an attorney. And these days he specializes in space law.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:14] Space law.

Justine Paradis: [00:19:15] Space law. He did need to go back to school to get an extra special law degree for it. So I reached out to George because I wanted to understand how property and territory work in space to ask the question who owns the sky beyond Earth? But yeah, George says there is no consensus in the international community about where air space ends and outer space begins.

George Anthony Long: [00:19:38] To be true. Space is just one of those areas. You sort of at the certain point, you know, when you're there. But the whole point is when you get there, you know, what point is that you arrive there? That's where it's unclear.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:51] All right. Well, this is an echo of a famous Supreme Court statement in an obscenity case in which Justice Potter Stewart said, quote, I'll know it [00:20:00] when I see it. So we've got kind of this unexpected overlap between space and obscene material here. Quick and strange aside, Justine, I read once that Supreme Court justices in the seventies used to watch obscene material. They'd have like a a movie get together.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:18] All of the Supreme Court bros would get together.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:21] Yeah, And watch some. Yep.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:24] All right.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:24] I think they even called it movie day.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:26] What, are you kidding me?

Nick Capodice: [00:20:27] Nope. True story.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:34] So space law is governed by just a handful of treaties through the United Nations.

George Anthony Long: [00:20:40] Generally, there are five international space law treaties.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:44] The first and biggest one is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

George Anthony Long: [00:20:48] That is the cornerstone of space law.

Justine Paradis: [00:20:52] And I think the major thing to understand is that the context for this treaty was the Cold War, and among the principal stakeholders [00:21:00] were the Soviet Union and the United States. It was just ten years after the Soviet Union had launched the first manmade satellite into space.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:08] Yeah. Sputnik. Two years before the United States put a man on the moon. So we're mid space race here.

Archival: [00:21:17] Our objective is not to continue the Cold War, but to end it. We have signed an agreement, the United Nations, on the peaceful uses of outer space.

Justine Paradis: [00:21:34] The first article of the Outer Space treaty says, well, actually, do one want. You want to read this?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:41] Sure. The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province [00:22:00] of all mankind. What a nice notion. When was the last time you heard something like that? Wowsers.

Nick Capodice: [00:22:08]  This sounds like Antarctica, actually.

Justine Paradis: [00:22:10] I think it is very similar to Antarctica and for similar reasons, because we didn't want to be fighting a war down at the South Pole. So we were saying, okay, let's just agree not to do that. Let's not go there, because that would that would be awful, you know? The treaty also says states can't build military stations in space. They can't occupy the moon. We can't put nukes in orbit or anywhere in space. Basically, it says we agree that we go forth in peace.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:37] Okay. But as Nick and I recently learned in an episode about the Space Force, which is specifically designed to protect stuff in space, it's not that straightforward, right? Like space is filled with satellites that help defense systems. And we are certainly looking toward the future as potentially having some conflict having to do with space.

Nick Capodice: [00:22:57] Yeah, the reality isn't as high minded [00:23:00] as this go forth and peace language aspires it to be.

Justine Paradis: [00:23:03] I think when you hear the old speeches of JFK where he says, you know, essentially let's go forth in peace, you can kind of hear the threat in his voice.

John F. Kennedy: [00:23:11] All of us salute the brave cosmonauts of the Soviet Union. The new horizons of outer space must not be riven by the old, bitter concepts of imperialism and sovereign claims.

Justine Paradis: [00:23:32] Other treaties of that era dealt with the more practical matters of space law. And in many ways, these treaties mirror ideas in maritime law. So the Law of the Sea, one way it's similar is that you have an obligation to help other ships in distress, just as you would in most cases at sea. But one way it's different from the sea is that objects can also crash to earth. It's like, what happens if a satellite lands on someone's house? Here's George. [00:24:00]

George Anthony Long: [00:24:00] Damage on the face of the Earth is absolute liability. So there is no mitigation of saying somebody else is at fault. It really doesn't matter. The launching state or states are absolutely liable. But if if an accident happens in space, such as if two space objects collide, then it's fault liability and that somewhat equivalent to your fault liability for regular traffic accidents.

Nick Capodice: [00:24:30] So this is like the space law version of the fine print of a car insurance policy.

Justine Paradis: [00:24:35] Another difference from maritime law is the law of salvage. Do you know this one? At least at sea?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:40] I know that when I play my favorite video game, I can pick up anything in the sea that I want, Justine.

Justine Paradis: [00:24:46] There you go.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:47] If it's out there, I'm allowed to pick the flotsam. Right.

Nick Capodice: [00:24:50] I thought that if you, you know, dug something up from the ocean, you were obligated to return it from whence it came.

Justine Paradis: [00:24:57] You get a reward?

Nick Capodice: [00:24:58] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:24:59] It's kind of [00:25:00] like our Fifth Amendment stuff again. You get compensation for it.

Justine Paradis: [00:25:03] Not so in space.

George Anthony Long: [00:25:03] The Outer space treaty makes the ownership of a space object and any component part of the space object. The ownership is perpetual. You never lose it.

Justine Paradis: [00:25:16] And that becomes a problem because nobody can clean up anybody else's broken satellites. So all this space junk is just building up. Finally, like maritime law, there's a treaty called the Registration Convention.

George Anthony Long: [00:25:27] Which sort of suggests that countries register space objects that they launch with the United Nations.

Justine Paradis: [00:25:36] But the operative word here is suggests.

George Anthony Long: [00:25:39] It is not a requirement and it is not always done.

Justine Paradis: [00:25:44] I mean, I don't know. Can you think of an instance in which a country might be disinclined to register their space objects?

Nick Capodice: [00:25:49] Yeah, Like if it's a secret spy satellite?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:51] I don't think we should name any countries here. But I know what we're all thinking.

Justine Paradis: [00:25:55] I know what we're thinking. Spy satellite? Yeah. The International Space [00:26:00] Station is kind of a special case in all of.

George Anthony Long: [00:26:02] This International Space Station as a orbiting platform with different sections by each partner to the space station has its own section. United States has its portion of space station, and United States law applies in its section. Japan has its section. Japanese law applies in its section. And then they have all the agreements of how they will resolve differences.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:33] I'm very familiar with all the different sections in the ISS because of my son's obsession with space.

Justine Paradis: [00:26:38] Oh really? I know that your son is quite a thorough researcher, so we'll have to run this by him to see what I think.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:44] He'd appreciate that.

Justine Paradis: [00:26:50] The Outer Space Treaty was signed almost 60 years ago. And while that version of the space race is over, we're in a new era of extraterrestrial exploration. [00:27:00] And it's not just state rockets headed up there anymore. Private companies like SpaceX are putting objects into orbit now. And it's a time when we're renegotiating the question, who owns the skies?

Deondre Smiles: [00:27:12] You know, when you ask, well, who owns the sky? My initial reaction is like, well, nobody owns the sky, right?

Justine Paradis: [00:27:16] This is Deondre Smiles. He is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Victoria.

Deondre Smiles: [00:27:22] I'm Ojibwe. From my own kind of cultural perspective, it would be really weird for me to say, Oh, we we own the sky because we don't. We were in relationship with the sky. We have accountabilities to the sky, like through, like clean air.

Justine Paradis: [00:27:36] Deondre is the author of an article called The Settler Logics of Outer Space, which argues that the language that we use around traveling into space, like as a pioneer of space, as the next or even the final frontier, that that language is really familiar.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:51] Yeah. And that that is very purposeful. Justine I have learned a lot about the American principles of Manifest Destiny and expanding westward. And there's [00:28:00] definitely the sense that once we get to California and we hit the ocean and by we, I mean this is a philosophy of white settlers. We started sort of hanneke looking around for somewhere else to go. And so that meant, you know, like spreading democracy to other countries for a while. And then when space was an option, there was a very real anxiety about getting there. Like that race with the Soviet Union was very much tied to America's notion of being the expander of always having a frontier.

Justine Paradis: [00:28:30] And Deondre is just one of many folks writing about this and about how. Bringing a different approach to space means having accountability to places even beyond the planet.

Deondre Smiles: [00:28:42] We need to instead think about the deep embedded knowledge that sits in places. There's this kind of idea that like, Well, it's empty, right? There's no nobody. It's living in outer space. There's no life there but an indigenous, you know, plural sort of reading of this would say, Well, just because there's nothing living there doesn't mean that it's still [00:29:00] not a space that we have to treat with respect and care and really think about why it is that we're going into outer space in the first place.

Justine Paradis: [00:29:12] One reason why we're going into outer space and space. Law expert George Anthony Long thinks this is one of the biggest issues that will test space law as it exists now is mining.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:23] Mining as in like asteroids have a lot of good stuff on them. And just like in the fantastic TV show The Expanse, we're going to have all these factions formed just because there's a lot of money and asteroid minerals resources.

Justine Paradis: [00:29:39] Absolutely. And even not just in asteroids, but the moon. The moon has a lot of frozen water and helium three, which is in high demand on this planet. And helium three also has nuclear fusion potential. But remember, don't these celestial bodies belong to no one.

George Anthony Long: [00:29:56] Who cannot own property in space? [00:30:00] Article two of the Outer Space Treaty prohibits a state from exercising sovereignty in space or any celestial body or the moon. And while that is a very noble goal, I'm not sure how practical that's going to be, because the question becomes how do you protect a mining site or keep other people away from your mining site without exercising some form of control?

Justine Paradis: [00:30:31] So there are a couple different efforts to figure this out, this dilemma around mining. One of them is called the Moon Treaty, but very few countries have signed on to this one.

George Anthony Long: [00:30:42] It talks about the prohibition of property rights and it talks about having the obligation to share some of the wealth that's gained from, let's say, resource extraction or mining in space.

Nick Capodice: [00:30:55] But like the great space powers, I'm talking the U.S., China or Russia, [00:31:00] they haven't signed on to this.

Justine Paradis: [00:31:01] No, they have not. And within the United States, we've got a law that passed in 2015 which says something different that you may not be able to claim an entire asteroid, but if you extract resources from it, you are entitled to those.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:15] This is very funny because is this the United States just saying, well, we have this law like because that's not a treaty. It's not between other nations.

Justine Paradis: [00:31:27] It's not. But meanwhile, NASA is leading something, an international agreement called the Artemis Accords, which is sort of affirming some of those principles in the old treaties, but is also trying to carve out more legal room for space mining. But it's still affirming that space is for all humanity ideal of that original outer space treaty of 1967.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:49] Yeah, and I can only imagine that once we actually start to be able to extract and acquire them, things are going to change pretty drastically.

Nick Capodice: [00:31:58] On a basic level, like the idea of towing [00:32:00] an asteroid onto the planet that's just pure diamond and suddenly diamonds don't mean anything anymore.

Justine Paradis: [00:32:05] We're going to have to have a new De Beers company or what is the name of that company?

Nick Capodice: [00:32:09] De Beers. Or you can just be like, Oh, those are space diamonds. Those are inferior. He got me a ring, but it had a space diamond on it.

Justine Paradis: [00:32:17] It's not serious. I mean, yeah, I agree with Hannah. Whatever the solution is, it looks like we're going to be entering into a new era of space exploration. A Chinese mission in 2020 already brought back helium three from the surface of the moon. What? And China has definitely not signed the Artemis Accords.

Nick Capodice: [00:32:33] What I think's most interesting about this is it's kind of like anything goes until suddenly it doesn't anymore. Like, that's how we've done things so far. You know, ad column goes until it doesn't anymore. And yeah, right now we don't have nukes in space or real guns and space, and we're not mining space diamonds, But that's going to happen. And when it does, we're going to have enough have to do another episode, I think.

Justine Paradis: [00:32:57] I think so. I mean, it's interesting because [00:33:00] there's this there's this idealistic language around space that does feel quite Star Trek like no one can occupy it. But the thing is, when you put something into orbit, especially geostationary orbit, that's really valuable orbital space, and if a satellite is in that space like it's technically occupying it, no one else can be there. So it's it's already pretty fuzzy, you know?

Nick Capodice: [00:33:24] Well, it's scary to me, too, Justine. The number of things that we are putting in space is growing exponentially as the years go by, and they all just stay there like nothing gets taken out. If space junk gets to be too big, if there's too much of it, we'll never be able to leave the planet again because there's a whirling ball of steel that surrounds our planet and that terrifies me.

Justine Paradis: [00:33:45] And it affects us on earth, you know, like.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:49] Right.

Justine Paradis: [00:33:49] I don't imagine that I'm alone when I like, think about looking up at the moon and seeing the lights of a truck backing up like a construction zone or a mining pit. You know, I feel [00:34:00] a little like Thomas Cosby, like, hey, you you trespassed on something fundamental here, you know?

Nick Capodice: [00:34:16] Well, that is who owns the skies from heaven to hell here on Civics 101. This episode was a collaboration between Civics 101 and Outside/In, both productions of New Hampshire Public Radio. It was produced, reported and mixed by our colleague and dear friend Justine Paradis. You can find more of her work as well as the rest of the team at outside, in and outside in radio talk or wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, if any of you out there are interested in Hannah's favorite video game right now, it's called Anno 1800. And it's mine, too. Special thanks to Jim Salzman and Laura Donahue, whose article, Who Owns the Skies, was a major resource for this episode. This episode was edited [00:35:00] by Taylor Quimby and our executive producer, Rebecca Lavoie. Our staff here at Civics 101 includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Music In this episode from Lobo Loco, Proprietor, Triple Bacon, Larry Poppins. Gabriel Lewis. Ben Nelson, Bonkers Beat Club, Bommel Anthony Earls. David Zesty and the Sky That Nobody Can Own, Chris Zabrisky. It's Zabriskie, but you know what I mean? Civics 101 and Outside/In our productions of NHPR. New Hampshire Public Radio.

Nate Hegyi: [00:35:33] Woohoo!

Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:51] My mother has actually used her merchant marine card to get a lot of help and like a lot of passage in her life time passage. Yeah. [00:36:00] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:36:00] Big air quotes around that.

Justine Paradis: [00:36:02] So you. So when you're in distress at sea, when your mom is in distress, at sea... I didn't make that mean to make that a your mom joke but.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The 2008 Financial Crisis Explained

In this episode, we ask how the actions of various American financial institutions caused a global recession and destroyed the livelihoods and homeownership of millions of American people. Then we figure out what the federal government decided to do about it. This is the 2008 financial crisis as told by Amy Friend, Chief Counsel to the Senate Banking Committee as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was written.  

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Transcript

The 2008 Financial Crisis Explained

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] Uh, so, Nick, you know why I've brought you here today?

Nick Capodice: [00:00:04] I do.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:05] And my understanding is you're not terribly thrilled.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:08] No, because this is the sort of stuff that my brain, it just turns off, and it has for decades, and I'm excited to change that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:19] All right, Nick. Well, I have got an industrious young entrepreneur story for you. Okay.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:25] I wasn't expecting that to start us off, but I like those as a rule.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:29] That's great. So it's 1844. A young man named Higham is living near Rome, PA, Germany, with his mom, his dad and his two brothers. Dad's a cattle dealer, but Higham decides he's going to strike out on his own. He's 23. He emigrates to the US, he changes his name to Henry and gets to peddling household goods around Alabama.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:53] Household goods? It's not like the most profitable business, but it's sort of a tried and true start.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:58] Yeah, it's a start. And [00:01:00] he manages to save enough money to open up a general store in Montgomery.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:04] Well, this is a nice story.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:05] It is a nice story.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:06] Is this Montgomery Ward?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:08] Montgomery, Alabama. Oh, So then one of Henry's brothers comes over from Germany, right? And then the other. And they all work together, and the store sells what they call Southern domestics. So sheets, shirts, yarn, a lot of stuff made from cotton.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:23] Okay, So cotton in the 1850s. That's right. And also in the south. So this is an industry pretty much entirely dependent on enslaved labor.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:33] Right. And that is going to come into play here in very short order. So these brothers, they add another cotton aspect to their business. They make the decision to accept cotton as payment for goods in their store.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:46] Raw cotton.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:47] That's right.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:47] Cotton. That I assume they can quickly turn around and sell.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:51] It is a hot commodity. And remember that word, Nick? Commodity. So Henry takes a trip to New Orleans in 1855, and he catches [00:02:00] yellow fever. Oh, dear. Yeah. Oh, dear. Is right. He dies, but his brothers carry on and eventually they go full cotton. Full cotton. They become cotton commodity brokers.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:11] So this is what's happened. That combination of words. As soon as you put them together, it made my brain turn off.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:16] Well, turn it back on, friend. It just means they buy raw cotton and they sell it to people who do something with it.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:22] Okay, I can get that. So. Like, they're the middlemen.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:25] Yeah. And the middlemen opened an office in New York City, the very seat of the commodities trading business in the US. And at this point, we are in the 1860s.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:34] Okay, good. I'm glad you got to this. That civil war is going to come around pretty soon and change things. But also, didn't Abraham Lincoln pretty explicitly banned Southern cotton from being sold to the north?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:46] Yes. And therein lay a potential hiccup for a business. Right. But not for these brothers, at least one of whom, by the way, was himself an enslaver. They simply acquired their cotton in the southern US, shipped it to England and then shipped [00:03:00] it back to New York. Problem solved.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:02] Well, that is a big old loophole that they're just exploiting there.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:06] A loophole that worked wonders for their business. They made it through the war. They helped start the Cotton Exchange in New York, and then they started to get into other commodities coffee, sugar, petroleum.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:19] You know, I definitely own this board game.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:21] Later comes real estate, railways, mining, textiles, even Nick, even municipal financing.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:30] You did it again there with those words.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:31] It's okay. Basically, all that it means is they helped Alabama do money stuff, right via bond.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:37] Keep keep that word out of your mouth. Keep that word away from me.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:40] All right, All right. You're nearly there. I'm going to speed up here. The next generation starts working in the family business and they become an investment bank.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:47] You know, this started out fun with farmers in Germany Securities.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:51] We're talking stocks. They get in on the ground floor of aviation and the movie business. At some point they get out of cotton and at some point they [00:04:00] get into oil.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:01] I mean, it sounds like these brothers were pretty good at seeing what is going to be worth lots of money in the future.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:07] So good, in fact, that people started to turn to them for advice and not just investment advice, but advice on mergers and acquiring companies and setting up foundations on pension funds. By the late 1970s, I told you we were speeding up. They are the fourth largest investment bank in the country. This company survived the Great Depression. It survived the 1970s oil crisis and later on it survived September 11th despite its threats to the global financial market.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:40] Wait, who exactly are these brothers?

Archival: [00:04:45] Lehman Brothers is going bankrupt and financial markets from Asia to Europe are doing their utmost to prevent Monday from turning from dark to black. Employees of America's fourth largest investment bank saw the writing on the wall late Sunday after. Talks [00:05:00] to pull them back from the abyss collapsed.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:02] By 2008, Nick Lehman Brothers was a 158 year old behemoth. It started out as a small household goods business in Alabama and ended up with $639 billion in assets, 25,000 employees worldwide, and a portfolio that would knock your socks off. And then it collapsed.

Archival: [00:05:27] Shares in Lehman Brothers have plummeted more than 80% in 2008 alone. Meanwhile, as markets everywhere react, the bottom to America's financial woes appear nowhere in sight. Monday will be a difficult day to face for Lehman's thousands of shareholders and more than 25,000 employees. Many had hoped this day would never come.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:59] I [00:06:00] knew this rapid rise entrepreneur story was a little bit too good to be true. This is about finance, isn't it, Hannah?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:06] But don't you want to know what happened?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:07] I was tricked into this. Hannah. I thought it was an immigrant tale.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:11] It was an immigrant tale. It just became something else. It became a part of one of the grandest catastrophes in American financial history, which means one of the grandest in the world. So don't you want to know what happened?

Nick Capodice: [00:06:28] Okay.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:28] Okay. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:31] I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:32] And this is the 2008 financial crisis and what we did about it. So, Nick, Lehman Brothers isn't just an interesting entrepreneur story, obviously. It's also an interesting story because they did, in fact, collapse. They were allowed to go under. But the story of the 2008 financial crisis is largely one about preventing collapse at an enormous cost, specifically an [00:07:00] enormous cost to the federal government.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:03] Now you're talking about how the federal government bailed out a bunch of corporations.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:06] Save the companies, save the world. That was the legitimate calculation being made here.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:11] And this is where we get the phrase too big to fail, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:14] That's where we get it. And we're going to get to all of that. But before we go any further, I am bringing in someone who actually knows what she's talking about, someone who was.

Amy Friend: [00:07:23] There. Let's see. I had worked in the House for both individual members, including then-Congressman Schumer, who is now the majority leader in the Senate. And then I had also worked on what was then House Banking Committee, which is now House Financial Services Committee. And so I developed an expertise in the areas of banking and financial services.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:50] This is Amy Friend. Amy is going to help us understand. Amy has experience in both government work and banking work and then later in the Treasury Department. [00:08:00]

Nick Capodice: [00:08:00] So she understands banking really well.

Amy Friend: [00:08:03] So 2008 rolls around and then a former.

Amy Friend: [00:08:07] Colleague of mine had asked me to interview for a position as chief counsel.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:11] Chief counsel. What that means is that Amy is the lawyer who knows a lot of stuff, and she's helping out the Banking Committee.

Amy Friend: [00:08:20] But what I didn't know was that one month later, Bear Stearns, which was a big investment bank, would collapse. And that was sort of an early sign of things to come in the collapse of the housing market.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:42] So I was joking about it in the beginning. Hannah But I am going to be up front and honest and tell you I do not understand how or why an investment bank would collapse, and I do not know why it even matters that they do. And I also do not know what it means for a market of any kind, be it a housing market [00:09:00] or a fish market to collapse.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:02] Okay, let's lay the backdrop.

Amy Friend: [00:09:04] What happened in the early 2000s was there was a proliferation of subprime loans, which were loans that were made to people who have lower credit scores.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:15] All right. Break this down for me.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:18] Borrowing money, you get that part, right?

Nick Capodice: [00:09:19] Yes. Do I ever.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:21] You can borrow money from a bank in the form of, for example, a credit card or a student loan. But in this episode, we are talking mostly about loans that let you buy a house.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:32] Like a mortgage.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:33] Exactly. Which is typically a lot easier to get when you have a higher credit score.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:39] And a credit score being basically your grade for how well you pay off loans.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:44] Very good. Exactly. So if you're really reliable when it comes to paying your credit card bill, you might have a high credit score. If you're not reliable, you might have a low credit score. And by the way, the credit score system is considered discriminatory by many [00:10:00] and deeply based in a history of structural racism. That is a subject for another day. But it has got to be said here. So when it comes to houses, it is usually harder to get a mortgage when you have a low credit score or heaven forbid, no credit score, which happens if, for example, you have never borrowed money or taken out a credit card.

Amy Friend: [00:10:21] So there are subprime borrowers that have these lower scores or may not have any credit file at all because they may be renters and they may not be they may not own a home or they may not have credit cards. And so we call those sort of thin files or no files subprime.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:40] That word just think risky. A subprime borrower is someone who a financial institution believes is not responsible with loans. A subprime mortgage is what you call a mortgage that is given to a risky A.K. Low or no credit score borrower. A prime borrower, [00:11:00] by contrast, is someone the financial world has decided is good at borrowing money and paying it back. There are a lot of things that can make you a sub prime borrower. Sometimes it is not paying loans on time, sometimes it's borrowing a lot of money. That would take you a long time to pay back. Sometimes it is circumstances that have nothing to do with how quote unquote responsible you are, but instead have to do with the kind of financial resources you have access to or high medical bills or periods of unemployment, things like that.

Amy Friend: [00:11:30] What was happening in this subprime crisis in the early 2000s was that there was a lot of money in the system.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:36] What does she mean by a lot of money in the system?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:39] Okay. What we're talking about here is that there was a recession in 2001. So what happens is the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates way, way down to stimulate the economy. Interest rates are the fee that you pay to a lender who gave you a loan. When interest rates are low, people typically have more money because their loan bills [00:12:00] are not as high. They don't have these high fees on top. And lenders wanted.

Amy Friend: [00:12:05] To expand the envelope of who could.

[00:12:08] Get credit, but they didn't do it in a responsible way. They made loans that had.

Amy Friend: [00:12:15] Terms that many borrowers could not meet. So, for instance, they might have done something called an adjustable rate mortgage. Nothing wrong with that. And when an adjustable rate mortgage is, the borrower gets a mortgage at a certain rate for a period of time, and then it adjusts based on the interest rate. So it will go up, you know, chances are over a couple of years, then it could go up again and up again. So the lender might have said, well, you can.

[00:12:45] Repay at the first rate of interest. It might be.

Amy Friend: [00:12:49] Difficult for you to repay when this interest rate goes up. But don't worry, because traditionally, historically, all the models show [00:13:00] housing prices always go up.

[00:13:01] So you can refinance and you'll get you know, you'll have more equity because you will put money down.

Amy Friend: [00:13:08] You build up equity in the house as you pay off the loan, so you'll have more equity or you can sell your house and housing prices go up.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:15] You'll be able to pay your loan. Okay. All right. Let me try.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:18] This. Go for it.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:19] A person could get a loan even if they weren't really the best candidate, even if they were a risky candidate. And the lenders are telling these candidates that their monthly bill would be pretty doable, too. Right, Because interest rates were low. And by the time those interest rates went up and that monthly bill went up, their house would be worth more. Money, then it cost them to buy. So they could either just sell that house to pay off their mortgage or they could borrow even more money and use that money to pay their monthly mortgage bill.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:48] And that second thing you described has a couple of options -  refinancing your mortgage, taking out a new one that takes your home's higher value into account, OR a home equity loan. So [00:14:00] back to the subprime, A.K.A. Risky Loan, right? A lot of the people who got one did not actually have enough money to even make a down payment on their house. By the way, this falls into the predatory lending category. It is at the heart of what would turn into a very bad situation.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:22] And when you say down payment, you mean a big chunk of change that you pay. That kind of proves, hey, I will definitely be able to afford this whole house eventually.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:32] But in the early 2000s, lenders essentially eliminated the typical requirements for some borrowers. They would also say maybe.

Amy Friend: [00:14:41] You don't need a down payment. You don't need a down payment. Just sign on the dotted line. What's your income? Well, you need X amount of income to qualify for this mortgage. Just put it down and we're not going to verify it. So they didn't verify income. These were called liar's loans [00:15:00] or they were interest only. You never get to pay the principal of the loan, so you don't actually pay it down.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:06] You're just paying the interest. By the way, these are called liar's loans because the lender is ostensibly just taking the borrower at their word, as in you say you can do it, great. We won't ask you for any documentation. But really, what's going on here, Nick, is that these financial institutions are telling the borrower that this is okay. That's the predatory part.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:28] This sounds like a really bad idea. Hannah It sounds like those storefronts that have giant signs saying get a loan today, no proof of income needed, no money down. Why on earth would any mortgage lender agree to do that?

Amy Friend: [00:15:42] So you would say, why would a lender that's going to keep these loans on their books make loans with such faulty terms and essentially not underwrite? So when you underwrite, you look at the debt that the consumer [00:16:00] has compared to the level of income and whether they can take on this new loan based on all of that. And that was not being done. And the reason that lenders could do this is because they sold those loans to Wall Street companies, to these investment banks.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:18] Wait, you can buy a loan. How can you buy a loan? How can you buy something that is like the opposite of something? How can you buy something that is like negative money?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:27] I'm going to try it like this. Okay. And just tell me if this makes sense, okay? Bob Bank gives Suzy Homebuyer a loan to pay for her house.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:36] All right, I'm with you.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:39] And Bob tells Susie she has 30 years to pay them back. And because the loan comes with a fee, aka an interest rate, Bob Bank will make a profit. But Bob Bank does the math and decides they don't want to wait 30 years to make a profit. That's forever. Also, what if Susie Homebuyer gets to a point where she can't pay [00:17:00] Bob anymore? How is Bob going to get all that money back with interest right away? And also not worry about Susie Homebuyer maybe not paying her mortgage?

Nick Capodice: [00:17:11] I didn't even know this was an option for Bob Bank. Is this the selling the loan part?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:16] It is Bob Bank talks to Janet Wall Street and Janet is like, yeah, okay, I'm interested. I'll buy that loan from you because I have a plan for this loan. I am also going to sell it. And by the way, can I get 99 more of these?

Nick Capodice: [00:17:34] So Susie Homebuyer's loan gets sold.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:37] Twice, essentially, and the second time it is sold, or we should say part of it is sold. It's in a big bundle with a bunch of other loans it's invested in. So Bob Bank gets money from Janet Wall Street and Janet Wall Street gets money from Alistair Investor.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:53] Alistair. Alistair, how fancy. So does that mean that ultimately it's some investor [00:18:00] in this case Alistair who is getting Susie Homebuyers payments.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:06] And profiting on the fees a.k.a. the interest and often Nick Alistair Investor That's actually a company or a municipality like a town or city or pension fund and Alistair Investor is not going to make a risky investment. Alistair wants to make a profit and is not going to make a real gamble.

Amy Friend: [00:18:29] They can only purchase the safe securities, right? So there are credit rating agencies that actually rate these bonds and they could be triple-A for the best. They could be B for not so good, be negative. You know, they sort of there's a range, right? And so these rating agencies that were paid by the issuers of these securities would rate these bonds. They give them triple-A ratings. Well, the market you [00:19:00] know, housing prices always go up if we're going to keep paying. This is great.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:04] Oh, okay. Okay. I'm getting this. So a triple A bond is a bond full of mortgages, like a bag of mortgages that are very likely to be paid back versus triple B's, which are probably a little more risky. Like all the borrowers in the Triple A bond have great credit scores and they're almost guaranteed to pay their mortgage. So companies and municipalities and pension funds want to buy those because they're not even a gamble. They're like a sure bet.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:31] They're so safe. Right. Such a safe investment. And this is where something, just to my mind, ridiculous happens. We're in the early 2000s, Right? Remember that these bonds, as we've said, this bag of mortgages, it's a bunch of mortgages and they're all bundled up together.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:56] And investors buy that bundle of mortgages and they [00:20:00] want the packages. They get to have good credit scores to be Triple A's.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:04] Yes. But at this point, again, in the early 2000s, the investment banks are doing something else. They are also buying a bunch of, quote unquote, risky mortgages, risky like we talked about, both for the lender and the borrower, because the mortgage lenders have been handing them out like hotcakes. So the investment banks are like, okay, how are we going to make a bunch of money on these not so stellar mortgages that we've acquired? I know. Let's just.

Amy Friend: [00:20:33] Throw.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:34] Them into the mix with less risky mortgages.

Nick Capodice: [00:20:38] Well, it's like using a bad cut of meat to make a stew. But all these packages get grades, though, right? So wouldn't that lower the grade of the bond if there's a bunch of risky mortgages bundled in it?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:49] It should, but it doesn't. The ratings companies started rating these mixed bag bonds as triple A's, even if they had a bunch [00:21:00] of risky mortgages in them. Like even if you've got some Triple A's and then a bunch of triple B's.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:06] But that's a lie, isn't it? He's building houses on sand. Literal houses.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:11] Yeah. You're not the only one who had second thoughts about this approach.

Amy Friend: [00:21:14] So then these investment banks said, Well, just in case something blows up, we need insurance, right? So that if they blow up, we get paid. So that was something called a credit default swap.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:29] Okay. That is a weedy swamp of words right there.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:32] Yeah. And it's also words that the average American shouldn't really have to think about. Right. But I'm trying to explain this. It's just insurance. All right? The investment bank said, you know, just in case this whole thing doesn't work out. Cough, cough, let's get insurance. You know, And a company called AIG, American International Group is the one who issued most of that insurance. Meaning if people stopped paying their mortgages, AIG would make insurance payments so that the investors and [00:22:00] the Wall Street firms would be just fine. And then AIG would also be just fine because it could just take Suzy Homebuyer's house back and sell it. And because home values are always on the rise, everyone wins. Aside from Susie Homebuyer, but who cares about her?

Amy Friend: [00:22:17] So what happens? How did the bubble burst? Right? Because there was so much money and prices went up and up and up and up, particularly in certain regions in the country.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:26] And when housing prices skyrocket. Right. And they keep rising, people are like, oh, we better get a house right now. And it's easy to do it for everybody because anybody can get a mortgage. And, you know, everyone is being encouraged to get a mortgage. Also, housing stock was rising because there was so much demand. Contractors were building and building. And all of this, Nick, all of these little factors, the predatory lending, the quote unquote, liar's loans, the triple-A ratings on risky mortgage bonds, the housing [00:23:00] prices, it was all too much.

Amy Friend: [00:23:03] It was unsustainable. The value was not there and the borrowers simply couldn't pay off.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:10] Right. So the loans reset. A loan. Resetting, by the way, means a new interest rate kicks in, typically a higher one.

Amy Friend: [00:23:19] So that first interest rate, well, maybe they were okay for a couple of years and then it went up and they couldn't pay. And you know what? The bubble burst and then they were left with something called an underwater mortgage, which is where the house value no.

[00:23:37] Longer supported the value of the mortgage. So the mortgage was higher priced than the underlying house that was supposed to support that.

Amy Friend: [00:23:47] So people couldn't sell and they couldn't refinance to get better terms. And so a lot of people people walked away. People struggled. So so when they stop paying [00:24:00] what happened to these bonds, they went bust. So the investors weren't getting paid. And then what happened? What why did the rating agencies give them these high ratings? And then when they went to AIG to get paid on their credit default swap, all of a sudden AIG finds that it's tremendously exposed on the other side of this deal to a lot of these big companies. And they didn't have the money to pay out. So this whole financial engineering, which was a way to pass off the risk to somebody else and diffuse it like insurance. So it spread around. It ended up concentrating the risk and all of these. Companies became interconnected and they just. It was a house of cards and it all fell apart.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:02] So [00:25:00] what happens when homeowners can't pay their mortgages? Which means that these bonds that were sold as very good. Prove themselves to be very bad. And the investors who bought these bonds learn their investment is worthless. And the insurance company who promised to take care of the fallout if the bonds did prove to be worthless doesn't actually have the money to do it. And the houses that would have provided that value don't actually have the value. Everyone was pretending they had a catastrophe. And who do we at least try to look to in times of catastrophe? The federal government. That's after the break here on Civics one on one.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:01] And [00:26:00] I started out confused. Now I am madly in love with the housing crisis. But before the break, I just want to tell listeners if you like us or if you've got issues with us. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast. We read every single one. We take each one to heart and it helps us understand how to make the show better. Just do it. All right. All right.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:27] We're back. You're listening to Civics one on one. And on this episode, I have endeavored to explain the financial crisis that sent homeowners, mortgage lenders, investment banks, investors and insurers into a tailspin.

Amy Friend: [00:26:38] That is what happened in 2008.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:41] Again, this is Amy Friend, an expert in banking and consumer protection law, who in 2008 had recently taken a job as the chief counsel for the Senate Banking Committee. And what happened is that due to a series of really poor decisions by some of the biggest financial institutions in the country, the bottom fell [00:27:00] out of the economy. Housing prices plummeted. People could not pay their mortgages. And these giant institutions found that many of their holdings, as in billions of dollars worth of subprime mortgages, were pretty much worthless. You had Fannie Mae.

Amy Friend: [00:27:18] And Freddie Mac, right. Which are basically keep the housing market going. They buy a lot of these. They buy a lot of loans from banks.

[00:27:27] From other lenders to keep liquidity so that the lenders can keep making.

Nick Capodice: [00:27:32] Loans. Okay. I've watched so many presidential debates and I nod vigorously whenever somebody yells about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, I don't know who they are. Also, what is liquidity?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:41] Let's do liquidity first, because I think that's like fairly straightforward. Think liquid, literally something's ability to flow. That's what liquidity means. Now just apply it to cash. Fannie Mae is a company that was started by Congress to help ensure that mortgage money could flow after the Great Depression.

Nick Capodice: [00:27:58] I've heard those names Fannie [00:28:00] Mae and Freddie Mac so many times. But like, who are they? Why are they called that?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:04] It comes from the initialism federal National Mortgage Association.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:09] No, that's not possible.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:11] Oh yeah. Fma.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:13] I can't believe I didn't know that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:15] Fannie Mae and then Freddie Mac, a.k.a. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Fme CC It came around in the 1970s, also started by Congress so that Fannie Mae would not have a monopoly.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:30] A monopoly on keeping mortgage money liquid.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:33] Yeah, pretty much. They acted very similarly to the way that Janet Wall Street acted. They buy mortgages from lenders, they package them and they sell them to investors, and that allows lenders to hold on to their cash and keep making loans.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:49] Which I assume is part of.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:50] Liquidity. It is. And the big difference with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is that because the government started, although did not own them, investors [00:29:00] thought of the mortgage bonds they were buying from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as being guaranteed by the government. Right. So no matter what happens, this is safe because the federal government is behind this investment.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:12] So if Susie Homeowner doesn't make his mortgage payment, the federal government is going to step in and ensure that I still get my money.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:20] Yeah, this was never actually written down anywhere. It was just like the perception of any massive.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:25] Agreement they're going to they're going to cover.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:27] Yeah, Yeah. And the issue is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they also got in on the subprime mortgage by, oh.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:36] This is a disaster.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:37] They bought a lot, Nick. They bought a lot. The problem is they did not have the money to back it up. So the federal government does do something.

Amy Friend: [00:29:47] Their regulator put them into conservatorship and basically said you're going to be under government control right now because you don't have adequate capital to to function. This was around Labor Day of 2008. [00:30:00]

Nick Capodice: [00:30:00] A conservatorship like, you.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:03] Know, yeah, a conservatorship, which means managing the financial affairs of these companies. But yes, as in what happened to Britney Spears. Okay. But also, what does that really mean? It means the federal government decided, you know what, we cannot let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go under. They are behind way too many mortgages, way too many investments, Too much money is involved here. If they fail, it could mess up the whole economy.

Nick Capodice: [00:30:32] As in they are too big to fail.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:34] Yeah, too big to fail. To the tune of $191 billion in taxpayer money. But somebody who we met earlier was not too big to fail.

[00:30:46] Lehman Brothers, which was a huge investment bank that turned out to be.

Amy Friend: [00:30:51] Overexposed with these bonds and basically couldn't go to.

[00:30:56] The market and get anybody to fund them. On the other side, there was a lack of [00:31:00] trust. They were allowed to fail. And then AIG was bailed out.

Nick Capodice: [00:31:05] Why Lehman Brothers and not AIG?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:07] That is a question that still rages today. The Federal Reserve says Lehman could not get their hands on enough collateral to justify a loan from the government. Right. Like a house is a piece of collateral for the home buyer. They can always say, I've got all this value behind me. Lehman Brothers couldn't prove that they had enough collateral. Nobody wanted to invest in Lehman Brothers because everything was falling apart. And some say that not bailing out Lehman Brothers was actually a big mistake.

Amy Friend: [00:31:34] So it just looked like chaos, like somebody put under government control than another company is allowed to fail. Then another company is bailed out. And then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and the treasury secretary came to Congress and said, you have to help out because we cannot deal with this anymore and you need to provide $700 billion to prop up the financial system [00:32:00] or the financial system in the United States will collapse and will bring the global economy down with it. And you've got a week to put this together.

Nick Capodice: [00:32:16] A week. Since when does Congress agree on a number like that? In a week.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:22] Okay. Something that we need to keep in mind here is that all of these US investment banks are tied to the global economy. It's not just the US. I mean, the pressure was on Nick. This was really bad. I just I want you to understand like this was devastatingly bad. This is Great Depression too, but worse.

Nick Capodice: [00:32:46] Wow.

Amy Friend: [00:32:48] It was shocking. Shocking. It's like the most, you know, respected financial system in the world with with all of the you know, [00:33:00] it was well regulated. And, you know, people flock to the United States as a safe place to put their money. And the dollar is the reserve currency for the world. And here we are. It was our crisis that was exported to other parts of the world, and the financial crisis was contagious. And it started in the United States. And it was just it was truly shocking that it fell apart as quickly as it did. And to hear, you know, Senator Dodd come back from this. There was a meeting in Speaker Pelosi's office.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:37] Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which Amy works for.

Amy Friend: [00:33:42] Chairman Bernanke, had been a sort of he studied the Great Depression and taught it at at Princeton. And he said this will be worse if you don't jump on this. This will be worse because the world is so much more interconnected than it was in 1929. And I know that we have [00:34:00] to have an overwhelming, aggressive action here in order to stem the hemorrhaging.

Nick Capodice: [00:34:09] Okay. So it really is, like you said earlier, save the companies, save the world.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:14] That was the calculation.

Amy Friend: [00:34:15] Well, very short period of time to put together the immediate reaction to the crisis, which was this $700 billion called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, or TARP, which was the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which is what Treasury came to the Congress and asked for. But it ended up morphing into something quite different.

[00:34:39] But it was very successful program and stood side by side with a number of other actions that the regulators took.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:48] All right. I'm going to give you the barest of glancing blows of TARP here, just so you understand what they could possibly need. That $700 Billion for 250 billion for making sure giant investment banks didn't go under 27 [00:35:00] billion to get credit markets going again.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:02] Credit markets.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:03] Okay. When you own a house, you own collateral. We've been over that, right? When the price of your house drops, your personal wealth drops, and it is harder to get a line of credit, It's harder to get a loan based on the value of your house. That's part of the credit market. And it froze up. Then $82 billion goes to the auto industry to get that going again.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:23] How does the auto industry figure into this at all?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:25] Did I not mention that oil prices went up 50% and then the oil market crash? And also nobody was buying cars because their main source of wealth and credit, a.k.a. their homes, had lost value? Nick, I keep telling you, everything was horrible. Everything was falling apart. Aig gets 70 billion. That is a part of their eventual $191 Billion to get them stabilized and then 46 billion for the little guys, families facing foreclosure, which due to a long, awful history of credits and loans that we mentioned earlier, of course, disproportionately affected communities of color.

Nick Capodice: [00:35:59] And also [00:36:00] notably, the least money was going to the millions of affected Americans.

Speaker5: [00:36:05] It seems there's no good news when it comes to the housing market. Sales of existing homes plunged 8.6% in November as compared to October. It's estimated that 45% of sales of existing homes are foreclosed properties.

Nick Capodice: [00:36:17] So you've had a lot of your neighbors foreclosed on already.

Speaker6: [00:36:21] If you are watching us from the last home you'll ever own tonight, consider yourself lucky. Same goes for anyone ready to buy a slice of the American dream. But if you're among the millions trying to sell, this was a very bad day. So if there's somebody whose financial planning is based on their house price coming up in value soon, you're saying maybe they should come up with another plan? Exactly. I mean, there's absolutely no reason to expect that prices are going to go back to the levels they were at three or four years ago.

Amy Friend: [00:36:50] One interesting lesson from the Great Depression was that government needed to act speedily. And the Federal Reserve Board, [00:37:00] which was created in 1913 to address panics. Right. Did not step up in the Depression, but this time stepped up in a huge way.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:11] Basically, the government knew that the whole financial system would freeze up if they didn't do something, because that is what happens in a situation like this. So the Fed said, All right, we will buy these assets from these companies that nobody wants right now in order to keep the system functioning. And if you're hearing this and thinking, wait, so this is very much a massively capitalist based issue, you are correct and welcome to America.

Nick Capodice: [00:37:38] So we talk about bailouts. What's actually happening here is that the Fed is buying these worthless assets from these investment banks because they can't get anybody else to buy them.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:49] Yes. All right. So, okay, that is the emergency response, right? That is what came first. That's what Congress pulled off in a week. But that was not enough. The [00:38:00] answer to the financial crisis was not simply throw money on the fire.

Amy Friend: [00:38:04] Dodd-frank was the longer term. How do we fix the system now that we were forced to bail it out? How do we.

Nick Capodice: [00:38:14] Make sure that doesn't happen again? I have heard of Dodd-Frank, and I assume this is partially named after Senator Christopher Dodd. He mentioned earlier.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:21] Sure is. And Amy is in the room for all of it.

Amy Friend: [00:38:24] The Senate Banking Committee staff started working on ideas in October, November 2008 and talking to a lot of experts and putting experts before the members of the committee to start to think about how do you create a system of reforms going forward to ensure as best possible that we don't face the same failings and that make the system resilient enough so that they can withstand something [00:39:00] unanticipated? So we were working on that in the fall of 2008.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:07] So then Barack Obama gets. Elected and his administration is like, we really want to show the world that we have a good plan because we messed up big.

Speaker6: [00:39:17] And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold. Now, I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:36] So what's the plan? Give us the plan. We've got this big global meeting coming up and we have got to show them that we know what we're doing. We're going to fix this.

Amy Friend: [00:39:44] So they were pressing Congress to try to do something by April of 2009, which no, there was no way this was such a huge undertaking. But I remember that the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, and the chairman [00:40:00] of Senate Banking, Senator Dodd, put together a letter to President Obama saying that we are working in earnest and we will pass something so that they could go to this international meeting and say, you know, we're going to clean this up, because, again, it was the US that was responsible for something that was then in basically.

[00:40:19] Bleeding out into into the other parts of the world.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:40:26] And this is what it ended up looking like a gigantic bill, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Here is what it basically said. First thing, we're going to have consumer protection.

Amy Friend: [00:40:41] It creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look at financial services through the eyes of the consumer, through the eyes of the borrower. Right. So through the eyes of the consumer that is getting [00:41:00] a financial product or service in a way that hadn't been done during the crisis. Right? I think the bank regulators were largely looking at it from the perspective of the bank, and it looked like these things were safe and sound because they were profitable. But if you stopped and looked at it from the consumer's perspective, which is they're getting these loans that they can't afford, it's like a canary in the coal mine.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:27] Next, regulators.

Amy Friend: [00:41:29] It created a council of regulators. It's called the Financial Stability Oversight Council to look across the whole financial system because we have a lot of financial regulators that focus on different parts of the system.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:46] A major question that some people me I am the some people may have about this whole thing is why didn't anybody see that this was happening? And the answer is that we did not have a robust system of regulators [00:42:00] who were watching for systemic breakdown due to bad behavior on the part of financial institutions. So now this Council of Regulators meets with Congress annually to report on risks they see in the system. Dodd-frank also came up with a plan for companies who obviously need some oversight. Basically, the Federal Reserve is now allowed to take a company under its wing for a while. The long, slow bankruptcy process for Lehman Brothers proved to the government that the system, as in the bankruptcy system, is not designed to handle the disintegration of a giant, multibillion dollar multinational company. Also, when something that giant and interconnected fails, as we've seen, it has the potential to take the whole system down with it. So now the government says, you know what, you actually can fail, but you have to have a plan for how to do [00:43:00] it without ruining everyone's lives.

Amy Friend: [00:43:02] In fact, these companies all have to submit on a regular basis plans for how they could be unwound so that if the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which would be the entity that resolves them, has to ever step in, they at least have a roadmap.

Nick Capodice: [00:43:19] Wow. So it's like these companies all have to write a last will and testament in the event of my death. Here is how things will go. Also, what does Amy mean by moral hazard?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:30] She said that if the market sees that Congress is just going to bail out companies when they make mistakes, those companies are just going to keep making those mistakes.

Amy Friend: [00:43:38] And that's the argument that we're going on, on different sides of just the foreclosure relief. And that's what the arguments that were going on in propping up the failed system in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that was preceded than the Dodd-Frank Act. So these were common themes that were playing [00:44:00] out. And I would say it was largely the Democrats that were in favor of more aggressive foreclosure relief and the Republicans who were arguing for market discipline.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:44:10] Okay. And then Dodd-Frank also said, look, giant financial institutions, you cannot end up in a spot like this again. You cannot leave yourself so exposed to possible failure, giant company. You have to make sure you have a ton of capital, as in total wealth and assets before you can mess around with loans and investments. And this, Amy says, is a super important part of Dodd-Frank.

Amy Friend: [00:44:33] And so there's more capital in the system, there's more liquidity. So if you have some kind of event like a stress, like the pandemic where companies were failing, right, the financial system was strong and that was a result of all of these reforms that were put into place, though the financial system was a source of strength for the economy as opposed to a drain on the economy. In the financial crisis. [00:45:00]

[00:45:00] In 2008, the financial system was a drain on the economy during the.

Amy Friend: [00:45:04] Pandemic, when small businesses were closing and people were going out right, there were layoffs and we saw it. Everything. Unemployment go up, the financial system stood strong. So so there's more liquidity, there's better risk management, there's more capital in the system.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:45:20] Amy actually says that the COVID 19 pandemic, which happened only ten years after Dodd. Frank was passed was the ultimate test of whether or not the system really had been strengthened.

Nick Capodice: [00:45:37] Okay. But I do remember that this whole effort on Congress's part was not exactly popular. Right. The public was openly furious with Congress for bailing out the banks, for propping everything up while the homeowners suffered.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:45:53] It's our duty as Americans to fight for our country and to keep it, you know, true to serving its people. And when it doesn't [00:46:00] do that, it's immoral not to stand up and say something.

Nick Capodice: [00:46:04] I'm here myself as a free individual to humanize the markets and to have true participatory democracy, bottom up democracy, and to make.

Amy Friend: [00:46:15] I think there is not a whole lot of understanding amongst the general public about what Dodd-Frank does. A lot of the provisions are complicated, esoteric. People don't talk about credit default swaps. Nor necessarily should they. Where the public emotion ran very high was in the emergency response in TARP, which was a perception that Congress was bailing out Wall Street and and forgoing assistance to Main Street.

Nick Capodice: [00:46:55] Can I can I just break in here for a second and say that I have no idea what the whole Wall [00:47:00] Street versus Main Street thing means? Am I Main Street or we Main Street?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:47:04] I think the best way to think of it is Main Street means all of us Americans who are not a part of this wildly money filled, gigantic financial institution world, people who stand to lose their smaller businesses, their jobs, their homes, their ability to feed and clothe themselves and their families, I mean, their whole life savings, etc.. If Wall Street screws up. Amy says that in Congress, the idea was if we bail out the banks, then they'll be able to support Main Street. They'll be able to get lines of credit going again. Homeowners and business owners will be able to survive. And let's be clear here. This could alternatively be labeled as a trickle down economics theory. And a lot of voters did not agree with it because that's what it appeared to be. And Congress did not do a great job of explaining it.

Amy Friend: [00:47:56] Had there been some more focus [00:48:00] and more sort of conversation about this is foreclosure relief for homebuyers, as well as we're keeping the banks going so they can support Main Street. But it was never popular. Members of Congress, senators, congressmen lost their seats for voting for TARP. But I know the firm belief was if this went down, the system could go down. And we can't we can't afford that. Even if the public sentiment is not supporting this, we have to step up because it's the right thing to do. And I believe it was the right thing to do. But people still debate that.

[00:48:39] So Dodd-Frank, which was more of the long term, how do you make the system sound? It definitely.

Amy Friend: [00:48:46] Has its detractors.

[00:48:47] But I would say most members of the public don't understand or would take the time to really understand the different aspects of it. I think they.

Amy Friend: [00:48:57] Just want the government to [00:49:00] have to stand behind a system.

[00:49:03] That is sound and that's fair. And that is what Dodd-Frank.

Amy Friend: [00:49:08] Is meant to do, which is to create this system that is resilient, that will treat customers, consumers, borrowers, investors fairly, and that will hold financial firms to high standards. That's what.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:49:22] Dodd-frank does. So one thing I have to make very clear, and it probably already is, is that Dodd-Frank and TARP and everything about the response to the 2008 financial crisis is, of course, political. And Amy is obviously a fan of Dodd-Frank. Not everybody is. But to her point, and this was certainly true of me before I made this episode, not many people understand what Dodd-Frank is. And when I tried to read its nearly 850 pages. I tried. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. And that could in itself be a problem. But I also suppose that's [00:50:00] laws for you. I do appreciate, however, this point that she made about the whole quote unquote market, because the story of the financial crisis still has me thinking, wait, but how did this happen? And the how this happened is what Dodd-Frank attempts to fix. You know, there is this sentiment.

Amy Friend: [00:50:20] That the market should largely policed itself, but the market blew up. I mean, the market was so focused on making money and had believed that they so engineered this disbursement of risk that nobody would be left holding the the, you know, the bag.

Nick Capodice: [00:50:41] And it just blew up. Hold on. What is the actual answer to the question? How did this happen? We have a lack of regulation, and I get that. But what was underneath the unregulated surface before 2008? I mean, is the answer just everybody wanted to get rich.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:50:59] Yeah.

Nick Capodice: [00:51:00] That's [00:51:00] it. And we can maybe get away with it.

[00:51:04] So there was just an incredible drive to make money. And, you know, and the question was, well, where were the regulators? And like, what were they doing? And so some of these activities were outside of the regulated space. And then when they went into the banks, I think the.

Amy Friend: [00:51:22] Regulators also miscalculated and thought, well, the banks are all making money, so this must be safe and sound. Never really looking from the consumer's perspective of, well, these don't have sound terms, so banks should not be anywhere close to them.

[00:51:37] They shouldn't be buying them, packaging them, funding them. They shouldn't be involved in this. And that never happened.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:51:50] When I was a kid and learning about the Great Depression, my mom told me, Don't worry about a kid. That could never happen again because the government has ways of preventing that now. But [00:52:00] the truth is it did not. And there was a massive panic and the government had to devote billions and billions of taxpayer money and pass a massive piece of legislation to deal with that panic. So now here's the question. Could it happen again? Again? You know, the idea behind.

Amy Friend: [00:52:19] Dodd-frank was not just to address the problems of the past because you don't know the ones that are coming up. Right. So, for instance, nobody saw a global pandemic. That would be a stress on the economic system. So the idea was to also create this 21st century financial system and set of regulations and regulatory actors that could take on new challenges. So one of the things that I think we see emerging is that climate change is actually a risk to the financial system because financial actors are quite exposed when it comes to climate change. So they're making [00:53:00] loans in areas that are subject to constant droughts or floods or fires. Right. And then there's something called transition risk, where as the economy moves away from fossil fuels to more renewable energy, what about investments and loans to all of these fossil fuel companies when we're heading towards net zero? So, you know, it's managing these risks. Cryptocurrency, right? So is that systemic? So I think what's important is that Dodd-Frank did not just address like the ills of the past, but it also gives the regulators the tools to deal with emerging issues. I think ultimately, the success of Dodd-Frank, you know, in the long run is did it make the system more resilient and provide the tools that regulators need to deal with emerging issues? And so far, I would say the answer is yes.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:53:59] So [00:54:00] obviously, Nick, Dodd-Frank did not arise out of one of these unpredictable situations. It arose out of the purposeful and incredibly risky and ultimately completely disastrous behavior of financial institutions who were not being watched closely enough. But Amy's point is that with Dodd-Frank in place now, the system is ultimately at less risk in any number of potential disastrous situations.

Nick Capodice: [00:54:25] It would have been nice if we could have had all that without attending the school of hard knocks.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:54:29] Wouldn't it, though? In this episode of Civics 101 was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with help from Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music [00:55:00] In this episode by Roof, Charles Valentin Alkin, ISO Indies and Ketsa. You can find this whole episode and all of our others on our website, civics101podcast.org. And if you enjoyed this episode or if you did not leave us a review, your feedback makes us better and we take it very seriously. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Why Do We Have an Income Tax?

Most Americans need help to file our tax return each year - about 90% of people use technology like Turbo Tax, or hire a human tax preparer.  Why does it feel like it takes degree in accounting, or the money to pay someone with a degree, or computer software, just to comply with the law? 

The income tax system is full of complexity, and extremely personal. It's a system where things like who you work for, what kind of resources you have, and how you spend your money, determine how much you owe the government, and what the government provides in return. So how did we get here? 

Helping us untangle this history is Eric Toder, Institute fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute; Beverly Moran, Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on federal income taxation, including individuals, partnerships, tax-exempt organizations and corporate; and Joe Thorndike, Director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts.  

Stay tuned for our follow up episode on how to do your taxes successfully, and correctly - we'll talk about the IRS, enforcement and compliance, and the rise of tax preparation software. 

Support our show and our mission with a gift to Civics 101 today, it means the world to us.

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Transcript:

Fed Income Taxes 1

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] Hi, this is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:02] And I'm Nick Capodice and I guess we're just jumping in. No warm up, no archival. Just going right into this.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:09] Well, I do have a question for you, but it sounds a lot like a question we might ask at the beginning of an ad, which this is not. This is a real show. We are not trying to sell you on anything. But we are going to talk about something that you're probably hearing a lot of ads about right now, and that is taxes.

Nick Capodice: [00:00:32] Oh, dear.

Audio Clip: [00:00:33] They say everybody's got different problems. Well, maybe so. But I've got a song about one problem that every one of us have, and that's taxes.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:44] So I solemnly swear I'm not about to sell you a tax service. But I do want to ask to any of these questions. Sound familiar to you? How many kids do you have? Do you work from home? Did you save for retirement? Did you pay tuition? How about student loans? Did you get money from an inheritance? Do you buy an electric vehicle? Could you donate to a charity? Did you buy a house? Sell a house? How big is your office?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:04] Yeah, I'm familiar with all those questions, Hannah, because I answer them when I file my taxes.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:09] And, Nick, if you don't mind me asking, how did you do your taxes last year?

Nick Capodice: [00:01:15] Well, after I put them off, I used an accountant.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:19] Right. Like you, most Americans need help figuring out how much money we owe the government. Each year, about 90% of people use technology like TurboTax or hire a human tax preparer to do their tax return. Tax season requires an enormous amount of time, money and resources, not only from the government but from us, the taxpayers.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:41] It is pretty confounding, Hannah, that we live in a country where you basically need a degree in accounting or the money to pay for someone with a degree or computer software just to comply with the law. It's hard to understand how that's a good thing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:56] You raise a good point. So I want to introduce you to someone named Beverly Moran. She's a professor of law and sociology at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on federal income taxation. She's testified before Congress and written extensively about the complexity of our income tax system.

Beverly Moran: [00:02:12] I mean, what people talk about being able to have a tax return on a postcard, that was basically the amount of information you had to put out a return for most people. But the problem is, as the tax started to filter to the whole country, there was another sort of movement going on which caused the return to become much more frightening. And what that was was that we started to put a lot of things into the tax system. That really weren't about taxes.

Beverly Moran: [00:02:51] In preparation for talking to you. I reached out to several friends of mine who had, like, you know, decades of experience. You know, we're tax preparers, right? They know the taxpayer side and they know the government side. They wrote while saying to me, like, how can you say any of it is good? How could you come up with a story like and I'm saying, well, I want to say this and that. They were like, well, good for you that you can come up with this story because it's not good. It's horrible.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:26] So today on Civics 101, we're going to talk about why our income tax system is the way it is, full of complexity, difficult to navigate and extremely personal, where circumstances like who you work for, what kind of resources you have and how you spend your money are directly connected to how much you owe the government each year, and what the government provides for you in return.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:53] Just to clarify, you said federal income taxes, so we're leaving states out of it. We're not talking about state local sales tax or anything like that.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:01] Right. Because that's a whole other subject entirely. Every state, and many municipalities, have their own tax system and they vary widely. We're focused today on federal income taxes, specifically those taxes that individuals like you and me pay every year out of the money we earn. And to start, I think we should get a better sense of how much income taxes matter.

Eric Toder: [00:04:27] So the federal income tax is our largest single source of revenue for the federal government. It raises roughly 50% of of federal receipts.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:37] This is Eric Toder. He's an institute fellow at the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. He worked in tax policy for the Treasury Department at the IRS and in the Congressional Budget Office. He also worked as a consultant for the New Zealand Treasury.

Eric Toder: [00:04:52] But there are other big taxes. The second biggest tax is the payroll tax, which people may feel is similar to an income tax because it also comes out of their paycheck. And for most people in this country, the payroll tax is a bigger tax than the income tax. The income tax is a very progressive tax. It rises steeply as a rate of tax with your income, whereas the payroll tax is a flat rate tax.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:19] The payroll tax is a flat tax set at 15.3%. Your employer pays half and you pay half.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:27] But Eric said that income tax is a progressive tax. So can you clarify for me the difference between a flat rate tax and a progressive tax?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:35] A flat rate tax is one that applies to everyone in the same amount, regardless of how much money they make. Like Social Security, if you made anywhere from $0 to $160000, you pay 6.2% of your income to Social Security, and your employer also pays 6.2%. If you're self-employed, you pay the full 12.4%. What makes our income tax progressive is that the more income you earn, the higher the tax rate is on that income for 2022. The lowest rate is 10% and the highest rate is 37%.

Eric Toder: [00:06:13] The third biggest source, which is significantly smaller, is the corporate income tax. But that's an important part of our tax system because without a tax on corporate income, people could avoid the income tax by accumulating income within corporations. So the corporation income tax, even though it raises only about 10% of federal revenues, is an important part of our our tax system. There are other taxes excise taxes, estate taxes, customs duties. There are smaller.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:43] Where does that revenue go? What kind of things does it pay for?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:47] It pays for the cost of running the government. It pays for all kinds of government programs, with social services being the biggest chunk, followed by defense and things like education, scientific research, infrastructure and natural resources.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:02] So I want to go back to how we got to this place. Did the framers mention this at all in the Constitution? Have we always had an income tax?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:10] We have not. The Constitution says that Congress can set taxes to, quote, "pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." But the framers favored indirect taxes like sales taxes and tariffs more than direct taxes on income.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:30] So indirect meaning like a tax on something that you're paying for and theoretically could choose to pay for rather than tax, that automatically comes out of your paycheck?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:40]  Correct.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:40] All right. So what changed?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:42] Well, that whole "provide for the common defense" thing became really important during the Civil War.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:48] Ah.

Joe Thorndike: [00:07:51] Yeah. It was really intended as a war measure. We'd never had an income tax in the U.S., although the British had had one for 60 years at that point. But in the U.S. we hadn't. And they saw this as an emergency tax.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:04] This is Joe Thorndike. He's the director of the Tax History Project. Civics 101 talked to him back in 2017.

Joe Thorndike: [00:08:11] It was a way to balance more regressive taxes. So most of the taxes were on consumption, excise taxes on things like, you know, alcohol, tobacco and actually almost everything during the Civil War. But they wanted something that was more progressive and that was the income tax. That's why they created it as a balance.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:28] Like Joe says, it was supposed to be an emergency tax, but it didn't go exactly as planned.

Joe Thorndike: [00:08:34] The first income tax was actually imposed in 1861, and the tax came due at the end of June, back then in 1862, but there was no agency to collect it yet. So I always say that's the most unusual thing about it, is that the first income tax was never collected because there was no one to take the checks.

Nick Capodice: [00:08:53] So they're basically sending people a tax bill, but just not giving them a way to pay it.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:58] Yeah, like, I don't know, setting a New Year's resolution to make coffee at home instead of buying it. But you don't have a coffee maker and you don't own mugs.

Joe Thorndike: [00:09:07] But the next year, they kind of got their act together. They passed a new income tax and they created an agency, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, to collect it. That was 1862.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:16] The Bureau of Internal Revenue was the first iteration of what we know now as the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. It's part of the Treasury Department and it's in charge of collecting taxes and enforcing tax law.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:29] So what did that first income tax look like?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:32] It started as a 3% tax on all income over a certain amount, but that income tax did not stick around.

Joe Thorndike: [00:09:39] But then after the war was over, they let it expire again. You know, emergency tax. Now the emergency is over. Let's let it go. There were people asking for one after that. Progressives, we would call them liberals today, but progressives and populists and people like that. But and eventually they got another one enacted and the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. And the grounds for that decision were fairly technical, and it was really only a stopping point on the way to actually having a permanent income tax. So when did we finally get a permanent income tax?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:11] That happened in 1913 when we ratified the 16th Amendment. This amendment says the federal government has the right to impose income taxes and more importantly, that the federal government does not have to distribute or apportion that revenue to states based on population size.

Joe Thorndike: [00:10:29] Now, in the beginning, the tax is really narrow, only applies to a relative handful of Americans. And that's true, you know, up till the World War One. And then it gets broader and bigger and then but it's still it's pretty minor tax. It's a rich man's burden, basically, right now originally.

Beverly Moran: [00:10:44] And even now to some extent, it's a fantasy.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:47] Again, this is Beverly Moran.

Beverly Moran: [00:10:49] And the fantasy that it was selling between 1913 and the 1940s was that this was a way of having some sort of income redistribution.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:02] But the income tax wasn't just added to the already existing taxes. The government also lowered tariffs, which are taxes on imported and exported goods. Tariffs had been a main source of revenue after the Civil War and the rise of industrialization. But with that industrialization came business owners and investors who accumulated vast sums of wealth. People who used that wealth to exploit workers, monopolize industries, raise prices and manipulate the markets for their own gain. So in an effort to lower tariffs and redistribute wealth without making big cuts to the government's budget, Congress shifted more of the tax burden directly onto the wealthiest Americans.

Beverly Moran: [00:11:47] The taps that were only like 3% of the population even had to file. Only about 1% of the population had to pay.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:56] But even so, the stock market crashed in 1929.

Nick Capodice: [00:12:00] Which led to the Great Depression.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:01] It did indeed.

Audio Clip: [00:12:02] Prosperity is just around the corner, say the hopeful headlines. But around the corner is wind. The lengthening breadlines and a whole new class of citizens appears in a. Society, the new poor.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:18] Businesses, failed, industries crashed. And when President Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1933, he wasn't shy about using income tax to pay for economic recovery.

President Franklin Roosevelt: [00:12:29] My friends, I still believe in ideals. I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:50] For example, Roosevelt introduced the Revenue Act of 1935, which was targeted specifically at the wealthiest Americans with tax rates that were as high as 75%. Wow. This helped fund the relatively new Social Security Administration, one of the New Deal welfare programs Roosevelt created after the Great Depression.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:10] And I am just trying to imagine something like a 75% income tax happening today. And I just cannot.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:16] By the way, at one point the highest tax bracket only had one person, John D. Rockefeller. But at the same time that the federal government was heavily taxing the wealthy, it was also creating exceptions, asterisks, things that allowed people to get out of paying taxes on their entire income. Here's Joe Thorndike.

Joe Thorndike: [00:13:39] There was one moment where where FDR says to his Treasury secretary, I'd like a list of the top 50 tax payers in, you know, 1942. I can remember which year it was, but roughly around then. No names, of course. And then they give him a they give him a memo which includes all the names. Roosevelt was famous for a lot of sort of anti loophole anti-tax avoidance crackdowns. And in 1937, I mean, he had the Treasury write him this memo. Again, there were two versions, one that had the names and one that didn't. But they made sure that those names made their way into the public sphere and that these guys were called out for using, you know, special little loopholes to try to avoid their taxes.

Eric Toder: [00:14:21] Well, we've always had certain exceptions in the income tax system.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:25] This is Eric Toder again.

Eric Toder: [00:14:26] Modern federal income tax started in 1913. We had a capital gains preference in introduced in 1921. We had mortgage interest deduction from the beginning. That wasn't very important because not very many people paid income tax and not very many people owned homes. The federal income tax started, but it became important later.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:50] It became more important when our income taxes went from something that only affected a small group of people to something that applied to nearly everyone.

Nick Capodice: [00:14:59] I'm going to go with the episode trend so far. Hannah, And guess that a war had something to do with this.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:05] It did indeed. Once again, war.

President Franklin Roosevelt: [00:15:08] No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion. The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:26] Specifically World War Two and the need to pay for it led to a major shift in our tax policy.

Eric Toder: [00:15:34] Big government really dates from the Second World War. And that was when we introduced a mass income tax that applied to the majority of Americans.

Beverly Moran: [00:15:45] And again, the income tax becomes a way of communicating certain ideas like this is like a victory guard or this is like not wearing nylons. You know, we're all in it for the war effort.

Audio Clip: [00:15:59] I paid my income tax Today. I'm only one of millions more whose income never was taxed before, a tax I'm very glad to pay.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:12] Victory gardens like that's where the government encouraged people to grow their own food to help reduce the demand needed to feed soldiers.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:19] Yeah, taxes were pitched in the same way the propaganda around income taxes, like the song by Irving Berlin that you're hearing right now, were all about showing your support for the war effort by paying taxes.

Nick Capodice: [00:16:32] I got to say, it's a pretty jaunty little tune.

Audio Clip: [00:16:34] They won.

Joe Thorndike: [00:16:35] When the number of tax payers increases like seven fold in a few years, millions of new people start paying the tax. They the thing is that it went from being a class tax to a mass tax, and that's when the Bureau of Internal Revenue became a fact of life for regular Americans, for middle class Americans in particular.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:57] Like the previous income tax. The expanded mass income tax was a progressive graduated tax. The higher your income, the higher your income tax rate.

Nick Capodice: [00:17:08] All right. So how did the Bureau handle this huge new tax base?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:12] Well, it got help from the Social Security Administration, which introduced Social Security numbers. So the Bureau of Internal Revenue could keep track of people's identities and income. And Congress also made it possible for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to collect those taxes from someone's check before payday.

Eric Toder: [00:17:31] Also, during the Second World War, we introduced withholding on wages, which was really important to facilitate the income tax because without withholding, people would have a big tax bill at the end of the year and would be unable to afford to pay. So withholding was a way to take the money out of people's paychecks and frequent little bunches.

Beverly Moran: [00:17:53] I think every kid has this experience, right? You get a job, you're told you're going to get paid $100. You get the check. The check is $80. Where did that $20 go? But it's withholding. So when you think about it, when all this is going on, there are no computers. There's there's no Internet right there. Barely like telephones. So withholding serves a lot of purposes, one of which, from the government point of view, is fewer people to deal with. If I can deal with Smith's grocery that represents 20 people, that's much easier for me than dealing with all the 20 people who work in Smith's grocery. And so the whole thing was pretty easy to do.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:41] All right. So this sounds pretty basic. Most people paid an income tax, but a lot of times it just came right out of their paycheck. So how do we go from that to what we have now, where a tax return has all of these components in it?

Audio Clip: [00:18:55] The total amount of income is not taxed, however, as each person is allowed certain deductions. You can deduct portions of medical and dental expenses.

Eric Toder: [00:19:04] One reason it's complicated and isn't as complicated in some other other countries is we've tried to use the tax system for many different things other than raising revenue.

Audio Clip: [00:19:13] Charitable contributions, interest payments, certain taxes and so on.

Eric Toder: [00:19:18] The federal government has decided it wants to encourage certain activities, wants to help people save for retirement. It wants to encourage them to give money to charities. Some of these programs could have been done by appropriations. And instead they're done through forgiving tax.

Nick Capodice: [00:19:36] What does he mean by that? Can you give me like an example?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:38] Let's start with World War Two. In 1942, Congress gave President Roosevelt the power to freeze wages, and he introduced a maximum wage of $25,000.

President Franklin Roosevelt: [00:19:51] Taxation is the only practical way of preventing the incomes and profits of individuals and corporations from getting too high.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:59] Essentially, any income you made over 25,000 was taxed at nearly 100%.

President Franklin Roosevelt: [00:20:07] The nation must have more money to run the war. People must stop spending for luxuries. Our country needs a far greater share of our income.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:21] But, and here's where things get interesting, that wage cap applied to salary, commissions, bonuses, but it did not apply to other kinds of compensation like insurance and pension benefits.

Eric Toder: [00:20:38] When wages were capped, employers in order to compensate their employees, started introducing health benefits, retirement benefits. The federal government wanted to encourage these things, so the amount of income you get in the form of employer contributions to health insurance is exempt from federal income tax.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:01] Especially because the employer also did not have to pay taxes on any income they spent on those kinds of programs.

Eric Toder: [00:21:10] Which encourages employers to provide health insurance to their employees.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:16] Is this unique to the United States? I mean, employer provided health care is one of those things that's now kind of the norm and the backbone of our health care system. And saving for retirement through work is, for most people the only way they're able to retire. But I know that's not the case elsewhere. So what's different about our tax policy than other countries?

Eric Toder: [00:21:38] Okay, so there are some very big differences. One is we don't have a national sales tax at the federal level. And we generally, even including states, we rely a lot less on consumption taxes than other countries. That means our tax system probably overall is a little bit more progressive than the tax systems in Europe.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:02] One way to think of this as more progressive is if there is a high sales tax on something, no matter how much money you earn, you pay that sales tax. Whereas theoretically the burden of the income tax is higher if you make more money.

Eric Toder: [00:22:18] But oddly enough, our fiscal system is less progressive. The reason I say this is they have these value added taxes, but they have much more generous social benefits, health benefits and so forth. So in a sense, we rely more on taxes for redistribution. They rely more on spending programs.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:39] So even though other countries may charge greater taxes on consumption, they also often spend more on programs that save people money or reduce their expenses. For example, the cost of health care.

Eric Toder: [00:22:52] All the systems use some tax expenditures. I think, you know, our exemption of employer premiums is probably unique to our system because in other other systems they have more public funding of health care. So you don't need to have this encouragement of the employer system.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:13] So it's hard to compare income taxes across countries, but people in Denmark pay almost half of their income in taxes. And Denmark also has some of the highest consumption taxes, taxes that you pay when you buy something or go out to eat, which the United States has kept relatively low. High consumption taxes are also the norm in countries like Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway.

Beverly Moran: [00:23:36] So how can it be that you have people who aren't making very much money, are paying a very high tax rate and are paying taxes that in the United States we say are taxes that hurt the poor? Well, the reason is that they are actually providing tremendous benefits to their people outside of the tax system. Anybody who's a resident in Germany can go to college for free. In Scandinavia. You can get your health care for free. You're able to have maternity leave. You I mean, all sorts of things that in the United States, it's all like it's on you, right? Your retirement is on you. Are you saving for it or are you not saving for it? You know, your maternity leave is between you and your employer. It's all fragmented. And in those countries, they can do their taxes in less than 2 hours. Some of them don't do it at all, right? They just get like a letter from the government. This is what you owe. This is what you paid. Here's a check for the difference. Thank you very much. The reason why it's so complicated in the United States is because certain people are advantaged by the fact that it's complicated.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:05] We'll be right back after this break.

Nick Capodice: [00:25:08] But real quick, if you like our show or even if you don't do Hannah and I a favor and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast, it helps make our show better. It helps other people see our show and see what it's about. And we read every single one, truly every single one. So do it. It means a lot to us. And thank you. So we've been talking about why our income taxes here in the U.S. are so complicated. And so far we have heard about how the government started using the tax code to shift behavior without passing laws like incentivizing employers to provide health insurance and retirement plans. So what are some of the other carrots that the federal government has added to the tax code?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:52] Hanna There are two main kinds of incentives, deductions and credits. We're going to talk about deductions. First, here's Eric Toder.

Eric Toder: [00:26:02] Deductions reduce the amount of income on which you pay tax. So if I have 50,000 of income and then I get 10,000 of deductions, that reduces the amount of income I have to report to 40,000. So there are certain items that, for example, home mortgage interest or state and local income taxes or charitable contributions, which are the biggest which you can claim as a deduction or subtract that from the income which is subject to tax.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:34] So every year you have to figure out which deductions you might qualify for and then find out how much of a deduction it would be and send all of that information to the IRS.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:46] If you go the itemized deduction route, yes, but there is another option.

Eric Toder: [00:26:51] However, you can also claim a standard deduction. So depending on your marital status, you can deduct a certain amount in lieu of taking itemized deductions. So what you want to do is figure out whether your itemized deductions total up to more than the standard deduction. And if they do, you itemize. And if you don't, you take the standard deduction.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:14] Sometimes that itemized deduction is going to be more than a standard deduction, especially if you say own multiple properties or give to multiple charities, or if you have set up a charitable foundation in your name.

Eric Toder: [00:27:29] Most people take the standard deduction. Most high income people use itemized deductions.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:36] Unlike deductions which lower your taxable income. Credits lower your tax bill. That's the amount you have to pay after deductions are factored in.

Eric Toder: [00:27:44] If I were paying $500 of tax and I got a tax credit of $150, that would reduce my taxes. 350. So just comes right off of the tax.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:56] And many times that credit ends up showing up as a refund after you file your taxes. Basically, the government says you overpaid this year. Here's the money back.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:05] Is it possible to earn more in tax credits than you paid in taxes?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:10] Okay. This is where tax credits get a little sticky. The answer is sometimes. Some credits are refundable, meaning that if the value of the tax credit is more than you owe in taxes, you have a negative tax bill.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:23] In other words, you get money instead of paying money.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:25] That's it. So if your tax bill was $500 and you had $600 in refundable tax credits, you would not owe any taxes and you would get $100. One of the main tax credits that is refundable is the earned income tax credit, which is specifically for people with lower incomes. But you have to have actually earned an income to qualify.

Nick Capodice: [00:28:46] But not all credits are refundable, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:48] Many of them are not. For example, the tax credit for buying an electric vehicle. If you bought certain new electric cars in 2022, you could qualify for a $7500 tax credit. But if your tax bill is only five grand, you only get five grand credited toward your tax bill.

Nick Capodice: [00:29:06] So the government is trying to encourage me to buy an electric car, but I'm not really getting a $7,500 discount on that electric car unless I owe $7,500 or more in taxes. I think I've got it. So how do these tax credits even end up in our tax policy? They seem complicated. Like with that earned income tax credit. Why not just lower the tax rate for people who make under a certain amount?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:35] The answer is simple: politics.

Eric Toder: [00:29:38] So we all have different views of what public benefits the government should supply. We all have different views of how big the government should be. Your purchase of public goods through taxes is mandatory. So this is the one place where the government is taking something from you as well as supplying you with something. So naturally the question is who should it take from? How should that burden be shared upon those? Those are basically political questions.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:09] And with that Earned income tax credit and other tax credits designed to help people with lower incomes in particular, the politics have shifted a lot in the last couple of decades.

Nick Capodice: [00:30:20] How so?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:22] Well, remember how we talked about the New Deal ushering in all of these government programs to help support people while the country recovered from the Great Depression?

Beverly Moran: [00:30:30] Yeah.

Audio Clip: [00:30:31] The remaining costs of government may be considered under general welfare. Social Security programs provide retirement income for the elderly, financial support for widows, children and others who've lost their means of support, as well as aid to the disabled and unemployed.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:47] In the last 30 years or so, a lot of these programs have transitioned from government expenditures to tax incentives instead. The 1980s were the era of Reaganomics, when the Reagan administration proposed streamlining the tax system by removing a lot of incentives while also cutting taxes across the board.

President Ronald Reagan: [00:31:09] When I signed this bill into law, America will have the lowest marginal tax rates and the most modern tax code among major industrialized nations.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:19] But especially for businesses and the wealthiest Americans.

President Ronald Reagan: [00:31:23] One that encourages risk taking, innovation, and that old American spirit of enterprise.

Nick Capodice: [00:31:29] All right. So this is the so called trickle down economics.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:32] Yup. This was also called supply side economics. And the theory was that if you cut taxes for businesses and for people with wealth to invest, they would invest that money back into the US economy rather than pocketing it. And after a lot of this reform and these massive tax cuts, as we're coming out of the eighties, the political debate about how big the government should be and what it should pay for was centered on the value and logistics of welfare programs.

President Ronald Reagan: [00:32:01] More must be done to reduce poverty and dependency. And believe me, nothing is more important than welfare reform.

President Bill Clinton: [00:32:10] And more broadly, how we help people to lift themselves out of poverty and dependence. It's time to make welfare what it should be a second chance, not a way of life.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:19] President Bill Clinton ran on a policy of welfare reform when he was elected in 1992.

Eric Toder: [00:32:25] The incentives for retirement saving were greatly expanded. The Earned Income Credit was introduced and. Greatly expanded child credit was introduced. That was at the same time where aid for Families with Dependent Children was repealed, then welfare reform in 1996. So our system really moved more toward using the tax system for spending like programs.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:50] And Eric worked in the Clinton administration on some of the new policies that focused on taxes.

Eric Toder: [00:32:56] When I was in the Clinton administration and we decided for political reasons, we had to have a middle class tax cut. Well, I think the main view was essentially government spending has a bad name and politicians wanted to keep what the public perceived to be the size of the government low. And to provide more tax cuts, middle class tax cuts, other kinds of tax cuts. And so the way you could do this. While still providing government social benefits was to provide credits and so forth through the tax system. So if we lowered rates a little bit, it just costs too much money. You couldn't you couldn't lower rates across the board. So that said, we had to give some kind of credits or some benefits for people that talked about a child credit. And the number that Republicans said race was $500. So we said, well, we have to have $500. Can't be less than $500.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:02] He's talking about the Balanced Budget Act of 1993. The way that worked is that families could get a $500 tax credit for every child they had under the age of 17. So when you filled out your taxes, if you had a kid under age 17, you'd have 500 bucks taken off your tax bill.

Eric Toder: [00:34:19] Well, how do we save money if it's $500? Well, we have to phase it out if people's income is above a certain amount and maybe we want to limit it instead of with personal exemptions, which was 18, maybe we ought to limit it to people under 17. And you get the picture. You go through one contortion after another to hit these various targets for how you're changing the system. And those things just stay in their.

Nick Capodice: [00:34:54] I'm beginning to see how we ended up with such a complicated system, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:58] And this changed the experience of people who used these programs, in part because for both deductions and tax credits, there's a responsibility on you, the taxpayer, to make sure you fill out the right paperwork and get those incentives.

Beverly Moran: [00:35:12] When the Clinton administration decided that it was going to kill welfare as we know it, right, that was one of the phrases to get rid of welfare as we know it.

President Bill Clinton: [00:35:23] I have a plan to end welfare as we know it to break the cycle of welfare dependency.

Beverly Moran: [00:35:28] So you don't really have welfare offices anymore. People don't really use the word welfare. That all seems to disappear, but the money is still flowing to people, but now it's flowing to people through the tax system. If you hide it in the tax system, what you're doing is you're replacing social workers with H&R BLOCK.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:54] Like Eric said before, many of the things treated as apportionment, that is, the government sets up programs and funds them directly, were now offered as relief from your tax bill instead. And all of these things just keep being added to the tax code to make it work.

Eric Toder: [00:36:11] The system is much more complicated than it needs to be and could use an overhaul. I mean, there are you know, when you look at something like retirement plans, there are multiple different ways you can contribute. And for the average person to figure out how to navigate through these systems, even the the programs for low income people like the education credits, many people just don't use them because they can't figure out how to navigate them in order to find some things. We've made things way more complicated than it needs to.

Beverly Moran: [00:36:44] For a lot of people. It's terrifying. You know, they they don't have the time. They don't have access to the things that they would need. Even if they have access to the things that they would need, the things that they would need are crazy complicated. The IRS produces all these instruction booklets, right. That could take  - they're like War and Peace. They use all sorts of language that makes sense to tax insiders, but doesn't necessarily make sense to anyone else. And so either you're going to like, engage in that system and get the money that the government wants you to have buy or you're going to like not engage with that system and maybe end up in prison.

Nick Capodice: [00:37:45] Well, that's enough death and taxes today. This episode was written and produced by Christina Phillips with me, Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode. by the guy who wrote God Bless America, Irving Berlin, Jesse Gallagher, Raymond Grouse, Gridded, Blue Dot Sessions, Ketsa, Lee Rosevere, Lobo Loco. Nick Tum. Pictures of a Floating World, ProleteR, Scott McCloud, Cooper Canal, Bala and the Tax free musical Stylings of Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is produced by that station, who I hope is kicking in their 6.2% NHPR. New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm just kidding. Of course they are.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

What's Up With The U.S. Space Force?

Many Americans were taken by surprise when a whole new branch of the military - the U.S. Space Force - was launched during the Trump administration. But this branch of the military wasn't created on a whim, and its mission is more complicated than you might expect. 

On this episode, we unpack the history of the militarization of space, the creation of the Space Force, and ask the question: is it here to stay? 

Our guest is Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb, Associate Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

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Transcript

Note: This transcript was machine-generated and may contain errors

Nick Capodice: Hannah, did you know that each branch of the military has its own theme song?

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. They also have their own marching bands.

Nick Capodice: Six marching bands here. And I'm going to do a little quiz, Hannah; guess which branch this song belongs to?

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Yeah, That one's the Marines. It's very recognizable.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's the United States Marine Corps hymn. How about this one?

Hannah McCarthy: Believe it or not, I used to sing this a lot with my friends.

Nick Capodice: It was very popular in chorus.

Hannah McCarthy: It's very- that's the Navy.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, you got it. The name of it is Anchors Aweigh. And here's the last one.

Archive: (Music).

Hannah McCarthy: Ohhh. Well, it sounds like it's the Coast Guard?

Nick Capodice: No.

Hannah McCarthy: Is that the Army?

Nick Capodice:  Wrong. I'm going to give you a hint. The name of the song is Semper Supra, which is Latin for "always above".

Hannah McCarthy: Ok, the Air Force.

Nick Capodice: Nope. So close. This is the song for the newest branch of the U.S. military. The Space Force.

Archive: Music

Hannah McCarthy: I guess it does feel kind of John Williams-y, right? Like Star Wars-y.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. You are not the first person to make that observation.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: This is unconfirmed, but I did hear a rumor that John Williams, the composer behind Star Wars and a lot of other movies, had offered to do the theme for them, and they turned them down because they, you know, obviously, they wanted their own people to do it. But that's an unconfirmed rumor.

Nick Capodice:  That is Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: I am an associate professor of strategy and security studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, otherwise known as SASS.

Nick Capodice: Wendy is a self-proclaimed space geek and went to school near the Space Coast in Florida.

Archive: 5,4,3,2,1, ignition.

Hannah McCarthy: I love that it's called the Space Coast.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: I grew up watching space shuttles launch my whole life.

Nick Capodice: Wendy was teaching a course on space policy at the United States Air Force Academy when that Space Force theme song dropped.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: My memory associated with it is just hearing what these young future space leaders are really excited about and being able to sort of get in on the ground floor of something new that they're building and, you know, having to come up with a song and think about it and- and what does that tell the world and our citizens about what it is that we do?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Space is a very unseen, invisible sort of world. People don't know a lot about what actually goes on up in space. So all we have, all the references we have to go on are science fiction for the most part. So I think it's hard for the public not to see those connections, even if they were not deliberately trying to make them.

Archive: We'll call it the Space Force... Think of that Space Force.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: You know, it's hard when the public hears these things or sees something like the Space Force logo to disassociate and disconnect, you know, what you're doing in the real World Space Force from what they see on TVs and movies.

Archive: Space Force! Space Force! Look, look.As long as J.J. Abrams directs and Mark Hamill has a cameo, I'm in.

Hannah McCarthy:  I remember a lot of jokes about the Space Force on late night TV shows.

Archive:  But there's no threat in space. Who are we fighting? Satellites? A bunch of frozen monkeys? Elon Musk's convertible?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. The Space Force has been the butt of many a joke since then. But Wendy says that a lot of that has to do with what we didn't hear when the branch was unveiled. Perhaps because we were so wrapped up in how sort of sci-fi it sounded.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: A lot of the things you see on Star Trek or Star Wars or any other science fiction show- that's not really possible given the laws of physics today. So, you know, I think the public, just in general, needs to have a better understanding of what the reality is. We're not actually going up there and fighting pew pew with lightsabers and all of these things. But it is really important to our everyday lives, especially here in the United States. It's going to get more important as the years go on. We all need to have a better appreciation for it and understand the realities and what can and can't be done there. So again, you know, we're not going to be fighting. We're not going to send the Space Force to plant the flag on- the Space Force flag on the moon and take over the moon. That's not happening.

Nick Capodice: This is civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: And today we're going to take a look at the United States Space Force, our newest branch of the military. We're going to clear up what the Space Force is actually doing, why it was formed, and who is being recruited for it. And I have to admit, Hannah, like a lot of people, I didn't really get it when the Space Force was created. Like, is this whole other branch of the military even necessary when we already have the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. And not to mention, isn't space covered by NASA exclusively?

Hannah McCarthy: So is the Space Force doing brand new things, or is it taking on responsibilities that other branches and departments were doing? Because creating a new military branch, that is a big deal. I mean, it's got to be expensive.

Nick Capodice: We are going to get into all of that. But first, Hannah, I want you to think about our military branches. So when you think about the Navy, you think about its role in fighting and protecting territory in the sea. And the Army, you think about land forces. And here's where Wendy says the Space Force fits in.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: They do have a really important purpose to serve in protecting what we do have there and making sure that the United States is able to access an area that has become vitally important to each and every one of us.

Hannah McCarthy: Wendy mentions protecting what we have out in space. What exactly needs protecting?

Nick Capodice: Have you ever thought, Hannah, about space as a militarized zone?

Hannah McCarthy: Only in the context of like Star Trek.

Archive: We're venting plasma.

Archive: Reroute power to aft shields and return fire.

Archive: You're just prolonging the inevitable.

Archive: We've defeated the Borg before. We'll do it again.

Archive:  Not this time.

Nick Capodice: Well, in the real world, it didn't really used to be considered a militarized zone until human technology reached it. And the technology that is there now, a lot of it relies on and relates to the military.

Archive: At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Army's Jupiter-C rocket is ready for America's second attempt to launch a space satellite. No relation to the IRBM-Jupiter.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: We say that space is militarized because we use space for military purposes.

Nick Capodice: The United States Space Forces stated mission is to, quote, "conduct global space operations that enhance the way our joint and coalition forces fight, while also offering decision-makers military options to achieve national objectives. So in practical terms, Hannah, the Space Force's job is to protect our access to space and to operate and defend military satellites and their ground operations.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Since the very beginning, since the Soviet Union launched its first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957- the Soviet Union and the United States have known that space is important for military purposes.

Nick Capodice: Military purposes being things like intelligence gathering, surveillance and communications.

Archive: The Soviet Sputnik beep beeped its way across the sky. The reaction was one of astonishment and concern. For it was now known that a potential enemy was at least temporarily ahead in developing means for space travel.

Nick Capodice: After the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite launch in human history, America was in shock. Right?

Hannah McCarthy: Right. Because it wasn't just that Russia was our rival. Right? It's also that the occasionally self-proclaimed "greatest nation on earth" could not understand how Russia could have beat us into space.

Nick Capodice: Exactly. Many of Russia's claims of military and technological superiority had been sort of ignored up to that point.

Archive: Russia has in recent months been threatening nations who grant bases to America. Those threats have not been taken very seriously. But now the world knows that it took a far more powerful projectile than America possesses to push that satellite into its orbit in space.

Nick Capodice: But Americans could no longer ignore it when another superpower had the capability to launch rockets into orbit around the Earth. So the United States ramped up its space program and engaged the Soviet Union in a space race. With each side trying to one-up each other and tech and military hardware.

Archive: Today, a new moon is in the sky, a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket. Here, an artist's conception of how the feat was accomplished. A three stage rocket-

Hannah McCarthy: Wait a minute. They called Sputnik a moon?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. Very quickly Hannah let me define the word satellite. Satellite is really just an object that circles a larger object, like a moon circling a planet. So a moon is a natural satellite.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, yeah. And, of course, there are artificial satellites, machines made by humans and launched into space.

Nick Capodice: Yes. And just like that Sputnik launch, we still use rockets to launch satellites into orbit. Some satellites are the size of a school bus or a hippo like the GOES 15, which is a weather satellite launched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But some satellites are the size of a lunchbox. They can hitch rides into orbit on rockets whose main objectives are other missions. For instance, delivering supplies to the ISS, the International Space Station. And the cost of manufacturing. A satellite has dropped dramatically. So, more and more of them are being launched, both by global government agencies and private corporations. And these satellites serve a variety of purposes. As Wendy mentioned, a lot of them are military in nature. But even if you aren't taking spy photographs of Russia, you are benefiting from satellites.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: It's very hard to think about something that we do on a daily basis that isn't affected by space. When you go to the ATM and take money out that- you're using a satellite to make that withdrawal. When you go to the gas station, you're- and you pay at the pump, you're using a satellite to make that payment. Many of the day-to-day economic transactions we make are supported by these space-based systems. And so the fear over the past couple of years is, as we have come to depend more and more on these space-based systems, other countries see that and can potentially threaten our dependence by shooting down satellites. And so that would be a very bad day.

Archive: This morning outrage from U.S. officials after Russia carried out a missile test early Monday, firing an anti-satellite missile into space.

Archive: We were recently informed of a satellite breakup and need to have you guys start reviewing the safe haven procedure. It's nine decimal two one.

Archive: Obliterating one of its own satellites and creating a vast debris field that's now orbiting Earth.

Archive: At least the occurrence is out of control to have a conversation on dragon the ground about-

Nick Capodice: But the value of our satellites goes way beyond how we pay for stuff and move money around. They are the reason, Hannah, we can reach in our pocket and see where we are and how we're going to get where we're going. Because 31 satellites make up what is called the Global Positioning System, G.P.S..

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: G.p.s. is one of these things that I think we all sort of take for granted because we're using that information on our phone nearly every day.

Hannah McCarthy: I have to confess, I almost entirely depend on a map app on my phone, like, I can get around my hometown, but that's kind of it.

Archive: In two miles Hannah make a right on navigation-dependent Boulevard.

Nick Capodice: And those GPS satellites have been important to the military long before the creation of the Space Force. Quick interesting fact The network of global positioning satellites orbiting the Earth was developed by the Air Force in the late 1970s and used to be called NAVSTAR. The mapping technology was first made available for civilians in 1983, when President Reagan authorized its use by commercial airlines. The first consumer GPS devices came in the market in 1989, but the GPS satellites are still owned by the government and operated by the Space Force. But here's the thing, Hannah, there's something else those GPS satellites do that is vitally important. They provide incredibly precise timing data.

Hannah McCarthy: Timing?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. So each GPS satellite has an ultra precise atomic clock on board that continuously sends out what time it is according to that clock. This precise timing is used in financial transactions and by institutions around the world.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: You trade a stock, let's say, you want to buy it at the price it is at that very moment and not 5 minutes from now, not 5 minutes ago. So they use these ultra-precise timing signals to make these transactions and make them happen and make them match up. We also use these same signals for things like emergency services. If you think about how often we're making economic transactions on a daily basis, imagine what happens if you lose that capability. Many of us in society today don't carry a lot of cash. If GPS goes down, you're not going to get cash out of the ATM. You're not going to be able to use your credit cards or make financial transactions. In the past, where there have been errors in the timing signals of GPS satellites, emergency services have been unable to get signals and know where to go or know that they need to go somewhere.

Hannah McCarthy: So there are a bunch of extremely important and expensive pieces of equipment orbiting above us in space, and a lot of them have to do with supporting the military. But a lot of the value of these satellites is in making the modern world run. So my question is, given that collective value, is this the first time that our government has considered making a military branch to protect all this important stuff in space?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, the idea of having a military force for space came long before the creation of the Space Force. Over the years, many leaders in Congress and the military have considered consolidating space operations. There was talk of a military space service in the late 1950s. President Ronald Reagan also toyed with the idea. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted to consolidate space operations, but then those plans were sidelined by 9-11. Wendy said that over the past couple of decades, members of Congress started pushing for more proactive defense of our space based assets. And the Trump administration ran with it.

Archive: You know, I was saying it the other day- because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said, maybe we need a new force. We'll call it the Space Force. And I was not really serious. And then I said, What a great idea. Maybe we'll have to do that. That could happen.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb:  The president's support for this was sort of the culmination, the final point of this movement, this push to do it, this recognition that space is really important and really fragile. And we really need to think seriously about how we protect what it is we're doing in space.

Hannah McCarthy: Who was in charge of that protection before the Space Force was created?

Nick Capodice: The responsibility was shared. Before the Space Force, The Air Force was in charge of protecting and maintaining military satellites, and NASA was in charge of its own equipment in space. And the other branches, like the Army and the Navy, have recently turned over all of their military satellite communications to the Space Force as well.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, earlier, you mentioned that it wasn't just military satellites orbiting the Earth. I know a lot of US corporations have equipment up in space, too. Does the Space Force have any interaction with those satellites? Do they protect them or monitor them? You know, kind of like how the Coast Guard has both military and civil jurisdiction when it comes to waterways and boats?

Nick Capodice: Well, that's not part of their stated mission today. But, Wendy says it's actually not clear what role the Space Force could play in the future. It's possible.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb:  There are very few rules of the road when it comes to operating in space. And I think a lot of that's going to depend on whether the companies themselves want the protection of the Space Force or not. Some companies might say, "listen, it's not- you know, our satellite isn't worth a lot. We'll launch another one. Don't bother." I- because they don't want to get involved in the conflict. So you can imagine, like you might have a company like Planet, which provides remote imaging services. So they have a fleet of satellites up in space and taking pictures of the Earth, oftentimes with very good image quality. And let's say they are under threat of attack. They might not want the Space Force to step in because, you know, maybe that would just bring more threat to their satellite versus just sort of leaving it alone. I think a lot of it would also depend on the type of threat. And there's different ways to attack things in space. You can do it obviously physically by shooting it down essentially, or you can do it electromagnetically by blinding it or lasing it. So there's different types of sort of weapons in that sense. So I think a lot of it depends. A lot of it is unclear. The companies are under no requirement to tell anybody they're under attack. And even then they might not know they're under attack because it's very difficult to know what's going on up in space.

Nick Capodice: But this points to one of the reasons the Space Force was seen by a lot of people as needed in the first place. There is a lot of stuff up there military satellites, corporate satellites, space junk, a ton of space junk. That's the debris left by us in space when things break or are just abandoned. Aside from military threats, space is simply becoming more and more crowded. So it's a riskier place to operate. And that might require a dedicated branch of experts.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Maybe we need a service that is specifically dedicated to the protection and defense of our space based systems and our access to space, and that perhaps having a group of specialists and people who are really knowledgeable about space might be the better way to do that.

Hannah McCarthy: I would assume that there was quite a bit of conversation and debate about this, right, Because you can't just go ahead and create a whole new branch of the military without some push and pull.

Archive: The committee meeting will be come to order.

Archive: I'm like the chairman. I'm genuinely undecided, although as you can tell, I'm skeptical. I don't think it's broken. I think you're doing a good job. Why are we going to fix it?

Archive: So, Senator, I think we have been doing a good job, but we've been doing a good job in an environment where space has not been contested.

Hannah McCarthy: Given that the Space Force does indeed exist today, this was obviously resolved. But how did it get done?

Nick Capodice: Like so many things are resolved in politics, negotiation. In December of 2019, Congress was working on a new defense spending bill the Republicans wanted to include in that bill the creation of the Space Force, which the Democrats opposed, and the Democrats wanted to include paid family leave for government employees, which the Republicans opposed.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: And so, the space Force ended up as this bargaining chip. The Republican Party wanted the space force, the Democrats wanted paid family leave. And so they sort of traded it at the end of the day. I don't say that to take anything away from the Space Force, because saying that might say that might sound sort of glib and that it was a trade- they got it because of a trade. But I think it's also a reflection of, you know, very real political realities that we have in the country today. Whether you- whether a policy move is going to be good for national security or not, it has very real implications. And you're going to spend more money on space. Well, then maybe the other party is going to say, "well, let's spend some more money on this area." So I think it's very much par for the course, so to speak, with- with what we see in government today. And it doesn't make the Space Force anything less than what it is. But it- I think it acknowledges the very real political reality that we face today in the United States, having the political system and the party system that we do.

Nick Capodice: The establishment of the Space Force was ultimately included in the $738 billion defense spending bill. And with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act on December 20th, 2019, the US launched that shiny new military branch. The Space Force was born.

Archive: Today also marks another landmark achievement as we officially inaugurate the newest branch of our military. It's called the Space Force.

Hannah McCarthy: Now starting a brand new military branch, how does the government go about that? You've got a whole chain of command that has to be established, command centers. You have to build buildings, among other things, I would assume. How did it all work?

Nick Capodice: I shall tell you all about the intricacies of branch building, Hannah, right after this quick break. But first, do you know how to tell if you're wishing on a star or a GPS satellite?

Hannah McCarthy: Honestly, I have always wondered that because I take my wishes very seriously.

Nick Capodice: That's the sort of stuff we put in our civics 101 newsletter, Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks and you're going to love it. Sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org.

Archive: According to regulations

Archive: According to regulations

Archive: And the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Archive: The Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Archive: So help me God.

Archive: So help me God.

Archive: Congratulations and welcome to the United States Space Force.

Nick Capodice: We're back. You're listening to Civics 101 and we are talking about the Space Force and all the work that needs to be done when a brand new branch of the military is established like this one was in 2019.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, before the break, Nick, I asked you a pretty big question. How do you create a whole new arm of the military from scratch? How was the Space Force created?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, so similar to how the Marine Corps is organized under the Department of the Navy, which also oversees the United States Navy. The Space Force is organized under the Department of the Air Force as a, quote, "separate but co-equal branch along with the US Air Force."

Hannah McCarthy: How big is the force? Does co-equal mean it's the same size as the Air Force?

Nick Capodice: Absolutely not. Not at all. Of the approximately three hundred and thirty thousand active duty air force department military personnel, only about eighty four hundred are in the space force.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: It makes it the smallest service. Even aside from the Marine Corps, which had been the smallest service to date.

Nick Capodice: And that is Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb, again.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: One of the concerns when they created the Space Force was that you would create too much bureaucracy, too much organization and too much duplication of effort. And so one of the things that they have really worked hard is to keep the organization as small, flat, fast and efficient as possible. To sort of avoid some of those concerns. So I don't think there's necessarily any political appetite to enlarge that in the near future. Of course, barring something happening, if something happens and we find out, "wow, we really need to be doing more." You can imagine a situation where we might start to enlarge what the Space Force is doing and give them more people to do that. But I think for the most part it's going to stay relatively small.

Nick Capodice: Once the newly created US Space Force had indeed achieved liftoff, there was a lot of work to do to keep that bird in the air, so to speak. There were the monumental tasks of organizing the branch, recruiting skilled active-duty Air Force personnel and civilians. And of course, branding. And branding is important. Military folks know this, every branch has its own singular identity, and the Space Force needed one too.

Hannah McCarthy: Branding like a theme song?

Nick Capodice: Exactly. And also sleek new uniforms, a memorable symbol, a motto. These are all important parts of the Space Force's identity and brand. And while these may seem like little details to civilians, they all play a pretty big role in shaping the culture and character of the Space Force as a vital part of the U.S. military Space Force.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. So here's my question.

Nick Capodice: Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: Members who serve in different military branches are called different things. In the Army You've got soldiers. In the Navy, you've got sailors. And the Marines, You're called a marine. What do they call the personnel within the Space Force?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Again, this was something that the Space Force had to take a new eye to. In the Air Force, we actually call members of the Air Force, "airmen" not necessarily gender inclusive. And so, you know, I think the Space Force wanted to be sensitive to being gender inclusive, but also find a name that spoke to what it is that they intend to do. They did take some suggestions from the public about what to call members of the Space Force.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, boy. So one of these open to the public things?

Nick Capodice: Yeah

Hannah McCarthy:  Like, kind of, when we asked grade school students to design quarters. My quarter design was not accepted by the state of Massachusetts, by the way. What kinds of names did they get?

Nick Capodice: I think there was a paucity of sort of Boaty Mcboatface jokes, but there were a lot of fun submissions. My favorites were the Thunder Children and Mars Bars. But Wendy says there was a common theme in many of the public's suggestions.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Many of them did end up being sci-fi inspired in many ways. And I think that again, was another place where the Space Force tried to sort of separate out the science fiction from the fact. Obviously, when you hear the term guardians, you might think Guardians of the Galaxy. But I think the- the choice of the name Guardian really says what it is they want to do. They don't want to get actively involved in a war unless they have to. Their job is to guard. Guard our assets, guard our way of life, guard our access to space from any potential threat. And so I think that really is descriptive of what it is the Space Force hopes to do and what they see their mission as.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. Now, you said earlier that. The Space Force brought in active service members. And you mentioned recruitment. So where are these new guardians coming from? Like, are they being wooed away from other jobs in, say, NASA or even civilian jobs that have to do with space, like working with corporate satellites?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: The core of the new Space Force has been taken from the Air Force. And a lot of the space units that the Air Force was operating, a lot of the space professionals that the Air Force already had. The other services also had some space professionals and space systems. And so over the past couple of years, the Space Force has started to sort of consolidate a lot of the military space operations under their umbrella.

Hannah McCarthy: So to recap, the Space Force was formed to pull together a bunch of things that other branches, but primarily the Air Force, were in charge of before. They are essentially maintaining and protecting military satellites and the military access to space. And this includes potential attacks, collisions with space junk, communications. Are they doing anything else?

Nick Capodice: Well, one of the most important things is the support they're providing to all the other branches of the military, not just satellite operations, but communications, intelligence, navigation capabilities and missile defense. But they're not holding a total monopoly on government operations in space. Hannah have you ever heard of the National Reconnaissance Office, the NRO?

Hannah McCarthy: I have not. What is that?

Nick Capodice: The NRO was a highly, highly classified office during the Cold War that only became declassified in the 1990s. They run a lot of space based systems for the wider intelligence community. That's going to stay its own organization separate from the Space Force. And of course, NASA is still overseeing science and technology related to space and space exploration. And private corporations with a footprint in space aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: The civilian companies like Space X, Blue Origin will still be there. Obviously, the Space Force has looked to recruit from those companies and sort of bring in these working professionals who already have large areas of knowledge.

Nick Capodice: Wendy said that the Space Force has often sent its personnel to work with commercial companies in order to foster collaboration. There's a big focus on these private public partnerships, as well as international governmental relationships, which makes sense considering the diverse international mix of satellites orbiting our planet right now.

Hannah McCarthy: So I know that the Space Force falls under the Department of the Air Force and is this, quote, separate but co-equal branch with the Air Force. But given that the Space Force is so new, what is that relationship like?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: So there's still a relationship there between the Air Force and the Space Force. And in fact, the Air Force is still going to provide many of the support services for the Space Force. So over the past couple of years, we've renamed some Air Force bases to be Space Force bases. So Patrick Air Force Base, down near the Kennedy Space Center, used to be called Patrick Air Force Base. It's now called Patrick Space Force Base.

Nick Capodice: As of this taping, there are six main Space Force bases and seven smaller stations. There's even a base called Space Base Delta One, just a few miles from where we are taping this very podcast. It's in New Boston, New Hampshire.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: So we've broken out a lot of the space specific operations to be the purview of the Space Force. But the Air Force is still helping a lot in terms of providing some of those foundational things like base security that they're not necessarily big enough to do on their own. It's kind of, I guess, a sibling like relationship. we're at, right at the moment, between the Air Force and the Space Force.

Hannah McCarthy: What is training like for these guardians? Does the Space Force have a boot camp?

Nick Capodice: More like a space camp.

Hannah McCarthy: I always wanted to go to space camp. Looked so cool.

Nick Capodice: Space camp?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: We don't have astronauts going into space. They're not necessarily going into a war zone to fight. But we still want to make sure that they're healthy. There is a Space Force boot camp or basic training that they're running that they have broken out and they are currently the Space Force is currently working to separate their out their own system of professional military education and enlisted education to separate that out from the Air Force.

Nick Capodice: Wendy said guardians won't necessarily be going into battle like an Army soldier or Marine would, but that doesn't mean they're not doing dangerous work.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Many of them do get deployed and sent down range to operate satellite communications links and other valuable on the ground assets. So, you know, and being a military service, they still do have standards that they need to meet. However, the Space Force has really thought long and hard about what those requirements should be. And so they are looking to change it somewhat from the traditional military physical requirements that you would think of. They've been trying to take a more holistic attitude not just to physical fitness, but to health and wellness and to really encourage their guardians to have a a lifestyle of being fit. And so they're working on standards that that talk more about how much physical activity a guardian should be getting on a regular basis. So I think the Space Force has really been trying to think about how they might do things differently, especially in an era where we have a lot of wearables and technology that can look at it, what we're doing over time. So, you know, and it's a very interesting question. We don't have astronauts going into space. They're not necessarily going into a war zone to fight, but we still want to make sure that they're healthy.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Got it. But I cannot help but think about the brain training. I mean, we're talking about working on the ground with equipment in space that is highly scientific, esoteric stuff. How are the Guardian recruits being trained for that?

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: It's very hard to visualize sometimes. I think the the outer space environment. But you have these very large, sometimes very large satellites, and sometimes very small satellites, moving at incredible speeds in different directions, at different orbital inclinations. And orbital trajectories are just crazy. And so, you know, I think the Space Force has been really thinking hard about, well, "how do we train to operate and work in an environment that we can't necessarily be in all the time?"

Nick Capodice: Wendy says that the Space Force is looking into cutting edge technologies like virtual reality headsets with 3-D replicas of satellites, space stations and mission control rooms.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: You know, our satellites aren't necessarily set up for instant servicing. If something goes wrong with the satellite, you don't just send up a repair person. So, yeah, there's just different ways of operating in space that we have to learn and figure out and use the best tools to our advantage when you can't really get there. And we're not really anticipating sending guardians into space in the near future either.

Hannah McCarthy: I would assume that building a virtual reality space station is more affordable than sending someone into space, but I bet it doesn't come cheap.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's all pretty pricey. The 2023 budget bill passed for the Space Force was $26.2 billion. That's more than a 70% increase over their 2022 budget. And here's a staggering statistic that never fails to shock me. The United States comprises about 40% of the world's total military spending. That's more than the next nine countries combined. And with this highly specific branch addition, that number's going to keep going up. But these satellite and space programs already existed and already were expensive. They were just spread out under other agencies. And now with them being consolidated into one place, this funding could theoretically be harder to cut.

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: And it sounds like a lot. And it is it's actually a little bit more than what NASA gets. But, you know, compared to the other services, it is rather small. And this, I think, has been a concern to people who support the Space Force, because one of the things about what the Space Force does is it supports the other services. It supports everything else the Army does, the Navy does, the Marine Corps does by providing communication, by providing missile warning services, by providing remote sensing. You know, this is one of these things that the Space force has tried to argue that, like we need to get more money to do these things for the other services. It's not the U.S. Space Force doing it for the US Space Force sake. It's the Space Force doing it for the Armys sake.For the Marines sake. The Navy sake, or the Air Forces sake.

Hannah McCarthy: Is there a chance that political winds will shift and Congress could decide, you know, "let's just dismantle the Space Force, split the responsibilities back up under different branches and programs."

Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb: Listen, anything's possible. I'm never going to say never. But as someone who has studied bureaucracies, government bureaucracies, once one is created, it's very hard to kill it. It never really goes away. It might become morph into something else and change, but it never really goes away. But I think now that the Space Force is an organization, it's been around for three years now. It has people who support it. It has a budget line. It has facilities that they're starting to create. It makes it even harder to stop. So I think as as an agency gets older, it just gets even harder to kill. Even if a new administration came into office after the 2024 election, that means you're still going to have a space force that's been around for several years, and that's going to be even harder to kill than it would be now or two years ago.

Nick Capodice: Well, that is it for the Space Force here on Civics 101. This episode is created by our producer, Jacqui Fulton, with Rebecca Lavoie, Hannah McCarthy, and me, Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Music in this episode by Larry Poppins, Bonsai Needle Mouse Rubik's Cube, Rubio's Lupus Knocked Silver Maple Bio Unit, Anissa Orchestra, Nando and such military musical entities as the United States Navy band, the President's own US Marine Band and the United States Air Force Band. And last but never, never least, Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. Blast off.

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The Government and Housing: One City's Story

Atlanta was the first city to erect public housing in the United States. It started with Techwood Homes, an all-white development that went up in 1936. Sixty years later it would be torn down, along with others of the now-neglected developments that were the promise of FDR's New Deal. Akira Drake Rodriguez leads us through the story of how residents of public housing in Atlanta worked with, against and despite housing policy in their city.

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Transcript

Hannah McCarthy: Hi there. This is part two of a two parter on federal housing in the United States. And while you can listen to it all by its lonesome, I do recommend that you hit pause. Go back and listen to part one on housing policy in the US. The federal government has not always been involved in housing, but once it got involved, the policies that it adopted shaped housing and home ownership in drastic ways. Listen to that one to help you better understand what we're about to talk about in part two, Housing and Atlanta, Georgia.

Nick Capodice: Because Atlanta had the first public housing, right.

Hannah McCarthy: The very first 1936 Techwood Homes. The federal government's answer to both houselessness and what it saw as insufficient housing, what it would call slums in the United States. And just in case you do skip part one, I'll go ahead and not bury the lead. Techwood Homes was an all white housing development. Atlanta [00:01:00] also built all black housing developments, but public housing was segregated as a matter of policy. So keep that in mind. Let's get into it. This is civics one on one. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And to talk about public housing in general is nearly impossible. There are so many stories, so many different approaches and shifts across the country. I am choosing Atlanta because of the story that public housing residents created in that city. It's a story that Akira Drake Rodriguez, who we met in part one.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: I'm assistant professor of city and regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design.

Hannah McCarthy: Describes in her book Diverging Space for Deviance.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: So in terms of piloting public housing policies, administration and programs, and sort of distributing them out across the country, certainly Atlanta has a very sort of dominating role.

Hannah McCarthy: So before we can dive into the housing itself, it's important to know what Atlanta looked [00:02:00] like as public housing first went up in that city and not just housing wise, but politically.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: So after Reconstruction, Atlanta did elect some black representatives to city council, to the board. However, that was immediately repealed with the implementation of this white primary in the 1890s, where effectively the Democratic Party as a private institution was allowed to engage in race based discrimination. So this was not protected under any sort of constitutional amendment. This was simply the way of life. And this was a very sort of popular play of Southern states post reconstruction. So you see it in Texas and Louisiana and Georgia. And this way, primary existed until 1946 when it was repealed by the Georgia Supreme Court. And you start to see this like increase in black descriptive representation as a result. However, until that point, this sort of like geography [00:03:00] of black Atlanta was a very constrained.

Hannah McCarthy: Now black Atlantans made up around 32% of the population of Atlanta, but resided on only about 16% of the land.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: And so they were unable to get, you know, sidewalks, landfills, trash service, bus service, really any sort of public goods and services because they were effectively barred from voting.

Nick Capodice: Okay. I don't think I even knew about the white primary as an even if black Atlantans can technically vote in the general election, they weren't allowed to decide who they would ultimately be voting for.

Hannah McCarthy: Right. Because it isn't the government who is in charge of the primary, it's the parties. So when a whole demographic is prevented from selecting their choice candidate, when a whole group is not allowed to say we want this politician because we believe that this politician will take care of us, a couple of things happen. One, politicians are simply not courting that demographics vote. That [00:04:00] demographic is seen as less politically consequential to that means that that demographic is actually less likely to be taken care of as and have city resources like trash collection and street maintenance in the areas that they occupy. And that is exactly what happened in Atlanta with the all white primary when it came to what the black community actually received.

Nick Capodice: So you had neighborhoods that the city was not actually taking care of, full of people who did not have much political power. And of course, that lack of political power is part of the reason that the neighborhoods weren't well taken care of.

Hannah McCarthy: And at the beginning of the episode, I told you that Akira wrote a book. Its title is Diverging Space for Deviance, and I want to come back to that.

Nick Capodice: I did wonder about that title. Hana Deviant usually has sort of a negative connotation.

Hannah McCarthy: In this case. It's a term that Akira found in this political science article from the 1980s. Akira is specifically talking about political deviance [00:05:00] here, which is a term I had never heard before. By that she means people who deviate, who don't fit a certain standard of political behavior, who maybe don't vote as often, whose demographic is passed over in the political sphere, whose lives politicians don't feel like they need to represent.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: The deviant category, which was, you know, unemployed people who deal with substance abuse, people who are, you know, single mothers, for example. Those are considered deviants. Especially because they do not participate politically in the same way. So these are not the most engaged voters. These are not the targets of political ads and campaigns. And so they are both marginalized in public policy, but also severely underrepresented.

Hannah McCarthy: We're going to come back to this idea of the political deviant [00:06:00] right after a quick break. But before we do, just a reminder that civics one on one also has a newsletter, because let me tell you, we cannot fit everything into these episodes. We need somewhere else for all of the information to go. If you were a fan of trivia and ephemera, I highly recommend that you subscribe to that newsletter at civics101podcast.org. It's free, it's fun. It never has any ads, and we're not there to clog your inbox up. We're just there to talk. Again, you can subscribe at civics101podcast.org. We're back. This is civics one on one. And we're talking about public housing in Atlanta, Georgia. Right before the break, Akira was describing to us this notion of political deviance. And here's why. Atlanta is such an interesting city to look at when it comes to public housing and its segregationist roots. Because Akira noticed something about a, quote, deviant population in the all black housing developments in Atlanta.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: I sort of dug deeper [00:07:00] into the history of tenant organizations and the role they played in sort of taking the politically deviant public housing resident into a more sort of politically active and knowledgeable person. And so this was the idea was to kind of understand how the politics of public housing changed over the course of the 20th century. And so what I was really more interested in was the sort of political activism and organizing of tenants over time and how that changed based on public housing policy.

Nick Capodice: Tenant organizations like when tenants come together to complain to the landlord about leaky pipes or what have you.

Hannah McCarthy: That's not how it started in Atlanta, though. That is where it ended up, just not where it started. Like Akira said, tenant organizing changed as housing policy changed. So, for example, the first all black public housing in Atlanta went up around the [00:08:00] same time as the first all white public housing in Atlanta. It was called university Homes and the relationship between the tenant organizations and the people managing these homes started out like this.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: They were allies out of the managers. And so because the managers depended on the tenants and vice versa to make public housing a viable program and policy in the United States, they did a lot of work together. They did a lot of programs, a lot of classes, a lot of political education, a lot of, you know, gendered activities like, you know, ROTC and and small domestic classes for women, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, etc.. To me, it was really important to study this history of public housing in Atlanta, because the first black public housing development opened in 1937 before the white primary had ended. And so they weren't able [00:09:00] to get streetlights, they weren't able to get sidewalks, they were able to get like good housing. They were able to get housing that was actually managed by black people. So there was no white landlord. There were only black housing managers and staff.

Nick Capodice: So before the white primary had ended, meaning that black voters still could not select their choice candidates, they could not get proper representation. But inside of this all black public housing, there was this kind of microcosm of power.

Hannah McCarthy: But there's a limit here, and that limit is about who is actually allowed into these public housing communities.

Nick Capodice: There were rules about who was and was not allowed to live in public housing.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Yeah. So again, in the beginning, the New Deal policies for public housing were very conservative. And so you needed a minimum income, you needed a maximum income, you needed to have your employment verified. Someone would come to your house and conduct an interview. They were checking [00:10:00] references. And so it was it was quite difficult actually, to get access in to public housing. And once you're kind of family situation changed, whether you lost your job or you were even widowed or divorced, you were evicted from the from the housing development.

Nick Capodice: I just have to ask, what is with this widowed and divorced thing? Wouldn't people who are potentially losing the income of a partner need assistance all the more?

Hannah McCarthy: All right. Here is what you've got to understand about public housing. It is not actually for all members of the public, and the qualifiers are not as straightforward as a certain level of income. Some limitations that continue to exist to this day are based on whether or not you've been arrested or if you have a criminal conviction. I should also clarify that while it is overseen and funded by the federal government, public housing is run by local housing authority. So there are variations in how things are [00:11:00] done. But when things first got started in Atlanta, there were these bi racial advisory committees for public housing made up of the city's elites, and they had certain ideas about certain populations.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: They were all sort of subscribing to the same sorts of politics, namely what we call racial uplift politics. We kind of look at the minutes of these local advisory committees. There was a lot of discussion about, you know, we should set rents lower for the black developments because even though there are two adults working, that's still less than the wages of a white male earner in the white public housing developments, they were allowing for higher maximum incomes because they realized that because of the racialization of the kind of emerging mortgage industry, there actually wasn't a lot of financing, a lot of land available [00:12:00] for black private homeownership. And so they kind of made these exceptions for black families.

Nick Capodice: So the committee recognized that because of racist and segregationist policies in the workplace and in the housing market. That it would be reasonable to have lower rents in all black public housing, both because of lower income and because even families who should be able to buy a home couldn't obtain mortgages.

Hannah McCarthy: And it wasn't just about being reasonable. It was about uplifting black families. And this, by the way, was a specific motivation on the part of some educated, prosperous, influential black Americans in this era. There was a sense of responsibility for the well-being and civil and social elevation of black Americans generally. But what will being actually looked like could be limited. So lower rents for black families. Agreed.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: But then when it came time for [00:13:00] the sort of allowances around the number of individuals in the unit.

Hannah McCarthy: Meaning how many people can live in an apartment and in what situations.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: The woman named Florence Reed kind of makes this point like, Hey, what about teachers? They're single. They have to be single. That's sort of the law at the time. They should be allowed to you know, they should be the exception. That shouldn't just be about full families. It should be about these single women. Or at least allow for a single woman to reside with the family, as is often the case with people who take on caretaking duties in order to get room and board.

Nick Capodice: And we definitely need to talk about compulsory singledom for teachers in a future episode. But back to this woman, Florence Reed. She's basically saying that we should figure out an exception for single low wage earning women as well.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: And this was struck down. This was going to be according to a lot of the black men on the advisory committee. That would be the [00:14:00] end of the black family. That would create too much disorganization and chaos in the black family. So although they were advocating for a lot of the unique sort of economic and labor and class issues, they were not always so forgiving when it came to gender or other forms of deviance.

Nick Capodice: There's that word deviance again. So single women are a politically deviant population at this time.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Even when public housing was fully funded was really just for like people who couldn't afford to buy a house. And you had to be working. It had to be, you know, like literally you get sick and you lose your job and they evict you from public housing back in the day. So it was always just like really kind of like morality was like, was it? And it wasn't about like, caring compassion. It was about, like, judgment. Right? Like you're not deserving enough of this benefit. You're not contributing to the economy, so you're not going to get any money [00:15:00] in the end. You're not going to be able to benefit.

Nick Capodice: So this housing program, which was designed to give homes to Americans who needed them, was also designed to exclude disenfranchized and vulnerable populations, in part because of these value judgments about who was deserving of public housing, who hit the moral or ethical brief.

Hannah McCarthy: Honestly, that in a nutshell, sometimes feels like the twisted history of federal financial assistance for low and no wage people and families in America. But let's get back to how people used their situation to get what they really needed. You've got these all black public housing developments with all sorts of resources for the community and not just the tenant community, but the surrounding black community as well.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: They put in a library, they put in one of the second public auditoriums in the city. And so literally the right to assemble comes through this public housing policy at once. The primary is deemed unconstitutional in 1946. [00:16:00] They are immediately registering voters in this auditorium and in this public housing development. So it starts off immediately as this sort of hotbed of political activism.

Hannah McCarthy: This new high density physical space ended up being crucial to political power in the community, specifically Akira found among single women.

Nick Capodice: But earlier, you said that this concept of a single woman in a public housing apartment was not the advisory committees idea of the right kind of family.

Hannah McCarthy: That started to shift with the 1949 Federal Housing Act, which was passed with the goal of providing a, quote, decent home and suitable living environment for every American family. As the country entered a post-World War two housing crisis, it's basically Harry Truman's expansion of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt started. Suburban areas boomed while cities were viewed as increasingly unsightly. [00:17:00] This was, by the way, 100% tied to increasingly white suburbs and black cities and racism. And the act included money for cities across the country to demolish their, quote unquote, slums.

James Baldwin: They were tearing down his house because San Francisco is engaging, as most northern cities now are engaged in something called urban renewal, which means moving Negroes out. It means Negro removal. That is what it means. And the federal government is it is an accomplice to this fact.

Nick Capodice: This was a nationwide program to demolish neighborhoods.

Hannah McCarthy: Which is not too terribly different from how the first public housing in Atlanta came to be. Teakwood and university homes were constructed where, quote, blighted neighborhoods had stood only a year before. The difference in this project, [00:18:00] which was billed as urban renewal, was that it was more widespread. Despite the pledge for more housing, the federal government also limited spending on housing infrastructure itself.

Nick Capodice: Infrastructure like the materials for the apartments themselves, cheaper material, shoddy or construction, etc..

Hannah McCarthy: Bingo. So you have more apartments, but not particularly well built apartments. Now, by the way, the 1949 Federal Housing Act included a provision that for every dwelling that was demolished, an affordable housing unit would be built. But that 1 to 1 construction did not exactly pan out. And then, of course, with the clearance of loads of black neighborhoods across the country, public housing saw an influx of new tenants, new tenants who joined tenant associations.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: And so you start to see the public housing development and particularly the tenant association change from being [00:19:00] kind of, you know, coupled households and male leadership and the tenant association to single parent households and more women leadership in these organizations.

Hannah McCarthy: And it is with this shift that Akira started to notice something powerful, this politically deviant population, black women, often single mothers, leveraging the power of their numbers to make gains for their communities.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Mary Sanford, he was the head of the Tenant Association and Perry Homes was very pivotal to getting subway service. And in Northwest Spur, where most of the public housing was concentrated, and Louise Whatley, who also kind of was tenant organizer at Carver Homes and other major development in the Northwest. Susie Laborde I write about her a lot. She was the organizer at Great Eight Homes, and she went to the White House and met with President [00:20:00] and started economic opportunity. Atlanta. Even Davis, who also met with Jimmy Carter and brought a lot of resources to East Lake Meadows in particular.

Nick Capodice: So you had these women who, because of housing policy, had needs that weren't being met. And so they pushed they pushed for better conditions. But it also sounds like those conditions didn't stop at the apartment gate, so to speak, because subway service, for example, is city infrastructure, like it might serve public housing, but it changes the actual landscape.

Hannah McCarthy: Exactly. They were attempting to bend their physical space to meet their needs. And then on that apartment level, there was a shift away from tenant associations being the allies of management to prove public housing a viable project. These women knew it was a viable project. They were living there. They were creating political power. What they needed was investment [00:21:00] in this viable program.

Archival: This project is 40 years old, the oldest one in the world, and it's also to the first one built and the largest one. And we have not gotten anything and it's gone down. The community building look like a shamble. What are you prepared.

Archival: To do to see that these things are taken care.

Archival: Of? Whatever action needs to be done, if we have to, whatever step we have to take farther to go, we we we are just tired. The people is really tired.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: They are like the pipes are leaking, There's vermin. You never built a sidewalks. You actually never built anything after you initially build this out. And so they started engaging in a lot of direct actions like protests and rent strikes and occupations as a way to express their disapproval, but also to show themselves as sort of independent political thinkers and actors. There was meaningful change and, you know, so they got [00:22:00] policies, they got grievance procedures, they got autonomy, they got greater sort of control.

Hannah McCarthy: These women represented what Akira calls black feminist spatial politics. They were motivated by the public housing policies that shaped their lives, and they in turn used the public housing space to create a space conducive to their lives and their needs. Or is it cure? Calls it building cities hospitable to the modern deviant. And then just as soon as these black feminist politics were truly gaining momentum.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: These sort of successes because of the timing of. Kind of correlate when when we see the federal government pulling back from funding public housing. And so again, and thinking about those earlier kind of like social constructions, a policy target as the, you know, tenants become less white and less married, [00:23:00] you start to see this sort of shift in how the government is approaching and thinking about public housing. It goes from kind of like a necessary steppingstone for the middle class to, again, this sort of housing of last resort and creating almost like a new slum.

Nick Capodice: Even though the whole point of these developments was to replace what city leaders designated as slums.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: They constantly like think of them as an eyesore. And it's actually pretty ironic or funny, or maybe both or neither, because these public housing developments were supposed to replace slums which were also maligned in the same way. So any time you have this sort of concentration of what I call deviance, but, you know, underemployed, you know, marginalized populations, vulnerable populations, a concentration of them and in substandard housing is considered a blight. Right. Is considered a scourge, not just for those who live [00:24:00] in it, but also for city leaders in particular.

Hannah McCarthy: Public housing was integrated with the 1968 Fair Housing Act. We talked about this earlier with Richard. Right. You could no longer segregate these homes into all white and all black. And while it took some time, the populations of places like Teakwood homes, the first ever and all white federal public housing development in Atlanta did eventually integrate. But this is also an era of the federal government pulling back. Five years into the Fair Housing Act, President Richard Nixon announced that this model of federally subsidized housing construction had essentially failed the new model one that he promised to be a lot less expensive for taxpayers would be to directly provide people with money to seek housing in the private market.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Tenants were very protective of their property and really just wanting greater investment.

Archival: When you have said that it's the government [00:25:00] got down, maybe it else. But I tell you what, you got some proud folks here and I'm just as proud as I am. If I lived in Sandy Springs and I tell you what, my home, my yards are just like those in Sandy Springs.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: And so, you know, the seventies and eighties are a rough time in urban policy. So federal government doesn't have any money. Cities definitely don't have any money. And so it is very, very difficult to get any new resources.

Hannah McCarthy: No money, by the way, because of a massive recession in the seventies. So the physical conditions are deteriorating, but the community and the space shaping power it created remained for as long as it could.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: All of them were really, really fierce advocates for public housing. They wanted to keep public housing. You know, maybe they wanted to change the shape of it, change the funding, change the population. But they were very sort of adamant that public [00:26:00] housing wasn't good and did not deserve to be demolished.

Hannah McCarthy: Eventually, though, they would be between the housing voucher program, which was appealing to many public housing tenants and the disinvestment of cities. This space for black feminist politics was about to crumble.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Literally, it was all kind of for naught. And so because of this very sort of constrained resource environment of austerity, you see these conservative politics emerge and eventually kind of contribute to the demise of public housing.

Hannah McCarthy: And then in 1990. Atlanta, Georgia, won the bid for the 1996 Olympics.

Archival: The 1996 Olympic Games to the city of Atlanta.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: So [00:27:00] the Olympics is kind of like the major catalysts, right? Investment is coming in. This is a mega event. The Atlanta Olympics was the first modern Olympics to turn a profit. They made $3 billion at the Olympics. And the goal was like, we absolutely cannot have this blight or the eyesore of public housing near our new stadium.

Hannah McCarthy: This was as straightforward as, Oh, no, If you drive toward the center of Atlanta along the freeway and glanced to the side, you'll see the sprawling eyesore. And that will not do for all of the visitors headed our way.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: And so the demolition discussions, the redevelopment discussions began in the early nineties, and they were demolishing public housing in Atlanta through the late 2010.

Archival: By this [00:28:00] time next year, all public housing projects in the city of Atlanta will be gone. The Atlanta Housing Authority says it's ahead of schedule in reaching its goal to be the first major city...

Hannah McCarthy: Check out our episode on the Olympics, by the way, for a clearer picture of what hosting the Olympics often does to cities and why it is not always positive. So there is this long, drawn out process of demolishing these developments. And I should mention, not every city demolished all of its old public housing stock. Many still exist in this country today, but Atlanta did.

Nick Capodice: But they had to replace it with something, right?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, a few years before the Olympics, the federal government launched a program called Hope six. It was designed to replace existing public housing with mixed income rentals. Smaller developments that are usually privately owned. Some of the apartments in these developments are rented at market value and others at a more affordable cost for qualifying low income renters. These low income apartments [00:29:00] can either be paid for with Section eight vouchers or are simply available because the government gives that private company a subsidy to provide affordable housing.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: When you privatize the management at lease of public housing, you're privatizing kind of like the leasing terms and leasing options, which means that you may meet the kind of like income requirement, but you have bad credit or you were arrested or, you know, you took a drug test and let's say you're disqualified or someone in your household hits these kind of strikes. And so that kind of lost a lot of population as well prior to you even demolishing them. They were doing a lot of what was called the one strike rule, which is if anyone was arrested in the household, you could be evicted. And so you see these like changes in welfare policy, changes in public housing policy, all sort of happening at the same time in the early nineties. So [00:30:00] the actual population that has to be kind of relocated or rehoused is shrinking every day.

Hannah McCarthy: So again, Nick, this is the Atlanta story, one of many public housing stories in the country. Atlanta's post Nixon housing era looks different from Boston's. Boston's looks different from San Francisco's, San Francisco's from Kansas Cities. But the Atlanta story is important because of what occurred in developments that would eventually be deemed a failure. Political power and attention achieved by a deviant group, in part because of the space they occupied. When that space was eliminated. So was their coalition.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: So I was reading a lot about these mixed income developments, and I noted how there were homeowner [00:31:00] associations to kind of advocate for the interest of the homeowners and the development. But there were no tenant organizations. And the reason for that was that a lot of the developers said that, what do you need a tenant organization for if, like you have a new apartment? Right. And so the idea was that the only reason that these tenant organizations existed was to complain about the property or complain to the landlord, and that was effectively ended.

Hannah McCarthy: I asked Akira for her one big takeaway from all of this research What should people learn from the story of what happened, if so briefly? Within Atlanta's original public housing.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Tenant associations are for more than just complaining about your landlord. They are literal spaces of working class politics, organizing and mobilization. And so they should be standardized everywhere and not just sort of [00:32:00] like this weird, archaic thing. So that would be my my one takeaway.

Hannah McCarthy: So the Atlanta story, you know, the why of telling it is not simply that it was the first for me in the context of federal public housing policy, a policy that was explicitly designed to segregate a policy that prohibited so many black Americans from securing a path to wealth, which, by the way, is the same thing as a path to political power and civic influence. That is why the Atlanta story and this last message of a is is so significant, so important because political power and civic influence happened anyway, both in spite of and because of these policies. This [00:33:00] episode is produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with help from Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Anemoia, Nul Tiel Records, Kesha, Xylo-Ziko, Experia and Chris Zabriskie. You can listen to part one of this two-parter on federal housing by going to our website, civics101podcast.org and clicking on episodes. It is there you will find all of the many, many other episodes that we have made, and you'll also have the opportunity to submit a question of your own. Part of our job is to answer them sometimes in an episode. Civics 101 [00:34:00] is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Government and Housing: Policy

"Public housing" did not exist prior to the Great Depression. So it wasn't until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal that the government had the chance to impose segregation at the highest level. The effects of segregation policy in housing continue to this day in the United States. Akira Drake Rodriguez and Richard Rothstein are our guides to how and why the government did it.

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Transcript

Hannah McCarthy: In the early 1990s, the city of Atlanta began a wide scale demolition project.

Archival: This is the day that many have dreamed of and others feared would eventually come. The first phase of.

Hannah McCarthy: Some of the first buildings to be razed were part of a federal housing development called Techwood Homes.

Archival: These apartments are very, very old and new, and they have to come in here constantly to keep them up. It's a danger to the tenants, some conditions.

Hannah McCarthy: And by the time these homes were demolished, they were considered blighted property. It's an official term. It's still used today to describe uninhabitable or dangerous places. And it wasn't just teakwood. Federal public housing, like it in Atlanta and across the country, had deteriorated. Broken elevators, broken lights, unreliable heat and hot water. Trash piling up in garbage chutes, boarded [00:01:00] up, apartment units, organized crime. This kind of public housing. Some said it had been a nice idea. It had offered hope.

Archival: Anyone that has pads in the high rise projects and looking in from the outside, it seemed like a beautiful home, a clean home and a lovely place to live in.

Hannah McCarthy: But it just hadn't worked out.

Archival: I live inside and I know there's some fear that I am living in.

Hannah McCarthy: So, Nick, I bring up Techwood in part because it wasn't just one of the first to come down. It was the first, as in the very first in the United States to go up.

Nick Capodice: This was the first ever public housing.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: So Atlanta has the first public housing in the country. Right. So Teakwood Homes in 1936, first public housing development that was federally financed. Locally administered.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Akira Rodriguez.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: An assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman [00:02:00] School of Design.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And this is part one of two on federal housing in the US. Later on, I'm going to talk about Teakwood and Atlanta because the story of what happened within that city's public housing can teach us a lot about people, space and power. But first, we need to understand what we talk about when we talk about federal public housing. That is part one housing policy.

Archival: The story of Homes How people live is the story of the foundation on which a nation is built.

Nick Capodice: Very quickly, Hannah, can we just define what public housing is?

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Yes, public housing to me is housing that is subsidized.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: By the government. And so that is a very broad definition and kind of includes all housing, which [00:03:00] is the point to me. It should be like all housing is actually public housing.

Nick Capodice: Hold on. All housing in the US.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: This is like a favorite housing policy stat that our largest housing expenditure from the government is the mortgage interest tax deduction. It is not Section eight, it is not, you know, constructed public housing units. That is actually our biggest giveaway. And so all of us receive benefit of varying degrees from the federal government in order to support our housing costs and needs. And it really is the stigma, particularly the racialized and gendered stigma of public housing, as we think of it, the tall buildings, the empty lots that it has this negative connotation. But we all live in public housing.

Hannah McCarthy: So when we say subsidized housing in America, the typical association is with very low income renters [00:04:00] who qualify for government subsidized housing units or housing assistance vouchers from the government. But what Akira is saying is that the biggest subsidy is in mortgages for private homes. Anyway, for this episode, when we talk about public housing, we're talking about that last category that Akira described constructed public housing units, apartments and homes that the US government financed, the construction and provided for the management of.

Richard Rothstein: The federal government first got involved in housing in the New Deal. It first got involved with the creation of the first public housing in this country.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law.

Richard Rothstein: The first public housing in this country was created by the Public Works Administration, the first New Deal agencies. It created projects around the country, the first civilian public housing ever created in this country.

Nick Capodice: The New Deal. This is that period during and after the Great Depression, [00:05:00] when Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed a bunch of legislation through Congress to stop the U.S. essentially from going under. Yeah, and due to various financial and policy disasters, there were hundreds of thousands of people without jobs or homes. So FDR created a bunch of agencies and programs to help Americans survive and bring the economy back from the brink.

Archival: The legislation that has been passed is in the process of enactment, can properly be considered as part of a grounded, well rounded plan.

Hannah McCarthy: And infrastructure wise, we got the Public Works Administration. It spent billions of dollars to hire companies and administer projects across the country, and it built, among tons of other things, public housing, the very first being teakwood homes in Atlanta.

Nick Capodice: And the federal government had never been involved in housing like this before. This was the first time, right?

Hannah McCarthy: Public [00:06:00] housing was a brand new concept in the US, and when they came in, cranes blazing, the government made sure to include a crucial policy about the public homes that were being built. Here's Akira again.

Akira Drake Rodriguez: Public housing starts off as a segregated program. And so in the New Deal, which is when public housing begins in Atlanta, out of the sort of suite of programs and policies offered by Franklin Roosevelt, it is you know, we're going to build six public housing developments in Atlanta. Three of them will be for whites, three of them will be for African-Americans.

Nick Capodice: The federal government literally said that these homes are going to be segregated.

Richard Rothstein: This is public policy, administrative policy. And it began in the New Deal during the Roosevelt administration, during the Great Depression, because there was no federal involvement in housing prior to the New Deal.

Nick Capodice: Okay? This is policy, not law. Congress did not pass a law saying [00:07:00] heretofore housing shall be segregated in the United States. Nope.

Hannah McCarthy: Instead, this was the policy of the Public Works Administration or the PWA. Like an internal rule. Black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. Black housing and white housing. But I do want to make it very clear this was a policy that was written down.

Nick Capodice: So this wasn't de facto segregation. This wasn't some sort of off the books way that people simply behaved due to bigotry and racism.

Hannah McCarthy: This was how the CWA operated. It was the federal government actively segregating people, bureaucrats deciding what housing of this kind should look like. It's just that housing of this kind hadn't existed before.

Richard Rothstein: So there was no opportunity for the federal government to impose segregation. There were many efforts at the local level and state levels to do it. And with the creation of the first [00:08:00] public housing in this country, everywhere it created it, it segregated it, creating separate projects for African-Americans, separate projects for whites, frequently segregating neighborhoods that hadn't previously been segregated.

Nick Capodice: As in the PWA wasn't just building segregated housing units. It was also segregating neighborhoods that had not been segregated before.

Hannah McCarthy: In some cases, the PWA would look at an integrated neighborhood and just designate it like this is now a black neighborhood, or this is now a white neighborhood. And then they would demolish the existing neighborhood and build in either all black or all white public housing development.

Nick Capodice: But how did the federal government justify this?

Richard Rothstein: In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration was established.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. We're going to do a quick zoom out here to figure out what happened. Are you with me?

Nick Capodice: Let's go.

Hannah McCarthy: Part of the New Deal was [00:09:00] to establish public housing. Another part of the New Deal was to help people buy homes. A big part of the financial system collapsed during the Great Depression is that people were defaulting on their mortgages left and right. The government passed the Federal Housing Act and created the Federal Housing Administration. Now, the FHA made a couple of things happen. For one thing, it changed the terms of mortgages. You could make smaller payments over a longer period of time.

Archival: And so they leave reluctantly, it seems, or they both would like to have this place for their very own. Too bad they can't afford it all. But maybe they can. Well, according to this sign, they can buy this house with monthly payments that are less than they now spend for rent.

Hannah McCarthy: For another, the FHA would insure mortgages.

Nick Capodice: Basically, even if someone did default, is it not pay their mortgage? The [00:10:00] federal government would have the mortgage lenders back, essentially protecting banks and other financial institutions. So we didn't end up in another financial mess all over again.

Hannah McCarthy: That's right. But they'd only insure mortgages in certain neighborhoods.

Richard Rothstein: It imposed a program of excluding African-Americans from neighborhoods where it was issuing mortgages or guaranteeing mortgages, rather, or insuring mortgages or where it was financing developers to build suburbs.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, you asked for a justification for all of this, and there is one. It is on the books and everything that's coming up right after this break.

Nick Capodice: But before we go, I just want to remind everyone, it's tough to take something like public housing or an amendment or a foundational document and cram it into one digestible episode. We do our best, and it's the job of our very patient executive producer to just take out the stuff [00:11:00] that's a bit extraneous. But some people out there might like the extraneous stuff. If you are one of those people who likes ephemera and deep dives, you should definitely subscribe to our newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks. It's fun, it's free, and you can sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: We're back. This is Civics 101. And this is part one of a two parter on federal public housing part one policy. How did the United States government approach housing once it finally got itself involved?

Nick Capodice: And before the break, Hannah, you were telling me that the government had a reason. It had a justification for excluding black Americans from the housing assistance it was providing to white Americans. And so I want to know what exactly was that justification?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, the justification here, the reasoning behind generally not granting black Americans these insured [00:12:00] mortgages and new affordable homes was that black owned homes were thought to bring down the value of homes around them and that black owned homes because of that, were not the kind of thing that the federal government was generally going to insure. This becomes glaringly clear when developers start building the suburbs.

Richard Rothstein: The Federal Housing Administration began to finance developers build subdivisions in suburban areas, which really ramped up after World War Two, when millions of returning war veterans were coming home needing housing. The only way they could do it was by going to the Federal Housing Administration and then the Veterans Administration and both of those agencies required as a condition of their issuing bank guarantees for the loans that these developers needed to build the subdivisions as a condition that they never sell a home to an African American. And they [00:13:00] went so far as to say you couldn't even guarantee the bank loan for a developer was going to build an all white project if it was going to be located near where African Americans were. The Federal Housing Administration had a manual that laid this out. This wasn't the action of rogue bureaucrats. It was a policy written policy of the federal government.

Hannah McCarthy: This manual was distributed all over the country. And how does a home being owned by a black individual or family bring down its value? According to this manual, alongside the various factors that would make a neighborhood a bad financial investment. Environmental factors like smoke, odors and fog. This was an indicator.

Richard Rothstein: Infiltration by harmonious racial groups.

Nick Capodice: That language was explicitly in the manual.

Hannah McCarthy: It was. And let me just give you an example of what this looked like. There is this infamous dividing line in Detroit, Michigan, called Eight Mile Road. [00:14:00] To the south of Eight Mile Road was an historically black community. But white families began to settle closer and closer to that area, and suddenly neither black nor white families could secure FHA insured mortgages.

Nick Capodice: Because the FHA saw the threat of in harmonious racial groups, which was on its no loans list.

Hannah McCarthy: So a white developer looks at this issue and comes up with a solution. He builds a wall between the white area and the black area.

Nick Capodice: A literal wall.

Hannah McCarthy: Yes, literally, it is still there. Anyway, the wall goes up. In 1941, the FHA reappraised the white homes and lo and behold, it approved their mortgages.

Nick Capodice: But not the homes of the black families.

Richard Rothstein: In the 1930s, although there was a federal agency called the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which created maps of almost every major [00:15:00] city in the country. And the maps were designed to guide the federal agencies like the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration to where it was safe, low risk to make loans, guaranteed loans, I should say. The federal government doesn't make the loans. It guarantees the bank loans or insures them The areas where it was too risky to insure mortgages or loans to developers were color grid. And one of the criteria that the map developers used to decide which neighborhoods would be colored red was whether there were African-Americans living in it. Now banks follow the similar policy. It wasn't because of the maps, but the term redlining comes from these maps that the Home Mortgage Loan Corporation originally drew. And the redlining refers to the fact that there are neighborhoods where [00:16:00] the government, where banks were insurance companies won't support housing, but because they are black neighborhoods.

Nick Capodice: Okay, I've certainly heard of redlining, but I don't know if I've realized that there are actual physical maps with red lines drawn around areas, drawn around the homes that this loan corporation says are undesirable. And of course, undesirable in this case means in a black community. Was all this just totally out in the open?

Richard Rothstein: It was well known at the time. This is not the secret policy that the government was following. Certainly people who were directed to separate housing projects based on their race knew what was happening. Certainly people who bought homes where their deeds said that they couldn't sell or rent to an African-American knew what was happening. So this was a well known public policy. It was not something in the South, it was a national policy, and it was the cause of much of [00:17:00] the segregation that we have today. Without these policies, we would have much more integrated society today. But this was, as I say, it was done by the officials of the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration. It wasn't the single person who was dictating this. This was a widespread federal policy across several federal agencies, all the agencies that were involved in housing.

Nick Capodice: All right, Hannah. Just pause here for a minute. It's just that all of this, at first blush, sounds massively unconstitutional. Am I wrong about that?

Richard Rothstein: Well, it is unconstitutional. You can take as many blushes as you want. It's unconstitutional. The Supreme Court annihilated the intent of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution in 1866 following the adoption of the 13th Amendment, which [00:18:00] prohibited not only slavery but the characteristics of slavery, and authorized the federal government to implement that provision. In 1866, Congress passed the law prohibiting discrimination in housing, private or public. Prohibiting discrimination in housing. That law was amended a couple of times, and the Supreme Court eventually evaluated the 1893 and said it was unconstitutional.

Nick Capodice: The court said it was unconstitutional to prohibit discrimination in housing.

Hannah McCarthy: It took a very, very narrow view of the 13th and 14th Amendments, essentially saying these amendments cannot control individuals and they also only apply to literal enslavement. And eventually segregation would be deemed unconstitutional in various cases. But there's this really important point that Richard made when it comes to that desegregation, federal segregation in housing, as [00:19:00] in where people live, has a much more lasting effect than segregation in other spheres of life. Even after the court acknowledges that it is not constitutional.

Richard Rothstein: Once we've created segregation, it's hard to undo. You know, if you we had segregated restaurants and busses prior to the 1960s. We pass a law saying you can't segregate restaurants anymore. The next day, anybody can go to any restaurant. They pass a law saying you can't segregate neighborhoods. The next day, things would look much different.

Nick Capodice: Because housing doesn't change overnight. You don't just wake up the next day and move.

Hannah McCarthy: And the reasons why are bigger than, well, it's hard to integrate. When we segregated housing and who was allowed to have certain kinds of housing, the United States profoundly affected housing access for generations. Richard talks about this place called Levittown. It was this large FHA insured, all white, affordable development built for veterans returning from World [00:20:00] War Two.

Archival: Five years ago. This was a vast checkerboard of the. Bombs on New York's Long Island today. A community of 60,000 persons living in 15,000 homes all built by one firm. This is Levittown. One of the most remarkable housing developments ever conceived.

Richard Rothstein: The white returning war veterans, as well as other whites who were living in urban areas and wanting to move to these suburban homes, bought them for eight $9,000, $100,000. I'll use current dollars from now on, $100,000 in today's money. And they gained wealth over the next couple of generations as those homes appreciated the value. So you can't buy a home. Levittown today for $100,000. You can't buy a home in any of these suburbs for $100,000. They now cost, depending on the area of the country, at 203 hundred and 400,000. In some places, $1,000,000 in the more. So the white families gain wealth [00:21:00] from the appreciation of the value of their homes. They use that wealth to send their children to college. They use it to perhaps take care of medical emergencies or temporary employment. They use that to subsidize their own retirements, and they use it to bequeath wealth to their children and grandchildren. Who thou? Who then had down payments for their own homes. African-americans are prohibited from participating in this wealth generating program.

Hannah McCarthy: Desegregation in housing specifically. Eventually came the Fair Housing Act of 1968 said, okay. Black individuals and families can live in formerly white only neighborhoods. But that doesn't take care of the generational wealth gap between white families and black families, which was created in large part by racist housing policy.

Richard Rothstein: Levittown today is, [00:22:00] oh, about 2% African-American. There are some African-American families going abroad who could afford to buy $500,000 homes. But Levittown is located in an area is probably about 13 to 14% African-American.

Nick Capodice: Because if you essentially prohibit homeownership assistance to black families, then a huge part of the population can only rent for decades. They can't buy a home.

Hannah McCarthy: And owning a home is pretty much the best way to accumulate wealth over generations. You can take out loans and you can use your house as collateral. You can sell a home for way more than you bought it for and give some of that wealth to your family. But that path to wealth was closed to a lot of Americans.

Richard Rothstein: What the Fair Housing Act itself cannot fix. So it's possible to redress this, but it requires enormous financial commitment, subsidies to African American families [00:23:00] to move to places that they were unconstitutionally prohibited from living it.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So, Nick, that is the big picture When we talk about federal housing policy in the United States, when we talk about who got help and what kind and how. We need to understand that the process was steeped in racist segregationist policy, and that policy made home ownership more difficult for black Americans as it made it easier for white Americans. Many of the affordable homes built for white Americans following the Great Depression still stand today. But if some of the homes specifically built for black Americans, homes like the rental apartment projects of Atlanta, Georgia, many of them have been deemed a failure and razed to the ground. So now we are going to take a very specific and close look at federal housing in one city, Atlanta, [00:24:00] Georgia. That's in part two of federal Housing One City's Story. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with help from Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Anemoia, Xylo-Ziko, Arthur Benson and Rockett Jr. You can listen to part two on federal housing in the United States, as well as the entirety of the rest of our catalog at Civics101podcast.org, where you will also find a bunch of other resources. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Federal Courts: Muhammad Ali and the Draft

This episode is the culmination of our series on famous federal court trials in US history. 

In April of 1967, Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) refused to step forward at a draft induction ceremony in Texas. His opposition to serving in Vietnam launched a sequence of trials and appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It's a case about conscientious objection, protest, America's shifting views of the war, and how athletes have the unique role of "soldiers without a weapon."

This episode features Winston Bowman from the Federal Judicial Center, and Jeffrey Sammons from the NYU History Department. 

Support our show and our mission with a gift to Civics 101 today, it means the world to us.

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Transcript

Ali final

Archival: Friday in Houston was the champion's moment of truth. He showed up at the induction center but refused to step forward, bringing on the threat of prison and a shattered career.

Muhammad Ali: I'm not going to help nobody give something my Negroes don't have. If I die I'll die here right now,fighting you if I'm going to die, you my enemy. My enemy is the white people. Not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese, you my opposer, when I want freedom, you my opposer when I want justice, you my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand [00:00:30] up for me in America for my religious beliefs. And you want me to go somewhere and fight. But you won't even stand up for me here at home.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: And this is Civics 101, the podcast refresher course on the basics of how our democracy works. Today we are concluding our series on famous federal court trials with a trial that involves one of the most famous individuals in modern history. Some say one of the greatest.

Muhammad Ali: I told you all [00:01:00] that I was the greatest of all time.

Nick Capodice: Athletes in the world. The case is US V, Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, We're talking about the trial with heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refusing to serve in Vietnam, correct?

Nick Capodice: Right. And this case is not just about one individual's protest. It's about conscientious objection, the draft, religion, celebrity, and most importantly, the complicated relationship between athletes [00:01:30] and politics. And to take us through it all, Hannah, I got two titans of jurisprudence, as well as lovers of the sweet science of bruising. Can I use the salad bowl for this? All right, here we go.

Nick Capodice: In the right corner. Winston Bowman.

Winston Bowman: My name is Winston Bowman. I'm an Associate.... I'm sorry. I'll start that over. My name is Winston Bowman. I am an associate historian [00:02:00] with the Federal Judicial Center.

Nick Capodice: And in the left, Jeffrey Sammons.

Jeffrey Sammons: Yes. Jeffrey Sammons, professor Emeritus, Department of History, New York University. Well, I feel like a boxer coming out of retirement, and I have a lot of ring rust.

Hannah McCarthy: Nick, I know that you are a lover of Muhammad Ali. But before we get to the circumstances of the trial, can you give us a sort of quick bio on the guy?

Nick Capodice: Sure. Cassius [00:02:30] Marcellus Clay, and I'm going to get back to his name change a little later, he first learned to box as a kid in the 1950s. Now the story is that another kid stole his bicycle and Clay learned to box to get it back.

Jeffrey Sammons: So that's how he was introduced to boxing. Of course, he would become a very good amateur boxer and actually go to the Olympics in Rome.

Archival: But the most popular U.S.A. winner was the light Hearted Cashes Marcellus Clay, the fifth in [00:03:00] white here who easily defeated Poland's Zbigniew Rakowski.

Jeffrey Sammons: And won a gold medal and became quite the celebrity as a result of that. And then there's this story that after he comes back, he realizes that he's just the same black guy that he was before in terms of how the people in Kentucky and perhaps the wider United States viewed him.

Muhammad Ali: I went and got my gold medal, went back in order to cheeseburgers, [00:03:30] and they said, I'm sorry, we we don't serve Negroes. I say, I don't eat em either, just give me two cheeseburgers. And she said, You're getting smart. She called him manager and he said, Somebody, I don't care who he is. She says, Cassius Clay, okay.

Jeffrey Sammons: And the story is that he tossed his gold medal into whatever that river is that runs through Louisville. So then he becomes a professional boxer. He's seen as the sort of Johnny Appleseed figure spreading [00:04:00] boxing, which is kind of a bit in the doldrums.

Nick Capodice: Jeffrey told me that lovers of the sport of boxing are always looking for a hero, a champion to elevate the sport. And the heavyweight champion at that time was a boxer named Sonny Liston.

Jeffrey Sammons: And Sonny Liston had these ties to organized crime. In fact, he was known as an enforcer of four of the Mafia in Saint Louis in the 1950s [00:04:30] that, you know, those who owed loans, etc., to the Mafia, they would send Liston after them. So when we see Rocky, you know, doing the same thing, they're borrowing on, I think Sonny Liston's real example.

Archival: Did I give you a job this morning or didn't I? So why don't you break his thumbs like I told you to? When you don't do what I tell you to do, you make me look bad, Rock.

Jeffrey Sammons: And when this young, brash, [00:05:00] handsome, clever Cassius Clay comes along, then Madison Avenue, the boxing establishment, say this is our savior of the sport. And of course, the sport is always looking for some kind of savior. But at the same time, revealing that he is a member of the Nation of Islam. And the boxing establishment would rather have somebody identified with [00:05:30] the mafia than with the Nation of Islam.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Can we talk a little bit about the Nation of Islam?

Nick Capodice: Absolutely. Very briefly, because it's a big organization with the big history, the Nation of Islam, which is not the same thing as the religion of Islam, which is the one that about 2 billion people across the world practice. The Nation of Islam is a religious, social and political organization that was founded in the 1930s. Malcolm X was their spokesperson at this time, the Nation of Islam differs significantly [00:06:00] from the central tenets of Islam and was and remains to this day, a very controversial organization.

Jeffrey Sammons: But it also condemned black people who they saw as kind of wedded to the legacy of of of slavery and also railed against whites. It also called for the separation of the races. And interestingly, Malcolm X would actually meet with members of [00:06:30] the Ku Klux Klan at some point because both agreed upon the need for the separation of the races.

Nick Capodice: Clay made a public announcement in 1964 that he had converted and he was a member of the Nation of Islam. He first changed his name to Cassius X, citing that Clay was a name passed down to him through his family's former enslavers, and soon after that he adopted the new name Muhammad Ali.

Hannah McCarthy: Wasn't there some famous fight where there was someone who kept [00:07:00] calling Ali, Clay and Ali would hit him and say, What's my name?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, that was Ernie Terrell, 1966. This was a few months before the draft induction ceremony that's going to launch this case.

Archival: Why don't you call me my name, man? Well, what's your name? You told me your name was Cassius Clay a few years ago. You? My name was Cassius Clay. My name is Muhammad Ali. And you will announce it right there in the center of that ring. After the fight, if you don't do it now.

Jeffrey Sammons: So. So with Terrell, he just. He refused to knock him out. He just kept basically hitting [00:07:30] him in ways that that would punish him but not finish him off.

Archival: Terrell is now being examined by a commission doctor. What impels a man to go out there? His pride and always the fact that he has the chance. He still has a chance.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. Let's pivot to the Vietnam War. You've got President Eisenhower bringing Americans into the conflict in Vietnam in 1955. When do people start to get drafted to fight? [00:08:00]

Nick Capodice: Now, this is tricky because the famous first draft lottery for Vietnam was in 1969, But that was a new way of doing things. Before the lottery system, everyone who had registered for the Selective Service, which is almost all males between the ages of 18 and 25, were evaluated by a draft board and either drafted or not due to their individual circumstances. Muhammad Ali was indeed registered for the Selective Service, but he was not a candidate for conscription until 1966. [00:08:30]

Hannah McCarthy: Why is that?

Nick Capodice: I'm going to bring back Winston Bowman for this one.

Winston Bowman: The reason for that is that although Ali signed up for the the draft, his test scores were initially too low to make an eligible for the military. And a lot of people are sort of incredulous about this at the time because he seems like such a bright guy, but he actually wasn't a terribly sort of dedicated student.

Nick Capodice: Ali, in fact, joked to some reporters by saying, I said I was the greatest, not the smartest.

Winston Bowman: What [00:09:00] happens is that in February of 1966, the Army gets more desperate for soldiers and lowers the test scores necessary. So that's actually what makes Ali eligible for the draft.

Nick Capodice: At this time, Ali makes public his intent to refuse to serve. He files for conscientious objector status and makes a famous statement.

Muhammad Ali: I will not go 10,000 miles from here to help murder [00:09:30] and kill a lot of poor people simply to continue the domination of white slave masters over the darker peoples of the earth.

Winston Bowman: And that triggers this sort of administrative proceeding where basically the Department of Justice and the FBI conduct a background investigation on him to ascertain whether he meets these three criteria.

Nick Capodice: So [00:10:00] let's talk about conscientious objector status. You can claim it and refuse to serve if your beliefs oppose war, but only if you indeed meet three criteria. And they've changed a little bit since then. But these were the criteria in the 1960s. Number one, your belief must be sincere. Number two, that belief must be religious in nature. And number three, that religious compunction must be against serving in all wars, not just the [00:10:30] one you were drafted for. So Ali applies for this status. A judge in Kentucky reviews it and finds he does meet the criteria and refers his findings to the Department of Justice.

Winston Bowman: The DOJ looks at that information, but ultimately they make a recommendation to the body that whose word is law, The draft board that he should be denied conscientious objector status. And they say that he actually fails all three of the criteria.

Hannah McCarthy: All [00:11:00] right. Hang on. Let me make sure that I've got this right. Ali claims conscientious objector status. All such claims are reviewed by a judge. A judge reviews Ali's claim and finds it perfectly legitimate. But the judge also sends it to the Department of Justice. And the DOJ disagrees with that finding.

Nick Capodice: Exactly.

Hannah McCarthy: Why.

Winston Bowman: They say that he's you know, this isn't a sincere belief because he's really only asserted it since he became eligible for the draft [00:11:30] and it became an imminent possibility. They say that it's not a religious belief because the Nation of Islam is not fundamentally a religious organization that is beliefs of basically racial and political, that he doesn't want to fight in a white man's war. And then as a final part, they say that his beliefs are inherently selective about the kinds of war that he does and doesn't want to fight in.

Nick Capodice: Now, the draft appeal board could hypothetically go against the [00:12:00] DOJ's opinion, but they do not. The Appeal Board rejects his claim for conscientious objector status, but they don't give the reason why. And this is important for later, I promise. So Muhammad Ali is summoned to a now famous induction ceremony in Houston, Texas, held on April 28th, 1967.

Winston Bowman: And they're lined up and they all have to take a step forward when their name is called to indicate that they are going to join the military. And when it comes to [00:12:30] Muhammad Ali's turn, at first they call out his formal legal name, Cassius Clay, and he does not respond at that point. They call out his his taken name, Muhammad Ali. And again, he he doesn't take the symbolic step forward. And at that point, then he's taken in by military authorities and later indicted for draft evasion.

Archival: Former world heavyweight champion Cassius Clay refused to take the oath of induction into the Army. The Black Muslim [00:13:00] fighter, who is also known as Muhammad Ali, was immediately stripped of his title by the World Boxing Association. Clay insisted that he is an ordained minister and should be exempt. Clay also charges race discrimination by the Houston draft board. He faces federal prosecution and a possible five year prison sentence plus $10,000 fine.

Hannah McCarthy: What happens next? Does he go to jail? Was he fined?

Nick Capodice: Well, what happens next is a political and religious battle that takes years to complete. And we're going to walk you through all of it [00:13:30] and the reverberations surrounding the clash of politics and athleticism that ring to this very day right after this break.

Hannah McCarthy: But first, if you want to know more about everything we do on the show that's on and off the mic, that sort of thing is in our newsletter, Extra Credit. And I will bet $100 the next one will include Nick telling you why When We Were Kings is the best documentary ever made.

Nick Capodice: That's easy money, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: You can sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy: We're [00:14:00] back. This is Civics 101. We're talking about US v Clay, the court case regarding Muhammad Ali's refusal to serve in Vietnam. So Nick, Ali files for conscientious objector status. That claim is ultimately denied. He is summoned to an induction ceremony where he refuses to step forward when his name is called. So what happens next.

Nick Capodice: A lot happens to Ali and it [00:14:30] happens very quickly. Here's Jeffrey Sammons again.

Jeffrey Sammons: Immediately after he refuses induction. So even before there's a trial, they strip him of his boxing license and in some instances of his title, he's basically becomes eventually deprived of a right to make a living as as a boxer.

Nick Capodice: Muhammad Ali was approached by numerous officials and told things along the lines of, well, you don't have to fight the war necessarily. [00:15:00] You can just go over there for morale. Do some boxing, give some speeches, that sort of thing. But Ali flat out refused over and over no matter what.

Muhammad Ali: Well, shoot them for what? How am I going to shoot them? Little and poor Black people. Little babies and children and women. How can I shoot them poor people. Just take me to jail.

Jeffrey Sammons: And he said that he was actually willing to face a firing squad to die rather than to violate his principles, to fight [00:15:30] in, you know, a kind of nationalistic war and especially one against another people of color. And that's the thing that Ali also saw of himself as a member of a global nonwhite majority.

Hannah McCarthy: He said he would rather face a firing squad than go to Vietnam.

Nick Capodice: He did. He said he was prepared to go to prison or even die instead of going to Vietnam to fight in that war. [00:16:00]

Jeffrey Sammons: His famous statement was that he had no quarrel in his war with them Viet Cong. And he actually also wrote a poem about about that.

Hannah McCarthy: He wrote a poem about it?

Nick Capodice: He did.

Hannah McCarthy: Can I hear it?

Nick Capodice: Sure.

Jeffrey Sammons: Keep asking me, no matter how long on the war in Vietnam, I sing this song, I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, [00:16:30] how did the American public react to his refusal?

Nick Capodice: The reaction fluctuated quite a lot over the years, and it's important thing to consider when we talk about this case. Now we watch movies and documentaries and videos of protest, and it's easy to think that the Vietnam War was always deeply unpopular, which it eventually was. But initially, when Ali refuses, the war is much more popular. Here's [00:17:00] Winston Bowman again.

Winston Bowman: At the time that he first comes out against the war in 1966, he is widely criticized for it and really kind of made persona non grata. Even individuals like Jackie Robinson, a very critical of him for taking this stance, basically saying, you know, you're happy to take all the advantages from American society but not willing to sign up to fight for the country.

Archival: And the tragedy [00:17:30] to me is that Cassius has made millions of dollars off of the American public, and now he's not willing to show his appreciation to a country that is giving him, in my view, a fantastic opportunity.

Winston Bowman: I think it's also true that Ali's very kind of bombastic persona plays against him initially, that he does not fit the archetype of what most particularly white middle class Americans want from their sports [00:18:00] heroes at the time, right? He's sort of this larger than life character who will not be cowed. And a lot of people at the time talk about Ali as sort of getting above his station.

Hannah McCarthy: Which is patently racist.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, And Winston told me that racism was a huge part of what he called, towards Ali, a roiling cauldron of growing unpopularity.

Winston Bowman: And in fact, the files for the draft board are filled with hate mail from people saying, [00:18:30] Why haven't you drafted this person yet? Why hasn't he been charged, etc., etc.. Much of it is, you know, very clearly racially motivated. But certainly there's a widespread sense that he is a deeply unpopular figure at the time he comes up for trial.

Nick Capodice: June 16th, 1967. The trial of US V Clay begins, and this trial is over quickly.

Winston Bowman: The [00:19:00] trial takes two days. There's only a handful of witnesses called by each side, and the prosecution basically consists of calling a handful of military officers who saw that Ali was called at this ceremony, refused to step forward.

Nick Capodice: Ali's attorney argues that Ali should be considered a minister for the Nation of Islam. There was an exception for ministers. Ministers did not have to serve.

Winston Bowman: The judge sort of laughs this out of court and says, well, [00:19:30] I happen to know he's the world champion boxer. So clearly he has more on his hands than being a minister. As far as the Department of Justice's recommendations go, Ali's lawyers don't strenuously contest them. And this is probably a mistake. The jury only takes 20 minutes to deliberate and returns a guilty verdict.

Nick Capodice: The jury, six men, six women, all white, gives their verdict to the judge, who in turn gives Ali the maximum [00:20:00] possible sentence. Five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Ali's lawyers ask the judge, Judge Ingraham, for a lighter sentence, like probation or 18 months, as other people had gotten. But the judge flat out refused. Interestingly, there were about 500,000 men accused of draft violations during the Vietnam War, but only 8700 were convicted.

Hannah McCarthy: It's so interesting. This is probably one of the few instances that [00:20:30] the entire American public came to understand what happens when you don't give in to the draft.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, it's like here's the repercussion.

Hannah McCarthy: So did he go to jail?

Nick Capodice: He did not. Ali's legal team immediately started the appeal process and he was allowed out on bail, but he had to pay the fine as well as the significantly greater legal expense fees. But he was not allowed to box anymore. He couldn't box in the US and he wasn't allowed to fly out of the country to fight in other countries. Here's Jeffrey Sammons again.

Jeffrey Sammons: He [00:21:00] had to go on speaking tours to to support himself. And actually, I was a student at Rutgers when he came to Rutgers and gave a speech which I attended because I had been this enormous Ali fan. And, you know, it was amazing to to to see and hear him in in person.

Hannah McCarthy: So there's something specific to athletes that I really want to talk about here, [00:21:30] especially when it comes to being told they cannot compete due to legal issues or even injury. How old was Ali at this point? Was he in his twenties?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, he was 25.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay. So those are his prime boxing years, right? Every year that he cannot fight is a year that he can't get back.

Nick Capodice: Yeah. And this takes a few years. He appeals to the Fifth Circuit of Appeals and he loses. And you know where you go next if you lose a circuit court appeal, right.

Hannah McCarthy: I sure do, the very top.

Winston Bowman: So they initially appealed to [00:22:00] the Supreme Court in 1968. And I think most people, although it's impossible to know with 100% certainty, would say that the court would have been unlikely to take the case in 1968. But what happens is that three days after they file for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court, there's a scandal in the FBI.

Hannah McCarthy: A scandal?

Nick Capodice: Yeah, an illegal wiretapping scandal.

Winston Bowman: And it turns out that the FBI has been running a series [00:22:30] of programs where they're legally surveilling domestic political groups, including the Nation of Islam.

Jeffrey Sammons: Some of the information that is used in the case is gained by wiretaps on Martin Luther King Junior's phone authorized by Bobby Kennedy. So it shows people that we would come to believe as liberal and progressive, are determined to support [00:23:00] and protect and defend the war effort.

Winston Bowman: And it turns out that Ali had five illegal wiretaps during the pendency of of his case. So what happens is that the Supreme Court remands Ali's case and a series of other appeals back to the trial courts to see if that illegally obtained information had what they call tainted the trial in any way.

Nick Capodice: Remand, by the way, means it's not ruled [00:23:30] upon, but it's sent back to the lower court with new information. So the case goes back to that first judge in Houston to determine if the prosecution's case had been tainted by these illegal wiretaps. And this is a long hearing. The judge listens to the wiretaps in his chambers, and he eventually rules that while these taps were indeed illegal, they did not taint the prosecution's case and his previous ruling stood.

Hannah McCarthy: So Ali is still found guilty after all of this.

Nick Capodice: After all this. Absolutely. But contrary [00:24:00] to how it affects someone's boxing career in this instance, time is on his side. This wiretap issue delayed the whole process. And Ali appeals to the Supreme Court yet again. But now it's 1971.

Archival: Some 175,000 people from all walks of life with differing ideologies and purposes marched from the White House to the Capitol. Washington has grown accustomed to [00:24:30] this method of voicing dissent, though larger than most. This was an organized demonstration with parade permits...Marshals and responsible leadership...

Winston Bowman: And by that time, the whole draft process itself has come under much greater scrutiny. There's a widespread sense that the draft is unfair, that it disproportionately affects particularly [00:25:00] African-American, but also other minority groups and poor whites, because they're unable to claim college exemptions and things like this. There are reforms made to the draft machinery, but the Supreme Court, I think it's fair to say, is more concerned to show that it is also ensuring the fairness of that process.

Nick Capodice: The court decides to take the case and the arguments are heard. In April 1971, four years after Ali had [00:25:30] refused to take that step forward at the induction ceremony in Texas.

Archival: Number 783 Clay against the United States. Mr. Eskridge. You may proceed whenever you're ready...Mr. Chief Justice. And may it please the court.

Nick Capodice: Ali's advocate argues to the 8 justices that the denial of his conscientious objector status was invalid.

Hannah McCarthy: Hang on. You said eight justices. You mean nine justices?

Nick Capodice: No, [00:26:00] there was one missing.

Winston Bowman: What the reason that there's eight justices is that Thurgood Marshall, who's a relatively recent appointee, was solicitor general at the time that all these prosecution was taking place. And so he recuses himself.

Hannah McCarthy: You're telling me that the one Black justice on the court could not weigh in on a case in which race is a major factor?

Nick Capodice: He could not. And initially the justices were set to vote 5 to 3 against Ali, upholding that initial conviction in Texas. [00:26:30] But something happens before the opinions are written.

Jeffrey Sammons: One of the justices, John Marshall Harlan, is introduced by a clerk to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and comes to believe that Ali is truly a conscientious objector on the basis of religion, that his beliefs are sincere.

Hannah McCarthy: John Marshall Harlan In the Seventies,

Nick Capodice: Yeah,

Hannah McCarthy: Because there was a John Marshall Harlan before that too.

Nick Capodice: Yeah, so this one is sometimes called [00:27:00] John Marshall Harlan 2. He is the grandson of the other Supreme Court John Marshall Harlan, That is the justice who was the lone dissenter in the Plessy v Ferguson case.

Jeffrey Sammons: So he changes his his vote and makes the count four four. If it's at four four, then the lower court rulings would be upheld. There would be no opinion. Ali would never know what happened.

Nick Capodice: And some on the court believed that no opinion [00:27:30] would cause an absolute maelstrom of protests in opposition.

Jeffrey Sammons: And I forgot to mention, remember, you know, we had the assassination of Martin Luther King in 68 and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the same year, riots across the country. So the court is really fearful of contributing to social unrest. There was a fear that if Ali were acquitted on the basis of [00:28:00] being a conscientious objector because of his membership in the Nation of Islam or even his ministerial role, that the Nation of Islam would grow enormously because Blacks would join in droves. Right. So and its strength would also grow because of that. And it was a feared organization. On the other hand, if it votes to [00:28:30] uphold the conviction of Ali, this is going to make Ali into this incredible living martyr and is going to release potential new hell on the streets of of the United States.

Hannah McCarthy: So the court does not want to leave it to a 4 to 4, because in a 4 to 4, there's no opinion issued. Right. Which means like no transparency, this whole Supreme Court case about Muhammad Ali and we never get to hear about what actually happened. And there would be protests in the street. [00:29:00] They don't want to endorse the Nation of Islam by acquitting Ali, and they don't want to imprison him because he would then be seen as a martyr. So how do they actually rule?

Nick Capodice: Now, it might be silly to call it a TKO, but Justice Potter Stewart, you'll know when you see him, found a technicality. He found a way to frame the question so none of those things happened. Hannah, you remember like 20 minutes ago when I told you that Ali filed for [00:29:30] conscientious objector status, it was approved, the DOJ reviewed it, and they disagreed and advised the draft appeal Board to deny his claim. And they did?

Hannah McCarthy: I do.

Nick Capodice: Well, while the DOJ explained their reasons why they felt it should be denied, the draft board who made the actual decision never explained their reasoning. They just denied his claim. And Justice Potter Stewart tries to convince the other seven justices to go along with him to make that the reason the denial should be invalid.

Hannah McCarthy: So they can say that that tiny [00:30:00] step in this whole saga was flawed and therefore Ali is not guilty.

Nick Capodice: Exactly. And none of their feared repercussions happened. It's just a dry technical misstep and it works. The decision is unanimous. 8 to 0 in favor of Ali. So after learning about the circuitous path this case took over the course of four years, I asked [00:30:30] Winston, Why does he teach this case? Why is it important? What does U.S. V Clay tell us about the judiciary?

Winston Bowman: For me, this case illustrates nicely the difficulty the government can sometimes have in distilling people's beliefs down into something that's sort of legible to the bureaucracy, right? The government is very good at things that fit a check box and very bad [00:31:00] at sort of messiness. And when you're talking about religious ideas and beliefs fitting into particular categories, that could be very difficult for legal organizations to deal with.

Hannah McCarthy: There's another reason why this case is so important, and it's something that you brought up earlier that still is going on today. It's this unique relationship of celebrities, specifically athletes to political discourse.

Archival: Wouldn't you [00:31:30] love to see one of these NFL owners...When somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that ______ off the field right now, Out. He's fired. Fired.

Nick Capodice: When I spoke to Jeff before the interview, he said something to me on the phone I could not get out of my head. He said, An athlete is a soldier without a weapon. They are representatives of the might of a nation. [00:32:00]

Jeffrey Sammons: And that athletes were always supposed to be loyal and patriotic and supportive of the government and and especially because they had benefited so much from an American meritocracy as as as as it were. So they were upheld as the symbols that if you apply yourself, you have discipline, determination that you can make it [00:32:30] anywhere. You know, this is happening in sport, and sport is such a crucial element to upholding sort of the American system that this notion of hegemony, of that, that's not control from the top, but it springs up from all these institutions in which people believe and in the values of the nation. And sport is an important bolsterer of that system.

Nick Capodice: To put it plainly, when [00:33:00] we look at the long history in America of athletes being chastised or punished for acts of protest, it is almost without exception, Black athletes. Jackie Robinson wrote in his memoir that he never could sing or stand for the national anthem. And over 70 years later, Colin Kaepernick didn't have his contract renewed to the 49 ERs for doing exactly that, refusing to stand, and later kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.

Jeffrey Sammons: Kaepernick [00:33:30]. He'll never play professional football again, and it shows the influence that Ali had, but also how the reaction to the engagement of athletes and politics hasn't changed, that they're still punishing. Kaepernick is not the first one. There was the player for the Chicago [00:34:00] Bulls who wore a dashiki to an event at the White House. He also presented Bush some list of grievances, and he was never seen in the NBA again. Or the gentleman who played for the Denver Rockets who refused to stand for the national anthem. Kaepernick saw the example of Ali and John Carlos and Tommie Smith [00:34:30] and decided to use his standing as a star athlete and the platform of football to take a stand and and paid a very heavy price for. So that is a sort of cautionary tale. And that's the other thing I want to say about Ali, that that that he took on America in ways that no one else did, that that he opposed basic, so [00:35:00] called ideals and values, or at least that failure to live up to them. But he was acting sort of truly on Black terms and not willing to go along with the system. That brings up one other thing, too, that Ali had more of a support system, as it were, although he was out there all alone in some respects and paid a heavy personal price. I think the society was very [00:35:30] different than in terms of of activism.

Nick Capodice: Jeff mentioned that in the 1960s it wasn't just the Nation of Islam that backed Ali. They were part of the Black Power movement, along with SNIC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers.

Jeffrey Sammons: He wasn't out of step with those people, that's for sure. You know, they had his back in a kind of, you know, you're our man. We're really behind you. You are now the people's [00:36:00] champ. He lost, you know, money and his prime as a result. But he he became a transcendent figure because of his of his, you know, principled stand.

Archival: He's exercising his constitutional right to make a statement. I think there's a long history of sports figures doing so.

Archival: The United States leads the Olympics in medal awards [00:36:30] and is just about supreme in the Sprint races. Thanks to men like Tommie Smith and John Carlos, it started with the news that the Black Power Disciples, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Olympic 200 meters gold and bronze medalists had been suspended by the United States Olympic Committee and given 48 hours to leave Mexico. I had said that if there were any demonstrations at the Olympic Games, by anyone, the participants would be sent home. President Trump tweeted the Kaepernick had sent a terrible message. The NFL had this to say. The social [00:37:00] justice issues that Colin and other professional athletes have raised deserve our attention and action. Two very different points of view.

Nick Capodice: That’s US v Cassius Clay, and hey! Before we say who we are and whose music we used in this episode, Massive, massive thanks to our friends at the Federal Judicial Center for the idea of making a series on federal court cases. It was a delight from stem to stern. So special thanks to Catherine Hawke at the American bar Association, Christine Lamberson from the FJC, and the GOAT of the ABA as far as civics 101 is concerned, the infinitely supportive Frank Valadez. [00:38:00]

Nick Capodice: This episode was made by me Nick Capodice with you Hannah McCarthy. Jacqui Fulton is our producer, Christina Phillips our Senior Producer and Rebecca Lavoie our Executive Producer. Music in this episode by a lot of the old greats, Bio Unit, Cycle Hiccups, The New Fools, AGST, Dreem, Peter Sandberg, Autohacker, Fabien Tell, Peerless, From Now On, Carlton Lees, Ikmashoo Aoi, Jesse Gallagher, Scanglobe, Needledrop Sessions, and the reigning Civics 101 middleweight champion of being used in our episodes, Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, NHPR. Here's George Carlin.

Archival: Big fight coming up, Ali [00:38:30] and Frazier. Muhammad Ali. I call him Muhammad Ali because that's what he wants. Of course, he had a strange job, beating people up. Government wanted him to change jobs. Government wanted him to kill people. He thought it over and he said, No, that's where I draw the line. [00:39:00] I'll beat him up but I don't want to kill em. And the government told them, Well, if you won't kill em, we won't let you beat them up!

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Last State To Hold Out Against Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is publicly revered across the nation, a symbol of civil and human rights worthy of a memorial holiday. Federal and state legislatures have agreed to honor this man. But that agreement took awhile. The final state to acquiesce, New Hampshire, resisted the holiday until 1999. The story of that resistance reveals a public sentiment about King and the Black Freedom Struggle that is far from the reverence of today. This is the story of how a man becomes a national symbol, and the fight to make that so.

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Transcript

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy, and today we are doing something a little different. There is a reporter and producer here at New Hampshire Public Radio where we make Civics 101 named Jack Rodolico And for the past little while, Jack has been reporting out what I consider a really interesting, good story specifically. And I'm not going to bury the lead here. This is the story of how Martin Luther King Jr Day came to be a holiday at the federal level and in every state across the country. And the thing about this particular holiday is that it did not happen overnight, nor did it happen without a fight. And the most epic of those fights, the longest resistance to the holiday honoring Dr. King. It happened right here where we make this podcast. Jack got the details. Hello,

Hannah McCarthy: Jack Rodolico.

Jack Rodolico: Hello. It's good to be here with you.

Hannah McCarthy: It's good to have you here.

Jack Rodolico: I'm an honored I am honored to be a guest.

Hannah McCarthy: I'm an honor.

Jack Rodolico: I can't call myself an honor. That's not how that works. But I am honored to be here.

Hannah McCarthy: We are honored to have [00:01:00] you. And you have a story for us today.

Jack Rodolico: Yeah. Okay. So this is a story of MLK Day. Yep. How it became a thing. So there's this fact about New Hampshire that I have known for a long time, and it's honestly something that I found unsettling about this place where I have chosen to live. And I finally got to the point where I just needed to understand it. There's a story there, and I wanted to know what it was behind this fact. The fact is New Hampshire was the 50th state to recognize Martin Luther King Jr Day, the last state to do it.

Hannah McCarthy: When you say the last state, like, how long did this take?

Jack Rodolico: Well, New Hampshire, how long did it take? It was not a close race. It was not a close race. I mean, something like a decade and a half after the federal government, something like more than a decade after most states recognized MLK Day, that's [00:02:00] when New Hampshire got on board.

Hannah McCarthy: Why did it go down that way?

Jack Rodolico: I thought I wanted to know. And I think the most natural place to start is with a guy named Harvey Key. Introduce yourself.

Harvey Keye: My name is Harvey Kaye. I am a human rights activist. Period.

Jack Rodolico: Now, you were born.

Harvey Keye: In Birmingham, right? Yeah, 1932.

Jack Rodolico: So Harvey Key is 90 years old. He is like an extremely active 90 year old gentleman, still involved in the community, still involved in politics in different ways. He's the head of the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, among other things.

Hannah McCarthy: So he was born in Birmingham. Now he's living in New Hampshire. Yeah. When did he come up here?

Jack Rodolico: Yeah, Harvey came up here with this family in the seventies. He raised his kids here. But Birmingham is what made Harvey Key who he is. The MLK story that you're about to hear. Harvey has told this before. In [00:03:00] fact, he once told it before the New Hampshire state legislature back in 1999. Harvey was a state rep at that time. As a little.

Harvey Keye: Boy, I could not walk the streets and look white people in the eye because that was a threat to white people. I could be arrested for disorderly conduct. I could not shine shoes on the street. I could not deliver paper on the streets.

Jack Rodolico: Harvey goes up deep in the Jim Crow South.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay, so this is this era following the end of reconstruction, right where there are all of these laws in a lot of former Confederate states and some border states that basically codified a racial caste system, they were anti Black, anti enfranchisement laws that dictated a whole swath of behaviors for how Black people in America would have to act.

Jack Rodolico: Yes. And enforced with state violence and vigilante violence.

Harvey Keye: As a young man, I saw many shootings [00:04:00] of colored men who supposedly had stolen something from a store and shot in the back by white policemen. For a long time. I found it difficult to look people in the eye. Sometimes I find it difficult now. At age 14. I had no self esteem. I didn't have much hope for being anybody. So I became a game gang leader. I was put in jail at age 15 for assault and battery with attempted murder.

Jack Rodolico: So Harvey is on this very precarious course as a young man. He's dejected, he's angry, and he's surrounded by violence against Black men like him. So he starts to respond with a bit of violence himself. That's how he describes it. At the same time, he wasn't entirely without hope and positive examples of what his life could become. He has Black role models. [00:05:00] He has Black teachers at school, people who give him some hope that he can have a future.

Harvey Keye: My mother had a fourth grade education and she said to me one time, If they can, you can. Well, I don't know what that meant at that time. I know now.

Jack Rodolico: Despite setbacks, despite being jailed at 15, Harvey gets out of jail and starts to do really well in school. He is very smart, very studious. He goes on to college and to grad school. He develops a stronger sense of self. But as an adult in Birmingham, he still has this hot coal of anger in his chest because whenever he tries to assert his rights or even just dream about his future, he cannot do it. He can't vote.

Harvey Keye: Told me if I wanted to vote, I had to count the number of beads in a jar.

Jack Rodolico: He can't get a job.

Harvey Keye: And I had a degree in pre-med. He said I had too much education. It didn't have enough. I don't know whatever they said, but I couldn't [00:06:00] get a job.

Jack Rodolico: He even joined the army and fought in Korea. But there he got no relief from the racism all around him. He tells this story about waiting in line at the mess hall.

Harvey Keye: One of the soldiers says, Why don't you get back there where you belong? Uniform on. Same troop. And he had the nerve to say, get in the back where you belong.

Jack Rodolico: And so after the Korean War, Harvey comes back to Birmingham and he's just getting fed up. You know, he has a lower tolerance and he's not easily intimidated. He starts carrying a gun and he says that he was ready to use it if he had to. And just as Harvey has taken all that he can. Martin Luther King Jr is about to advance the front line of the Black freedom struggle to Harvey's hometown of Birmingham. So in the spring of 1963, King and [00:07:00] other leaders of the Black Freedom struggle descend on Birmingham.

Archival: It was against this background That Dr. King was asked what he meant when he said that achievement of a breakthrough in Birmingham.

Could crack the whole South.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, Birmingham is a symbol of hardcore resistance to integration. It is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. And they just had more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: And in a city in The United States.

Jack Rodolico: There is this campaign to desegregate the city. And King and others at the time said, you know, so goes Birmingham, so goes the country potentially. Right? That was the idea. And it's this 63 is this whiplash window of time in Birmingham. A lot of things that we might know about from history books happened in this like six month period. There were hundreds of arrests.

Archival: Arrests were made in mass lots. Everyone charged with the same offense parading without a permit. [00:08:00] The Negroes had asked for permits and had been denied them.

Jack Rodolico: King's letter from a Birmingham jail he wrote that year. There was a children's march where kids were blasted with fire hoses. These are images of the civil rights movement that many people have seen attacked by police dogs. There was even that church bombing where four little girls were murdered at a church.

Archival: And they died in Birmingham at the 16th Street Baptist Church, rallying point of the Negro drive in the nation's most segregated big city. Dynamite exploded on a Sunday morning, killed four little girls in Sunday school, injured 20 other Negro.

Jack Rodolico: So through all this, there is this one place in the city that serves as a hub for all of this civil rights activity for King and other activists. It's called the AG Gaston Motel.

Harvey Keye: It's the only motel in the city of Birmingham [00:09:00] that allowed colored folks Negroes to spend the night.

Jack Rodolico: Now, Harvey didn't ever spend a night there, but there was a hotel bar, which was one of the only places he and his friends could drink.

Harvey Keye: We used to have a few cool ones, I think. You know what I mean? On this one day we were having a cool one and Martin Luther King was having a conference with some of his SLC leaders or members. And shortly after, a big bomb blew a hole in the wall.

Jack Rodolico: The day in 1963 after the city and protesters announce a truce. Someone detonates a bomb at the A.G. Gaston Motel. It's an explosion. It tears through the building, actually just below the room where King and others were organizing.

Harvey Keye: And me and my boys were ready to go after them because we were tough and young and not too smart. But we were ready to pick up [00:10:00] anything. We had to go and get the guys and kill them.

Jack Rodolico: Now, before Harvey acts on this impulse, which could very likely get him killed for whatever reason, before he does, he decides to do something else. He's heard about this man, Dr. King.

Harvey Keye: You know, he was just a preacher, you know.

Jack Rodolico: And he goes to this press conference to hear King speak, and he says he was electrified. That was his word, electrified. And after the speech, he talks to.

Harvey Keye: King and he could see the anger on our face. He said, hey, where are you going? What are you doing? And we said, we're going to go and get him. He said, No, that's not the way we do it. And he gave us some other kind of a soap story that would mean a soft soap. In other words, you you That's not the way we're going to fight this battle.

Jack Rodolico: However, you cannot quote what [00:11:00] Dr. King said to him in that moment. Harvey does remember exactly how it made him feel.

Harvey Keye: And he didn't say it, that I can't remember exactly what he said, but whatever he said changed. It was impressive enough that I didn't carry a gun anymore.

Jack Rodolico: But something like that. Did it change?

Harvey Keye: It changed.

Jack Rodolico: But you didn't even know who he was.

Harvey Keye: Didn't know he was.

Jack Rodolico: He was just that charismatic.

Harvey Keye: Yes.

Jack Rodolico: In this moment, Harvey was sort of looking off into the distance. And I swear it felt like for a moment he was back in 1963, this young man on the verge of vengeance with all of these emotions standing in front of Dr. King and changing. And he just froze up while we were talking. It feels like you're there. Yeah. Excuse me.

Harvey Keye: Yeah. It's [00:12:00] tough. It's hard to think. That other human beings treated us so poorly. But I was changed from feeling the hate about how I was treated as a youngster in Birmingham, but I was changed instantly a better off because I carry I want to say it this way. He never said this. A pocket full of happiness. Wherever I go now, I didn't have that before.

Jack Rodolico: This is the story of what it took for America, for all of America to set aside a single day to honor a single Black life. It is a life that profoundly [00:13:00] changed those of others. But it's not actually a story about milk. It's a story about the politics of transforming a person into an official national symbol. Harvey Quay is going to play a role in the final stage of that transformation, as will the state of New Hampshire, and will return there soon. But I want to stay in the sixties for just a moment here, because, of course, that is where this all starts. The story actually starts right after Martin Luther King was assassinated. So he is murdered. Memphis, Tennessee, April 4th, 1968. And immediately there is this massive outpouring of grief across the country, particularly in Black communities.

Archival: This is [00:14:00] how Washington looked from the air tonight. At one point early in the evening, more than 100 fires were burning, some of them in an area just 20 blocks from the White House.

Jack Rodolico: In the immediate days after King's assassination, there are riots, particularly in northern cities across the United States.

Archival: And as darkness fell, arrests increased. To this hour, More than 700 people have been arrested. Some of them picked up in spot checks by police enforcing the curfew.

Jack Rodolico: You know, and this is this expression of frustration with, you know, living conditions, with job opportunities, everything that King stood for and fought for in the Black freedom struggle. You know, it's not like everything had been fixed by 1968. And so it was just this overflowing outpouring of anger and grief.

John Conyers: And so I said, what what is the greatest honor that I could pay this man? What do I do now?

Jack Rodolico: Okay, so this is John [00:15:00] Conyers. He's dead now. This tape is from 2008. And Conyers was a Democratic congressman from Michigan. He actually served in the House for 52 years, and he was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Influential guy for a long time. Back in 1968. He was only in his second term in the House. And after King was assassinated, Conyers wants to do something. And he has an idea that would become the seed of this huge social movement.

John Conyers: And I called Coretta Scott King, and I asked her permission and agreement. And we introduced the bill four days after his assassination.

Hannah McCarthy: All right. What bill is he talking about here?

Jack Rodolico: Conyers bill would set aside the third Monday of January as a federal holiday. The federal government [00:16:00] would shut down every year specifically to honor King's life and sacrifice. Now, today, we live in a world where King is pretty much universally recognized as a hero. That was not the case when he was alive. I mean, he was very popular among Black Americans, but among whites, he was divisive. He was unpopular. I mean, there was actually a national poll that found 31% of respondents said that King brought his death upon himself.

Hannah McCarthy: Wow.

Jack Rodolico: So in 1968, Conyers bill went nowhere in the House. But while the federal government sat on its hands, the idea of an m.k day starts to grow in popularity at the local level. All throughout the seventies.

John Conyers: It happened from the ground up because the theory was, well, there's a lot of emotion [00:17:00] around losing Dr. King. But as the years would pass, the enthusiasm would diminish. But just the opposite happened.

Jack Rodolico: Activists and local governments start to say, okay, if Congress won't declare a King holiday, then we'll declare a local king holiday. Cities like D.C., St Louis, Atlanta celebrate MLK Day. Those were the first MLK Day celebrations. Often, they were just activists without government sanction, celebrating on their own. But cities very quickly got on board.

John Conyers: In local areas in schools. States passed resolution.

Jack Rodolico: So you could see this momentum start to grow. State legislatures declare state holidays. The first one was Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey. Follow. And it actually starts to become a bit of a red line in politics. Are you for the holiday or are you against it? That becomes a symbol for other things that you believe in.

Hannah McCarthy: I don't know if you'll actually know the answer to this question, but let's give it [00:18:00] a shot. So, you know, you're saying that it's happening at the school level, happening at the city level, at the state level. Was there a shift among the sort of whole body politic when it came to sentiment about Martin Luther King?

Jack Rodolico: Yes, there was actually, because there is polling on King's popularity before he died and after he died, actually for years going up into recent years. And every single poll through the decades finds that he has more, particularly among white Americans, more and more. Virtually recognized as a hero in the seventies, the picture was still very muddled. But you did have cities and you did have local places that were fully on board. Before everybody else.

John Conyers: Unions started, including as a collective bargaining day in their negotiations. And more people began joining on the bill in the Congress. [00:19:00]

Jack Rodolico: So then the local pressure boomerangs back to Congress.

Archival: I support the Democratic platform, call for making his birthday a national holiday, and I will work for it.

Jack Rodolico: So in 1979, President Jimmy Carter gives a speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. This was the church where King was a pastor. He is there with Coretta Scott King behind him. All of these civil rights activists. And he publicly throws his support behind the bill. It's a big deal.

Archival: And I particularly hope that in this 50th anniversary year that I will be able to sign a bill proclaiming January the 15th as a national holiday in honor of Dr. King's principles.

Jack Rodolico: The momentum is moving. The bill does go to the House floor. It loses by five votes that year. So Jimmy Carter does not get that opportunity, but it sort of enters the public consciousness [00:20:00] in a way that it had not before, particularly because this is one of the most interesting things I feel like I learned. Okay. Stevie Wonder.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.

Jack Rodolico: The Stevie Wonder. Happy Birthday song.

Hannah McCarthy: I know it well.

Jack Rodolico: I know it well. Okay, So if you ask me, this is the best birthday song. It's better than the birthday song, right? It's just a it's a birthday anthem. I have heard it all my life. And Stevie Wonder wrote this song for Martin Luther King Day. He released it in 1980, specifically calling out the whole country. Why won't we honor this man? Why not create a holiday? The hook is happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. But the rest of the song, all of the lyrics are about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hannah McCarthy: I cannot believe I didn't realize that.

Jack Rodolico: I did not either.

Archival: And like for all of you to please join me urging the US Senate and your Senators [00:21:00] in particular to vote yes on s400 a bill to make. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday A national holiday.

Jack Rodolico: So in 1982, Stevie Wonder and Coretta Scott King deliver 6 million signatures to the speaker of the House supporting this holiday and the next year. In 1983, 15 years after John Conyers first introduced the bill, it passes in the House by a wide margin, 338 to 90. So makes it out of the House, and then it goes to the Senate, where it passes by another wide margin, 78 to 22, but only after some very anti MLK filibustering on the part of Jesse Helms. He was a North Carolina senator who made campaign commercials along the lines of this.

Archival: You needed that job.

And you were the best qualified. But they had [00:22:00] to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?

Jack Rodolico: The commercial shows just a pair of white hands.

Hannah McCarthy: Wow.

Jack Rodolico: It was actually called White Hands. That's what the commercial was known as.

Hannah McCarthy: Unbelievable.

Jack Rodolico: So the Senate shuts Helms' filibuster down as quickly as it can, but not before he gets across some pretty forceful messaging about MLK being a communist.

Hannah McCarthy: Which I feel we should say he was not.

Jack Rodolico: He was not. Mlk was not a communist. But it's worth bringing up because plenty of people across the country, predominantly white people, agreed with Helms assessment of milk, which would be a part of King's legacy for a long time. Anyway, the bill passes. Reagan signs it into law.

Archival: The White House staged an impressive ceremony today. The president and Dr. King's widow walking into the Rose Garden together in an effort to spruce up Mr. [00:23:00] Reagan's tattered civil rights image. The president signed the bill, which he had so strongly opposed, making Martin Luther King Jr's birthday a national holiday.

Archival: Then we will see the day when Dr. King's dream comes true and in his words, all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning. Land where my fathers died. Land of the pilgrim's pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. Thank you. God bless you. And I extend.

Hannah McCarthy: We're going to take a quick break. But before we do, a reminder that Civics 101, all of the work that we do here, [00:24:00] this story that Jack brought us, it's all made possible because our listeners support us both in spirit and when possible, with donations. This is public radio. That's how we work. If you're in a position to make a contribution to the show, please consider doing so. It's quick, it's easy, and it's a way for you to show your belief in free, accessible civics education and good stories. Click the donate button on our home page at civics101podcast.org. You're listening to Civics one on one. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today we are talking to reporter and producer Jack RODOLICO about the creation of Martin Luther King Junior Day. This holiday did not come about without a fight. Many fights, in fact. But in 1983, Ronald Reagan finally did sign a bill making MLK Day a federal holiday, which means that it was recognized by the federal government, [00:25:00] but not that it had to be recognized by the states. All right. So we've got this federal holiday. Jack, you have established that there are states across the nation celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday in that state or in a city or even in a school district. But as I know, a federal holiday does not mean that everyone in the country has to do it right. It's still up to the states as to whether or not they want to make it a holiday. So how many states are left who are not doing this?

Jack Rodolico: Well, Reagan signs the bill in 83. The first federal holiday is three years later in 86. And by 1986, 44 states officially recognize MLK Day. So by the time the first federal holiday comes around, there are only a handful of states that are refusing to create the Martin Luther King Junior holiday. [00:26:00] And Hanna, I will tell you, you and I are sitting in one of those states. And so yeah.

Jack Rodolico: For this handful of recalcitrant state legislatures, this starts to become a pretty potent issue. So, for example, in 1987, Governor Evan Mecham, basically as soon as he is inaugurated, rescinds Arizona's MLK Day.

Hannah McCarthy: So Arizona had signed it into state law.

Jack Rodolico: It had been by executive order, his predecessor.

Jack Rodolico: He ran campaigning that he would remove that executive order. And he does.

Hannah McCarthy: Okay.

Jack Rodolico: For what it's worth, he was later impeached for other issues. Wow. In Idaho, one lawmaker claims MLK Day is a, quote, Black holiday. [00:27:00] And another state lawmaker in Idaho says forget milk. Let's name a holiday after a real Black hero. I'm paraphrasing here, Bill Cosby. Okay.

Hannah McCarthy: Can you imagine?

Jack Rodolico: I cannot. I mean, obviously, these positions don't age very well. Now, New Hampshire is on that list, too. And kind of like Congress had for a very long time. The New Hampshire legislature mostly ignored the King holiday debate until they couldn't. The King State holiday bill first came up in New Hampshire in 1979, but it took a decade for the pressure to build up. And I want to give you a sense of the lawmakers who were at the state house when this discussion came to a head.

Linda Diane Long: It was hard to hide at that time. You could not just blend in. You can stand in the sea of 400 white people and still hold your own. You're not doing too bad.

Jack Rodolico: This is Democrat Linda Diane Long. She's now a Baptist minister in Georgia. [00:28:00] And in the late eighties, she was one of a small handful of Black lawmakers in New Hampshire's 400 member House of Representatives. Next up.

Wayne Burton: You have to understand, I was a full time assistant dean that year. H Right. And a full time legislator and a full time doctoral student with three kids. And I coached hockey and soccer and baseball.

Jack Rodolico: That's Wayne Burton, a Democrat and retired college administrator. And finally, Jackie Domaingue, a Republican. She splits her time now between New Hampshire and Florida, which is where I found her.

Jackie Domaingue: Her when I entered the legislature in 1987. I was 37 years old. The average age is 63.

Jack Rodolico: So the MLK Day pressure is coming from both outside the state of New Hampshire.

Linda Diane Long: We were seeing nationally how the national push for the holiday had picked up steam when Stevie Wonder wrote, you know, the song. And Jesse [00:29:00] Jackson, of course, was running for president.

Jack Rodolico: And from inside the state, from the state's biggest city.

Jackie Domaingue: The Manchester school board determined, wanting to recognize Martin Luther King Day in the hopes that it would help get it passed at the state level.

Jack Rodolico: So 1989 is a big year for the bill in New Hampshire. It is the first time that the public really turns out in force to tell the legislature to pass this bill.

Linda Diane Long: And the hearing itself started off very emotional, you know, with prayer. It was packed. We had children. We had white people, we had Black people, we had Native Americans, a variety of people speaking that day. So it wasn't a Black issue.

Jack Rodolico: A few members of the public spoke against the King holiday. Most spoke in favor. So break this down a little bit for me. You're asked to orchestrate the theater of a floor fight. Five monologues.

Wayne Burton: I would speak last because I had the story [00:30:00] of meeting Dr. King.

Jack Rodolico: One of the reasons Wayne Burton cared so much about a King holiday bill is that he met Martin Luther King back in 1964. Ml K came to Wayne's College in Maine for a lecture, and he met him in person. And, you know, as Harvey said earlier, it was just a life altering experience for him.

Wayne Burton: So he sat down on a couch and we were talking quite a while. And after a while I said to him, This is all wonderful stuff, but what's it got to do with me, a white kid or a white school in an all white state? And that's when he said, If your conscience stops at the border of Maine, you're less of a person than you should be, and yours is responsible for what happens in Birmingham as you are in Brunswick, Maine. And I was really taken aback. I'd never been challenged like that. We have a borderless conscience.

Jack Rodolico: Okay. [00:31:00] So now, for her part, Jacky Domaingue had been asked to speak to, but for the opposing side.

Jackie Domaingue: I was not a fan of Martin Luther King. I understood what he did. But unfortunately for me, I'm the daughter of an Army corporal who served on Iwo Jima, and I lost several classmates from elementary school to high school to the Vietnam War and comments that Dr. King had made.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: But they asked, and rightly so. What about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problem, bring about the changes it wanted.

My questions hit home and I knew that I could never again.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed and the ghetto without having first spoken [00:32:00] clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. My own government.

Jack Rodolico: It's a little hard to hear there, but that is King calling the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. He compares state violence against Black Americans to America's violence against the Vietnamese. And many Americans, particularly white Americans, considered his words an insult.

Jackie Domaingue: They didn't volunteer for that war. They were drafted and lost their lives. I felt it was unkind what he had said. And so I got on the floor and opposed the bill.

Jack Rodolico: Now, there were lawmakers at the time who were much more cutting. One called King, quote, an evil man. And this did come down to partizan politics. I mean, New Hampshire was controlled top down by Republicans. It basically had been for about 100 years. This is a state at the time where the most powerful media outlet [00:33:00] was a newspaper, the Union Leader, And that paper's editorial board was vehemently against MLK Day. Lawmakers are picking this paper up every day and reading it. And between 1988 and 1991. The Union Leader published an even 100 editorials and editorial cartoons about MLCs Day, relentlessly attacking King and his legacy and his supporters. They called him treasonous. They called him a demagogue. So what was it like to sit there and listen to people propagate these? You know.

Linda Diane Long: Just that they had a blood pressure about 300 or 2000 during that time.

Wayne Burton: They tried to demonize Dr. King by saying he was a communist because he had gone to North Vietnam during the war.

Jack Rodolico: How did you take that communism line as a Vietnam veteran yourself?

Wayne Burton: I took it quite badly [00:34:00] because I had spent I had almost been killed several times killing communists. And then to be accused of being a communist myself got me angry, quite honestly.

Jack Rodolico: So after the hearing, Wayne Burton was in the press a lot. He became sort of a de facto spokesman for the holiday bill. And because of that. T had a target on his back.

Wayne Burton: And I started getting anonymous letters without return addresses. King is a crime. He get out of our country and the cut out little letters out of Time magazine and so hate sentences. And there was some death threats to me and my kids that people would call on the phone, my house phone.

Jack Rodolico: Address how you're pointing to your phone and the next.

Wayne Burton: yeah.

Jack Rodolico: Same house. Yeah.

Wayne Burton: And I it's I was just astounded that someone would would do that.

Jack Rodolico: Were you scared for your life? I mean, how did you contextualize those threats?

Wayne Burton: Yes, [00:35:00] I was it was not dissimilar to some of the feelings I had in Vietnam. It is a terrible feeling to think that the price of doing the right thing may be your life.

Hannah McCarthy: And I just want to pause here and reflect on this. We are talking about a man who was trying to pass a state holiday, right?

Jack Rodolico: Mm hmm.

Jack Rodolico: In 1989, the holiday bill died in New Hampshire House by a wide margin. Like legislators voted almost 3 to 1 against it.

Hannah McCarthy: Wow.

Linda Diane Long: I wasn't that hopeful. I had hoped that it would change some minds from the hearing. I really hope the hearings would have opened some eyes, but it didn't. [00:36:00]

Jack Rodolico: So, again, it wasn't terribly surprising that the bill failed. What is surprising, at least to me, is Jackie Domain's response. Now, remember, she was opposed to this bill. Did that feel like a victory?

Jackie Domaingue: No. Evans No. It was very sad, I confess. Really? Yes. Yeah. It was very sad. It stayed with me for a long time. Yes, we won. But what did we want?

Hannah McCarthy: Wait. Okay. So Jackie and other Republicans, they got what they wanted, right? I mean, this is this is what they were aiming for. So why would she reflect on that and feel sad? That doesn't track for me.

Jack Rodolico: So after the vote, Jackie says someone in the antechamber of the house screamed at her and called her a racist. This person had tears in their eyes. And Jackie says that whatever [00:37:00] her personal feelings are about Martin Luther King, she also understood how important he was to so many other people. And she didn't like the feeling of obstructing progress. She says most New Hampshire voters at that time weren't ready for an MLCs day, so she wound up proposing something that she felt could pass the House.

Jackie Domaingue: The Purpose of a Civil Rights Day was to get to move the issue forward and not leave it where it had been left in 1989 in anger.

Jack Rodolico: In 1991, the state Senate was ready to create an RMC holiday. They passed a bill to do that, but the House was not, so they compromised. New Hampshire became the only state in the country that celebrated Civil Rights Day. One state rep at the time who hated this compromise said, quote, We would have been more honest to call it the anything but Martin [00:38:00] Luther King holiday.

Hannah McCarthy: We're going to take a quick break here, but when we're back, it is the final insistent push to once and for all spread the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr's life and work to every state in the nation. We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. And today, reporter and producer Jack RODOLICO is sharing the story of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the decades long struggle to make it truly a nationwide holiday.

Jack Rodolico: Okay, so, Hannah, this final stretch of the story is the part that I was honestly most curious about because the holiday bill seemingly enters this purgatory period. In hindsight, it feels inevitable [00:39:00] that New Hampshire would do this. But it's going to take all of the nineties, like all of the nineties. So what is going on? What does it take for New Hampshire to finally honor the holiday? That's what I wanted to know. I kind of assumed the bill languished, but in fact it.

Ray Joseph: Didn't at the time. For us, it was pure racism.

Jack Rodolico: This is Ray Joseph, and this is where things get really kind of unwieldy and unpredictable. So in 1990, Ray is a student at St Paul's School. Saint Paul's is one of America's most exclusive boarding schools, a high school. Historically, boarding schools are like the epitome of WASPy exclusive institutions, but at this time they were diversifying and Ray was part of a minority of very bright Black students on the Saint Paul's campus. By the way, Saint Paul's school is two miles from the New Hampshire State House.

Ray Joseph: You've got to [00:40:00] remember, this was the late eighties. So we were listening to Public Enemy, Fight the Power, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. So it wasn't me, but one of my roommates said we should boycott, we should not go to school. And it was that seed of an idea that wound up turning into something to bigger.

Jack Rodolico: So Ray in some classmates are like, This is BS. And at first they say, let's walk out of school tomorrow. This is the night before MLCs day in 1990. But they actually start talking to school administrators like the headmaster. And he says, well, actually, I was going to give you the day off. And you see, this was actually happening all over the state. School administrators, all over New Hampshire were saying, forget what the state government says. We make our calendars. So we're going to give students the day off for MLCs Day. But Ray and his classmates weren't satisfied with that. They are sharp. They are young. A lot of them are from New York City, and they [00:41:00] are just opening their eyes to the culture in New Hampshire.

Tommieka Teixiera: Yeah. You know, in my 15 year old mind, it was just New Hampshire was just a place that was beautiful and just empty of all forms of joy and entertainment. You know, it was just you know, we had light of FM. I think it was one on 1.9 was the only radio station. I mean, they didn't even play Bon Jovi. I mean, it was, you know, no Depeche Mode, no anything.

Jack Rodolico: This is Tommieka Teixeira, another Saint Paul student in 1990.

Linda Diane Long: I didn't know that there were people who would not celebrate MLK Day. Like, what do you even talking about? That's unfathomable to me, right?

Jack Rodolico: It wasn't just that they saw an omission of Black culture in New Hampshire. Tiffany Gill, another student, says this was sometimes a hostile environment for her.

Tiffany Gill: The first and only time I've ever been called a racial epithet that I've heard was walking down Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, as a high school student.

Jack Rodolico: So MLK Day 1990, The [00:42:00] Saint Paul's kids are like, We can't protest the school, but the school winds up sanctioning the protest and joining it.

Hannah McCarthy: That feels so rare to me.

Jack Rodolico: Doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The school was really on board and they made a plan together. Students and faculty and administrators walk from Saint Paul's two miles to the state house.

Ray Joseph: And so we spent the preceding night that Sunday night developing, you know, signs, wristbands, armbands. I remember filing out of chapel just as that New Hampshire snow begins to fall upon us. It was cold, as it always was in January in New Hampshire.

Tiffany Gill: It was a it was a warm feeling. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful line of us walking, you know, off the grounds together.

Tommieka Teixiera: Nothing had been plowed. And we all just came out with [00:43:00] excitement, with a little fear. I think we didn't know what we were to encounter and cars honking and showing support.

Jack Rodolico: You know, something they all kind of reflect on is that it was kind of like MLK had given them a roadmap for what to do in this situation. March Right. Go to the seat of power, make your demands known.

Tiffany Gill: You know, for us, it was like our mini civil rights movement.

Ray Joseph: We believe that it's time for change. But honoring Dr. Kent with a state.

Jack Rodolico: Holiday, is this the video with you, with the bullhorn?

Ray Joseph: You got it. That's exactly right.

Jack Rodolico: Yeah.

Ray Joseph: I declare our commitment to realizing King's dreams of eradicating racism, poverty and violence.

Jack Rodolico: So ultimately, this was inspiring for these Saint Paul's kids involved. But they had no political clout in New Hampshire. And they knew that. Right. They're not old enough to vote. They're not residents of the state. Their parents don't pay taxes here. So after the 1990 March, they [00:44:00] start to reach out.

Mike Vlasich: I was Forrest Gump in all this. So you have to understand, I was just in the right place, the right time.

Jack Rodolico: This is Mike Vlasic. He was a kid in the Concord Public High School at the time. By the way, Mike is now a Biden appointee in the Small Business Administration. And I have to tell you, like the number of youth involved in this milk fight in the 1990s in New Hampshire, to me, anyway, seemingly a big percentage of them are lifelong activists. And they will they will tell you that this was activating for them for the rest of their lives. Back then, Mike was a kid who had no contact with this exclusive school in town.

Mike Vlasich: If you're a Concord High public school student, interacting with St Paul's kids was not the norm for something so close to us, that institution. We wouldn't have thought that we were part of that.

Jack Rodolico: Saint Paul students and Concord High kids start a letter campaign and they invite kids to protest with them so that in 1991, more than 1000 [00:45:00] high schoolers descend on the state house lawn.

Arnie Alpert: So that was a cool thing again, because you had the basically the Black kids from the elite school with the white Townees.

Jack Rodolico: This is Arnie Alpert. Arnie had been advocating for Milk Day in New Hampshire since the early eighties. He was on a committee of active. It's dedicated to this cause. But, you know, they were all adults. They were all politicos, you know? For him to see a thousand kids come out for Milk Day. It felt like this thing had finally taken on its own momentum.

Arnie Alpert: Because the state was resisting the holiday. It actually made it more important. It was a holiday of celebration and resistance at the same time.

Jack Rodolico: Up until this point had it, there wasn't too much national press about New Hampshire's stance on MLK Day. But that was about to change because Arizona was about to painfully become the 49th state. So [00:46:00] this part of the story is kind of bananas to me. In 1990, the NFL, the National Football League Awards, the Super Bowl to Tempe, Arizona.

Hannah McCarthy: As in Tempe will host the Super Bowl.

Jack Rodolico: Tempe will host the Super Bowl and it will draw in the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Super Bowl brings in to that area. So the NFL says, okay, Arizona, you're in line to host the Super Bowl. But there's a caveat. We will take this game away from you if you continue to reject MLK Day. This is not a popular stance for the NFL to take at the time. The question, though, goes to a popular referendum. And Arizona voters reject MLK Day by a slim margin and the NFL follows through. It takes the Super Bowl away from Arizona with all of its profits. It's a projected $225 million would come into the state. So it's effectively a massive boycott.

Archival: Nfl Commissioner Paul Tagliabue [00:47:00] said. Arizona can continue its political debate without the Super Bowl as a factor, site selection Chairman Norman Braman said. How could anybody in his right mind go to play there?

Jack Rodolico: And I mean, Hannah, like Public Enemy, wrote a song at this time called By the Time I Get to Arizona, it is a tirade against Arizona about MLK Day. And in the song, which is really good, they namecheck New Hampshire.

Sister Souljah: Public Enemy believes that the powers.

Sister Souljah: That be in the states of New Hampshire and Arizona have found psychological discomfort in paying tribute.

To a Black man tried to teach white people the meaning of civilization. Good luck, brothers.

Hannah McCarthy: I mean, this is just so interesting, right? I understand why these songs are being written. It's not just Happy Birthday, right? It's also Public Enemy because it's like this is an unbelievably public display of pretty hard to deny racism.

Jack Rodolico: Yes. Well, and if you think about if you think about birthday song, Stevie Wonder, this is a happy go lucky song, right? Yeah. And because it's really kind [00:48:00] of calling out every way, Public Enemy, it's like you don't want to be Arizona or New Hampshire. And Public Enemy's crosshairs is very different, calling out America for racism and being in those crosshairs as one state. Yeah. So it starts to get pretty intense for these last final states. And then in 1993, Arizona voters redeem themselves. They approve MLK Day finally. And Stevie Wonder and Rosa Parks come to Arizona on MLK Day as a kind of a reward to the state, you know, And then the eyes of the nation turn to just one state. And it's like New Hampshire, whether it intended or not, sent up a racist bat signal. There is huge press coverage in 1996 of a white supremacist from Mississippi who gets a permit to demonstrate at the New Hampshire State House on MLK Day. He comes here to thank lawmakers.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh, man, that's a bad look.

Jack Rodolico: It's a bad look. [00:49:00]

Archival: Last year's celebrations were marred by white supremacists from Mississippi, but this year, only one dissenter was found in the crowd, far outnumbered by the young people seeking change.

Archival: Because it's our future, you know, even though the adults they're important to.

Archival: But You know, it's going to be us up there next. And we want our children to have a better future than, you know.

Jack Rodolico: By now. It's the mid 1990s and this is when it feels like, come on, it's got to happen. In 1996, the political landscape in New Hampshire starts shifting dramatically. The state elects a Democratic governor for the first time in a long time. A woman, Jeanne Shaheen, who's currently New Hampshire's senior senator. She campaigns on MLK Day. And Democrats make big gains in the state house with women at the helm. Jackie Weatherspoon was elected to the New Hampshire House that year. She was the third Black woman ever elected to the New Hampshire House. In 1997. She was on the House floor when the MLK [00:50:00] bill lost again. This time, the vote count was 178 to 177.

Hannah McCarthy: Oh.

Jackie Weatherspoon: I was there. Oh, my God. We lost that by one vote. And you could just hear it, see it, feel it when we lost by one vote. And then it became something like we became a laughingstock. We lost. It was the humiliation.

Hannah McCarthy: That's like an insult. That's just, ooh.

Jack Rodolico: Well, it just becomes like, what's it going to take?

Hannah McCarthy: Right, Right.

Jack Rodolico: You know, Maya Angelou spoke out. Spike Lee spoke out. Stevie Wonder, you know, Public Enemy wrote a song. I mean, so was that an element of like, you don't tell us what to do no matter what it's about, don't tell us what to do.

Mike Vlasich: I think for a certain element that was an excuse that they were using and they were not understanding that there was an increasing grassroots movement in New Hampshire that wasn't. [00:51:00] Political over the years. The further we have gotten from the civil rights movement, there has been a tendency to turn Martin Luther King into something of a Santa Claus of the movement.

Jack Rodolico: Tiffany Gill, one of the Saint Paul students, she's actually now a historian and associate professor at Rutgers University. And for her, looking back on this window of time, in a way, it's not really about New Hampshire per se. It's about the disconnect between the way MLK is viewed today, the way he was viewed when he was alive, and the slow march from one perspective to the other.

Tiffany Gill: One of the things that I always say is that I have to avoid social media on Martin Luther King Day because we are inundated from every political side with sort of shrinking Martin Luther King down into slogans and phrases. So it erases the fact that there was such [00:52:00] hatred toward King that he was not the beloved figure, that he has come to be within memory. His life was under constant surveillance by the FBI. His family was attacked and that he was ultimately assassinated.

Jack Rodolico: In 1999, the table was finally set. Or so it seemed. The MLK Day bill had failed in the New Hampshire House every time it had come up for the prior 20 years. So nothing was a sure bet. And proponents of the bill wanted a closer somebody who was really going to make a case, and they picked to give the last word to Harvey Quay.

Archival: Because the final speaker, the member from Nashua, representative key members to be taking their seats. A roll call has been requested. We're on the last speaker. [00:53:00]

Harvey Keye: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Honorable men and women of this historic House of Representatives, I rise to support the addition of Martin Luther King's name to the current House Bill 68.

Jack Rodolico: You remember Harvey? Of course.

Hannah McCarthy: Yes, of course.

Jack Rodolico: It's hard to forget from the beginning of the story, that old tape we heard of him earlier. That was from his floor speech to the New Hampshire House in 1999. He told them about meeting King and a few other things, too.

Harvey Keye: I have a granddaughter who is six years old, and she wrote me a poem and she said.

Papa, papa.

Harvey Keye: All the way from Alabama with a banjo on your knee up to New Hampshire to help keep people free. It's tough for me. Members [00:54:00] of this august board, please vote for Bill 68.

Archival: The question before the.

House is the adoption of a majority committee report has to be in order. The House will be in order.

Jack Rodolico: On May 25th, 1999, the New Hampshire House, the final stubborn block of resistance in America to honoring Martin Luther King Jr with a holiday. It voted 212 to 148 to do just that. I asked Harvey, How did that feel?

Harvey Keye: Heavenly.

Jack Rodolico: Harvey has lived for 90 years of unimaginable change, right? He was born under the thumb of Jim Crow. And now he and his wife own their home in New Hampshire. He has grown kids and [00:55:00] grandkids, and he sees history to him for what it is. You know, things move forward. Then they wrench backwards, back and forth. And all he can control is how he feels about it and how he feels is a gift. He was handed in Birmingham by Martin Luther King Jr.

Harvey Keye: I have a pocket full of joy and I hope to keep carrying a pocketful of joy everywhere I go. And that makes me 99.9% happy all of the time.

Hannah McCarthy: This [00:56:00] episode was produced by Jack Rodolico and me, Hannah McCarthy Nick Capodice is my co-host. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. You can find helpful links, resources and our entire episode archive at our website, civics101podcast.org. Special thanks to Steve Davis, Arnie Alpert, Meg Heckman, Jada Hebra, Marci Chang and Eleanor Dunphy. Music in this episode by Dilating Times, Nul Tiel Records meter ScanGlobe, Shaolin Dub, Anemoia, Kirk Osamayo and Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Life of a Political Operative

Ever wonder what life is really like for those who work to support a politician’s career? In September 2022, Hannah McCarthy sat down with Huma Abedin for a show called Writers on a New England Stage. This is an excerpt from their conversation. Huma discusses her memoir, Both/And, and describes what it's like to work alongside and advise a former First Lady, Secretary of State and presidential nominee. You can catch the whole conversation at nhpr.org.

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Transcript

Hannah McCarthy: You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. I had the great pleasure in September of 2022 of hosting writers on a New England stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This episode is an excerpt of a conversation I had with Huma Abedin, longtime aide and adviser to Hillary Clinton, about Huma's book Both/And. Huma gave us a peek into the life of an indispensable adviser of a prominent politician, including stories from the campaign trail. How much time and devotion it really takes and how her life growing up in Saudi Arabia granted her a unique perspective in her role. So here's Huma Abedin, four writers on a New England stage. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for [00:01:00] joining us here tonight. It is a pleasure and privilege to be here. And thank you so much, Huma Abedin, for joining us tonight. I am so glad that you were here. Now, first things first. You know, I host a show called Civics 101. I always try to get out the question right off the bat of what someone does for work. Now, you spent so much of your career in this all consuming public service job. What are you doing right now?

Huma Abedin: Well, I'm having a really good time. Let me start with that. First of all, I'm having definitely an emotional moment being here because. For those of you who knew who I am or know something about my life, I've been in politics for the last decade, 25 years, 26 in September. And when the gentleman picked me up at the airport in Boston, he's like, Have you been to New Hampshire before? And I almost said, I think I've spent more time in New Hampshire than I have in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I was born. Definitely have. By the way, aside [00:02:00] from being here with you, I'm able to find a little more rebalance in my life. I'm a mom of a ten year old going on 17 year old little boy goes by very quickly. We just optioned the book to be made into a television series. So Freida Pinto is making it into a show. And I'm actually flying to Los Angeles tomorrow and for a few other things. But so I'm very excited about that sort of turning because I know a lot of people I used to love to read when I was little and but I know a lot of people won't read the book and might watch it on the screen.

Huma Abedin: So I'm excited about that. And I'm working on this production company with Hillary and Chelsea. We just had two projects. We have lots of projects going on, but this is really become a new passion project and so one is called Gutsy and it's on Apple. Tv+ Some of you may have already watched it, but it's it's it was based on a book that Hillary [00:03:00] and Chelsea wrote, and I was one of the producers for this show. And really for me, this notion of shifting from politics and public service after the 2016 election, kind of this forced kind of shift to sort of reimagine what you're going to do when you grow up. At least that's what I've had to do. And so it's shifting a little bit to storytelling and really enjoying it and and figuring out what else I want to do in my life. And I'm lucky to have a lot of opportunities.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, one of my favorite parts of this whole book is the beginning, which I actually thought was all too brief a description of your childhood. And as you said, you grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You were born there, and then shortly thereafter you were transplanted to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. And I was reading through your book, and at a moment I put it down and I murmured to myself, This woman comes from remarkable people. For those in the audience who perhaps have not read your book or don't know your story, who are your parents?

Huma Abedin: I'm a product [00:04:00] of two immigrants, an Indian father, a Pakistani mother. And for us, for them, really, education was a religion. They were Fulbright scholars, and they came to the United States in the sixties and they met at the University of Pennsylvania. They were both meant to go back to their home countries to marry people they were betrothed to, but they fell in love and they got married and they moved. My father was a political scientist. My mother is a sociologist, and they said, Well, move over. We both can get jobs. So we moved to Michigan, which is where I was born and when I was two. And this is one of the first lines that I wrote in the book when I sat to write. When I was two, my father was diagnosed with renal failure. And in 1977, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, essentially, the doctor said to him, you should, you know, you probably have 5 to 10 years, so you should get your affairs in order. And I think about it in my father was my age when you [00:05:00] know now my age now when he was given this diagnosis. And it's one of the first it was the first line I wrote when I sat down to write the book, which is my father was told he was dying. And so he went out and he lived. And two months later we moved to Saudi Arabia for a one year sabbatical, and we just embarked on this great adventure. Hannah I mean, it was this my parents were so curious about one of the things they really wanted us to number one, even though my father always said, you know, your eyes are at the front of your head for a reason is to look forward.

Huma Abedin: He really wanted us to learn history and learn about other cultures and places and spaces. That's why the book is called Both. And I mean, this notion of you can be both. And my parents came from two countries that were at war and India and Pakistan. They couldn't go back and live there, which is why they got asylum in this country. But I feel like that curiosity, that sense of kind of wonder and joy about learning and respecting others places and spaces is a real gift they gave us. So [00:06:00] a combination of moderation was very important in our family and discipline was really important. But at the end of the day, it was like, We don't care what you do as long as you're educated. You can grow up and be and do whatever you want. And so here, you know, I walked into the White House 21 and had this incredible kind of really, you know, sense of my parents identity. They raised us as and maybe only a child of immigrants can really say this. And every time you say it, you get emotional. And I certainly do. But this notion I mean, we were raised as Americans and most. And faith was a very big part of my childhood. But to travel around the world and to land at airports everywhere, from Turkey to Japan to, you name it, and to land and have that blue passport, I mean that you you carry this great sense of pride at the country that you represented and that we represented. [00:07:00] And so I brought all that experience to me when I walked into the White House to work for Hillary.

Hannah McCarthy: And when your family moved to Saudi Arabia, you're in a very different culture. And you also emphasize that your parents constantly raised you with a sense that you had choices.

Huma Abedin: Yes.

Hannah McCarthy: That you were going to be able to be autonomous in your life. How were they able to reinforce that despite a culture that maybe didn't always reflect that?

Huma Abedin: My mother tells the story that the first time my father says, we're going to go to Saudi Arabia and I was to my mother is like, do they even have diapers in that country? Like, what are we doing? And I think about it. I mean, she landed, you know, this is pre the world of, you know, cell phones and, you know, obviously, you know, computers and Internet. I mean, she was so isolated and so alone and women could not drive and she had to veil herself when she went outside. I mean, it was socially it was a very, very challenging environment. She didn't speak the language. She taught herself Arabic [00:08:00] to communicate with her Saudi students at the university. It was really difficult. And I think it's one of the reasons I did turn to writing and my imagination. And and I created these worlds in my head. And my parents always told us, you can do whatever you wanted. But it was. It was not easy. I mean, certainly it was not easy. And I really commend my mother and my father. But this they made everything kind of this little adventure. And and we got to leave a lot to, I think, know, people often say to me, look, how how did you deal with that, not being able to drive and having to be so in such a conservative environment. I mean, I knew I had a way out. I mean, every we traveled so much and I knew I was going to come home to the United States in the summers and eventually move back here. I love that I was able to do both worlds. And one of the things I did love about growing up in Saudi Arabia was this notion, and we [00:09:00] call it the Ummah, which is basically translates to the community that ever present community. And what I loved about that kind of environment was that there was always a sense of support and you felt like you were part of something much bigger than yourself. Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: Now I'd love to jump back to how you got to the White House to begin with. Yeah, I know that you you start off with an internship in the Clinton administration and you were required to work 15 hours a week.

Huma Abedin: Oh, yes.

Hannah McCarthy: And you did not?

Huma Abedin: Yeah, I did not. Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: How quickly did you know that you were the right person for this kind of job?

Huma Abedin: Oh, God. I never knew. I was not. I didn't know. All I knew was I loved it. I you know, I went to university in Washington because I wanted to become Christiane Amanpour, and I'd seen her eye and turn on the TV. Cnn International had just arrived in 1992 during the first, you know, Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War, second Gulf War, depending on your perspective. But and just saw this woman [00:10:00] reporting from Baghdad, and she just was first of all, she looked like she came from my part of the world. She was so smart. She was so, you know, I saw her as sort of this, you know, truth seeker. And I just admired her so much. And so I went to study journalism and then got this internship by accident in the White House. I had a friend who was interning for Mike McCurry, and she says, Well, that's how you become Christiane Amanpour, go intern for Mike McCurry. I apply for the internship. I get it. Don't get a job in the press office. I get a job in the first lady's policy office because of my background. And I remember calling my mother and saying, Mom, I don't know how am I going to come become Christiane Amanpour in the first lady's policy office? And she said, well, you know, sometimes planning doesn't work out, but maybe Plan B will be, you know, pretty good. And and she was right. And even though I was raised by a father who said a good life is a balanced life, I did not follow that advice.

Huma Abedin: I just fell in love with the work. I just I, I very careful about how I use [00:11:00] that word that I really became addicted to it. And I was never the best at anything. I mean, there are so many stories in the book of my constant failures. I mean, and, and the attitude in this White House was basically like they tossed you into the deep end and you you either sank or you swam. And and all I knew I was never the best. I mean, I was I was not the smartest. I was not the prettiest. I was not the easiest of anything. All I knew is that I was prepared to outwork everybody else. And and I think that's one of the reasons I mean, I really I mean, I really did succeed. And there's a couple of, you know, crazy stories in the book. Like the very first speech I had to staff Hillary four, and I was super nervous. And I you know, here she is, the first lady. I'm this kid. No one's really told me what to do. And I, like, carry her speech. And I put it on stage and and she goes on stage and I'm at the back of the room because that's what you're supposed to do as a staff person, be invisible. And then [00:12:00] she's sitting on stage and all of a sudden she does this. And I thought, okay, this must be really bad. And I approached the stage and she leans over and she says, I don't have the right speech.

Huma Abedin: And it was the first time that I felt that from like the tip of my toes, like fire up into my head thinking. But that that's the moment when, you know, you either, like, completely fall apart or you say, which is what I said. For the very first time that night, I said, I got it. I didn't have it, definitely didn't have it. But I ran out to the car and sure enough, open the limousine. And there is, while I've been carrying my pristine copy of the speech, there is a speech like with all notes that she had edited the speech on the whole ride from the White House to the venue. And I run up, and by the time I get back to the stage, she's already at the podium and she readjusts the pages, delivers the speech. I expect it to be fired. By the way, when we walked off the stage and this tells you so much about Hillary, and I suspect there are people in the audience [00:13:00] who've actually met her and spent some time with her. And the very first thing she says to me is, you should ride in the limousine with me from now on. And it was her way of acknowledging that for this relationship to work when you are the primary person. You needed to know everything that that. And that's how she solved. And that was my first time in a limousine, and it's been 26 years. So it was all kinds of crazy adventures like that. But I survived.

Hannah McCarthy: And I have to know the Civics 101 in me has to know. When you were described as a top adviser, an aide to Hillary Clinton. What does that mean? What were you doing on a daily basis? What was your job?

Huma Abedin: You know, and that's, I think, one of the challenges of having such an amorphous job. I mean, it really became this kind of air traffic controller. I mean, so much of it, you know, I always said that in the 2008, if I was the manager of anything, I was the manager [00:14:00] of sanity, because so much of it on a daily basis, you're just juggling 100 balls. You know what what do you tell her when how to take somebody through a day, how you deal with your hosts, how you figure out what the right thing to say is. So it's actually it is very hard to describe the job that somebody like somebody like I did, but in part was a sense of getting ultimately your message across every single day, trying to think long term, trying to think short term. So it's it really is a little bit of everything. But it is it's it's hard to describe. I mean, for me, I wanted her to be able to go out there and just do the best job that she can. And then we are you know, we're the feet beneath the duck, you know, just paddling to make sure that everything is is smooth.

Huma Abedin: And also, for me, a big part of it, I tell young people who work for me now and you're who do what we call advance. I know everyone here knows what advance is. I had to describe what an advance person is when I was in Saudi Arabia earlier. But I [00:15:00] would say to my I say to my staff now, when you go somewhere and you're negotiating for event, it doesn't matter if you work for Hillary, if you work for Barack Obama or if you work for Microsoft, if somebody has a bad experience, they're not going to say, You, Jane Smith, are terrible. They're going to say Hillary Clinton sucks or Microsoft suck you. You know, so, so much of it is you really are an ambassador for what you represent. And that's at least how I was raised. And so you can see even 25 years later, I still struggle to figure out how to describe what the job is that I did.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. And I wonder, having spent so much of your young adult years utterly devoted to this individual in this cause and this party, how were you able to preserve yourself?

Huma Abedin: Well, you know, I was I lived a very I didn't I lived a very for those of you who, as you if you read, end up writing the book, I mean, I, I everything was work. I mean, I didn't have relationships. I didn't see my family. I didn't I actually write [00:16:00] about the fork in the road moment that when 1997 I get a call, I'm at a family wedding in Manhattan, this fairy tale wedding. And my cousin was getting married. And I get a phone call from the White House and and my supervisor calls and says, Do you want to go to Argentina to advance a trip for the first lady and the president? I was so green, I didn't even know what it meant. And it meant I would have to miss the wedding. I would leave in the middle of of the of the wedding and get on a plane and go to Buenos Aires. And I didn't even stop to think of it. And I that's my fork in the road moment. I mean, I had one path right in front of me, you know, the snow, this future of family and kids and, you know, or this. And I didn't even know what was down this other road. No, no idea. All I knew is I wanted it. And and so for me, I spent two decades of of work being my priority. And I really and I, I wouldn't change [00:17:00] a thing, but having a rebalance, I mean, my diet was horrible. I mean, I literally had like 15 cups of coffee a day. I survived on snack bars and then I'd go to dinner and I would have, you know, two orders of entrees and four desserts. You know, it was it was a really unhealthy it was a really physically unhealthy ex existence. So I'm healthier now at 47 than I was at 37, for sure.

Hannah McCarthy: You're listening to an excerpt from my conversation with Huma Abedin, for Writers on a New England Stage. There's plenty more coming after this quick break. But first, hello. You're listening to this podcast. Thank you. Seriously, our job here at Civics 1 to 1 is to answer your questions, respond to your needs, and this ever complicated tangle of American government and politics. And we hope that you turn to us with the confidence that you'll actually get something substantial out of a listen if you do and you have the ability. I'm asking you to take a moment. Go to Civics101podcast.org [00:18:00] and consider making a contribution to the show. This is public radio. It belongs to you. And it exists because of your donations. Got a little extra goodwill. Cash burning a hole in your pocket. We are a really great place to put that cash. I promise we will do good. Work with it. All right, that's it. And thanks for listening. This is civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. This episode is an edited version of my conversation with longtime Hillary Clinton, top aide and advisor Huma Abedin for Writers on a New England stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth. In part because this conversation happened in New Hampshire, Huma wanted to share the ground breaking, or, as she might tell it, glass ceiling shattering moment that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. And no, I'm not talking about 2016. I'm talking about the first time around. I'm talking about [00:19:00] 2008.

Huma Abedin: It was one mile down the road where she made history. I like I actually see that. I mean, it's it's just not honored more in some ways because that so this is I'm taking us back to for those of us who remember the 2008 presidential election, I certainly do. It's seared into my memory. But when Hillary Clinton got in and it was a very, very crowded primary, you know, she was the front runner and that she it came with all the advantages and the disadvantages of her being the front runner. And, you know, for those for those of you to remember, I mean, Joe Biden was running and John Edwards was running. I mean, it was a it was a big and we knew we had research when she got in into the campaign that it was going to be hard for a woman. It's one of the reasons why she didn't you know, she did the whole I'm in it to win it and kind of running as the most qualified candidate. And here was then-Senator Barack Obama, just [00:20:00] just this extraordinary, inspiring, you know, brilliant candidate. And so we're off to the races. And we worked really hard, invested a lot of time in Iowa. And and then she has this stunning loss, I mean, stunning loss where she didn't come second, but she came third. After John Edwards. So Barack Obama won and John Edwards came second and Hillary came third.

Huma Abedin: And the entire time leading up to this very, very long, very, very brutal campaign schedule. Like we were reeling. And I recount the story in the book of of of how shocked we all were. So immediately she does her concession speech, which she had not anticipated giving in Iowa. And we immediately get on a plane. And so we land in New Hampshire 3:00 in the morning, January 7th, 2008. And we are basically preparing to lose. I mean, it's now like we just didn't know what was going to happen in New Hampshire at that point. [00:21:00] At that point, oh, my God, Like everything went south. And so here we are about 11 points down in New Hampshire. And I remember slogging through that first day and ending up at a rally, if I remember correctly, in Manchester, and Wes Clark, who had run for president himself. We show up at an event and we're all kind of super depressed. And I said, you know, and he comes off stage and he's like really energized. And he said, General, how does it feel? And I because I was my normal question, I was like, why did I ask him? And he puts his hands on my shoulder and he says, Huma. She is going to win here. You can just feel it. And I'm looking at him like he's crazy. And but he did. I mean, he had been in New Hampshire, and it was something that you just you just can't you can't explain it.

Huma Abedin: But if you're in politics or you, you know, you can feel so. Gave us kind of a little a little bump. But one of the reasons I share the story is, you know, the day had been so long and we get up [00:22:00] at 5:00 in the morning and we basically got this message from our campaign manager, which is you should be prepared to lose here and which nobody knew at the time, obviously publicly weren't saying this, obviously. And we end up at Cafe Espresso down the road in Portsmouth. And I was on the bus because we had just gotten this devastating news. And I got on the phone with a few of her campaign advisers and to figure out what are we going to do, like what New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada and all this. And I get a knock on the door. Somebody comes running out and knocks on the bus door and says, We need you. She's crying. And I literally look at this advanced person. I mean, who is crying? What are you talking about? Because you cannot show emotion as a woman. Oh, my God. In politics. And long story short, a woman had had got up at the cafe and said, you know, this must be so hard. How do you do it? Marianne? [00:23:00] Yes, yes.

Huma Abedin: I mean, she does. And I really I mean, Marianne should get credit. I mean, it was that moment, that just human moment of how that was the people forget. The question was, how do you do it? This must be so hard. And it was I mean, as cheesy as people might think, this is I mean, she basically said, I do it because I care. I mean, I know I have this enormously privileged life and I see all these problems in our country. I know I can fix it. And that was it. And that moment, that brief moment, that emotional moment. Thank you, Marianne. And it really changed the tide. And so that I mean, sure enough, fast forward to everyone knows history here. She won she won New Hampshire. And it was extraordinary. It was nobody. And she did that. And this state did that for her. And the [00:24:00] very next morning, the first question she just got asked is, how do you explain your failures as opposed to how do you explain she made history that night, by the way, no one has done it since. Nobody no woman has done it since. And I that's why I have such a. And so we both of us have such deep. I'm sorry I'm rambling about this, but such deep kind of gratitude and affection and and love and because it was done here.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, well, this I think this is a great question because you actually you speak to how how very much public service and being a civil servant felt like you're calling and felt like the ultimate thing to devote yourself to a member of the audience asks, How do you envision the future of public service poll workers, teachers, voter registrars, etc.?

Huma Abedin: I think that it is all about passing that passion on to young people, which is why I'm happy to hear that. You say that college students are that you've spoken to are really motivated because, I [00:25:00] mean, I even see it in New York when I go vote in Manhattan. And poll workers are always, you know, it's always older, like how I want to make it exciting to young people to be part of take them along for the ride. It's and show you know, I write in the book about really getting to a very, very low, very, very bad place in my life. And, you know, post 2016. And I for some part felt very responsible for her loss. And and this notion of really being prepared to just you know, I had some very dark thoughts and that was that wasn't so long ago was in 2019. And I wrote the book when the book a lot of the writing the book was therapy. I tell all young people, by the way, to write their story. I mean, I think that act of writing is and storytelling is so, so powerful. And frankly, being in politics, what is being in politics, it's telling a story, right? [00:26:00] Ultimately, it's telling a story. And to now be this person in 2022 and to feel this much joy and satisfaction and sense of just possibility and and hope is I mean, like, if I can do that, I really do feel like it's it's it's possible for for anybody. And so maybe politics isn't my future. But I, I do feel very hopeful about the future and about our country. And I just think a big part of it is this is just being in community together again and and having conversations and not yelling and screaming at each other.

Hannah McCarthy: I do. I have to ask you, because I think so many young people really don't think politicians care at all about them, in part because they can't vote under certain age. Right. Their demographic maybe doesn't matter. Are they at all wrong?

Huma Abedin: I think some people are in it just for the platform. Absolutely. I mean, I would you know, but I think there are there are [00:27:00] there are so many candidates, forget running for president, you know, state, local elections who are doing some incredible, incredible things. And I think they should all be honored as secretaries of state and gubernatorial candidates and House candidates. There's a lot of good work and good people and well intentioned public servants out there who should be honored.

Hannah McCarthy: State and local government, everybody. That's where it's at.

Huma Abedin: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Hannah McCarthy: Huma Abedin, thank you so very much.

Huma Abedin: So much. Thank you all so much.

Speaker3:

Hannah McCarthy: This has been an excerpt from my conversation with Huma Abedin, longtime Hillary Clinton aide and adviser and author of the book both. And this conversation was recorded live before an audience at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Writers on a New England Stage in partnership with New Hampshire [00:28:00] Public Radio. A longer version of this conversation will be available at npr.org. A big thank you to everyone who helped put that show together. The musical executive Director Tina Sawtelle. New Hampshire Public Radio President and CEO Jim Schachter. New Hampshire public Radio producer Sarah Plourde, the Music Hall production manager. Zhana Morris. The Music Hall Live Sound and recording engineer. Ian Martin, musical director and band Bob Lord and Dreadnought and the Music Hall literary producer Brittany Wasson. This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy. Nick Capodice is my co-host. Christina Phillips is our executive producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Lavender Scare

You've probably heard about the Red Scare - the panic around the perceived threat of communism during the Cold War. But the Lavender Scare is lesser known. This was a time when the federal government investigated, persecuted and fired thousands of LGBTQ+ employees, calling them security risks and threats to the country. 

In this episode of Civics 101, we dive into the origin and timeline of the Lavender Scare, and meet the man who pushed back, and in doing so, started a movement. We also talk about the ripple effects we're still seeing today, with Dr. Lillian Faderman,  author of Woman: The American History of an Idea, and David K. Johnson, author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, which became the basis for a documentary film that was broadcast nationwide on PBS.

Transcript:

Note: The following transcript was AI-generated and may contain errors.

Hannah McCarthy: Just a quick note. This episode includes outdated language that is offensive. Hey, Nick. Can you describe for our listeners the video that I'm showing you right now?

Nick Capodice: Yeah. So you've got people picketing in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And they look like sort of clean-cut people. They're well groomed. And they also have signs, signs that say things like sexual preference is irrelevant to employment. And homosexual citizens want equal treatment as human beings. But it's kind of eerie. And because nobody's saying anything, there's no chanting. There's no yelling.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, this is a silent protest. The group protesting is part of the Mattachine Society. The founder and leader of the silent protest is that guy wearing the suit and the tie with the pocket square. Talking to a reporter. That's Frank Kameny.

Archive: I have lived for eight months on $0.20 worth of food a day when I had the 27th. This is at a time when people in my profession were in higher demand than they had been in all of human history. And I could not get a job specifically because I was a felon.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: Frank Kameny was very rare in his fighting back against the federal government and his being fired from his job. What usually happened when a homosexual, as we were all called, was fired from his job or her job is that that person would sort of slink off into silence and hope that nobody would find out help, that it could be kept as quiet as possible. Frank Kameny refused to be quiet, and on top of his refusing to be quiet himself, he encouraged other homosexuals to protest their firing.

Archive: And I am not alone. I know many people who have done the same. I see careers ruined, lives destroyed for no other reason. These were people with a great deal to offer to society simply because society is prejudiced against them and will not allow them equality of opportunity.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy: And today we are talking about something called the Lavender Scare. This was a time when the federal government investigated, persecuted and fired thousands of LGBTQ+ employees, calling them security risks and threats to the country.

Archive: American. Beatniks, homosexuals that time.

Hannah McCarthy: But this moral panic had the unintended effect of fueling the gay rights movement, and it paved the way for federal protections for LGBTQ+ employees.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: Lavender Scare actually began in the late 1940s.

Hannah McCarthy: This is Dr. Lillian Federman.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: I'm a historian. I'm most interested in lesbian history, women's history, and LGBTQ history.

Hannah McCarthy: Her latest book was published in 2022. It's called Women The American History of an Idea.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: The Red Scare. It was a period of paranoia when witch hunting of so-called communists began.

Archive: The world is divided into two factions. On the one side, the forces of freedom. On the other, the forces of communism. In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing. If he openly declares himself to be a communist, we take his word for it. But there are other communists who don't show their real faces, who work more silently.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: And eventually it leapt over into witch hunting of homosexuals, as we were all called at that time. Whether we were lesbian or gay or bisexual or trans, which was not a term at that time, transgender. And these same kind of witch hunting that was applied to suspected communists was also applied to suspected homosexuals, first on the federal level and then in various states, and then among private employers as well.

Nick Capodice: Okay, So we've mentioned the Red Scare before on the show. That was the hysteria that happened during the Cold War around fears of communism spreading in the United States. So red and red scare, that refers to the color of the Soviet flag and communist allegiance. But what's the meaning behind the lavender scare?

Prof. David Johnson: Well, it wasn't called that at the time. It's a term historians have used since, only starting in the in the nineties, when people like myself and other historians started looking at the phenomenon.

Hannah McCarthy: This is David Johnson. He wrote the definitive book on the Lavender Scare, and there's a 2017 PBS documentary based on this book.

Prof. David Johnson: But Lavender has has long been associated with homosexuality. There are different theories about why that is. Some link it back to as far back as the ancient Greeks. That's that the lesbian poet Sappho associated violet with homosexuality. The other explanation is that lavender is a mixture of colors. It's red and blue or pink and blue. So it's like male/female colors. And homosexuality is often associated with with some sort of gender inversion. But it was fairly widely known in the fifties that lavender they talked about the lavender lands in the State Department. The Cold War is seen as a as a moral crusade, right. Against atheistic communism. That's an attack on the family. And gay people, of course, are also seen as immoral and an anti family. There's that sort of moral connection in the popular imagination. They're also both seen as as psychologically disturbed. Mccarthy talks about anyone who's attracted to communism. There must be something wrong with him. They must be mentally twisted in some way.

Hannah McCarthy: Senator Joseph McCarthy played a big role in this moral crusade. We're going to talk more about Joseph McCarthy in a bit. But this attitude wasn't coming out of left field. Bigotry had permeated almost every facet of American society. If someone was not white, Protestant, part of a nuclear family, middle to upper class or straight, then they were viewed as the other and faced all kinds of discrimination. Here's Dr. Lillian Federman again.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: The LGBTQ community really suffered great threats and great discrimination to the churches. Without exception, virtually, we were all sinners to the medical health profession. We were all crazies. Until 1973, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder and was in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which was virtually the Bible of mental health professionals.

Hannah McCarthy: Licensed doctors tried to, quote, cure patients with everything from electroshock therapy to lobotomies. The stakes were just that high. So people lived double lives. They didn't want to risk the exposure.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: To the federal government. We were all subversives. We were open to blackmail, and we would give away federal secrets. And we weren't loyal to this country because of that.

Nick Capodice: So the government justified the persecution of gay federal employees because Russians or communists could blackmail them. Is that where this is headed?

Hannah McCarthy: That was the idea. That was the crux of the government's argument.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: If you were a homosexual, it was against the law in every single State of the Union, and you would be susceptible to blackmail by the Reds and you would give away the secrets of the federal government. This was true even if they were secretaries working in a federal job or truck drivers working for the federal government, they were still considered threats to the safety of the country, which was nonsense. Of course, there was never any evidence that a homosexual was blackmailed into giving up the federal secrets.

Hannah McCarthy: And here's where we come back to Joseph McCarthy. He was a Republican senator from Wisconsin who had been flying under the radar after taking office in 1946. But then he gave a speech that put him right in the national spotlight.

Prof. David Johnson: This kind of rise to power is when he makes a claim. At a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, he has a list of 205 card carrying communists currently working in the State Department with the knowledge of the secretary of state.

Archive: The president's own loyalty board found 284 unfit for service. He said, We only discharge 79 and we at that time called upon the president, the Secretary of State, to tell us who the 205 were and why they were kept on.

Prof. David Johnson: That captures the media attention they want. They want to see the list and they want to know who's on this list.

Nick Capodice: Was there any truth in McCarthy's claims?

Hannah McCarthy: Not according to the person actually in charge of the State Department at the time.

Prof. David Johnson: The secretary of state, Dean Acheson, is asked about this. He says, oh, no, no. Communists here in the State Department have been fired and they haven't found any. It's all good. Nothing to see here.

Hannah McCarthy: Now, in the meantime, the press was also pushing Joseph McCarthy to give more details about the 205 people on the list.

Archive: How do you still maintain, in view of what you've learned since that there are 205 or any similar number of communists working in the State Department today? Let's get our figures straight.

Hannah McCarthy: But McCarthy's claims kept shifting.

Archive: Unfortunately, I cannot get the names, but I do have in my hand the names of 57 individuals who were either communists were certainly loyal to the Communist Party.

Prof. David Johnson: First there's 205, then there's 87, later there's 57. And first they're card carrying communists, and then later they're loyalty risks or security risks. The language keeps changing.

Hannah McCarthy: A week after McCarthy's speech in Wheeling. Secretary of State Acheson attended a hearing on Capitol Hill. He was officially there to talk about the budget, but a senior senator from New Hampshire named Styles Bridges started asking questions mainly about security risks. These questions led Acheson to eventually reveal some things.

Prof. David Johnson: He admits that while we have fired 202 people we consider to be security risks. And then his aide finally admits, Well, and almost half of those 91 of them were homosexuals. And it's that revelation really that sets off the lavender scare. The reaction could have been, Oh, great, you know, you found these people and you got rid of them, you know? Right. But that's not how a moral panic works. People were like, well, where did those 91 go? Did they did they go to other government agencies? And how many of these homosexuals are working in the Department of Commerce? And and and why were they hired to begin with in the State Department? So it seems to corroborate McCarthy's otherwise groundless charges.

Nick Capodice: So, in other words, because neither government officials nor the public were satisfied with the firings, because these potential threats may still be in the government, McCarthy's seemed all the more justified in his hunt. So what did the government do? You had the public up in arms. There is a so called moral panic. I imagine the newspapers are having a field day with this covering like mad. How does the government respond?

Hannah McCarthy: The response came from the House of Representatives in the form of a series of congressional investigations.

Nick Capodice: Well, the Red Scare was known for its congressional investigations.

Hannah McCarthy: Yes, perhaps best known for those conducted by the House un-American Activities Committee or who back.

Archive: The growing menace of communism arouses the House of Representatives un-American Activities Committee. Among the well-informed witnesses testifying is J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Hoover speaks with authority on the subject. The Communist Party of the United States is a fifth column, if there ever was one. It is far better organized than were the Nazis in occupied countries prior to their capitulation.

Hannah McCarthy: Who act was created in 1938 as a special committee of the US House of Representatives. Its primary mission was to look into fascist and communist activity in the United States, and this committee used some fairly ruthless tactics. If a witness didn't comply or answer questions, they could be found in contempt of Congress and sent to jail. People who are asked to testify before, who act often refused, taking the Fifth Amendment and staying silent, which is a constitutional right, by the way. But this was often looked upon as an admission of guilt.

Archive: What do you mean by that? Are you now a member of the committee? You like to come to the ballot box when I vote and take out the ballot and see, Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest the witness be directed to answer the question. You are directed to answer the question. I invoke the Fifth Amendment and forget it. I respectfully suggest the witness be directed to answer the question whether if he gave us a truthful answer, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding.

Hannah McCarthy: And taking the Fifth didn't stop their careers or reputations from being left in tatters. Hundreds of people were jailed, thousands were fired and blacklisted, which, by the way, it means a person's name was put on a list of names of people who should not be hired. And there are a lot of well-known people who were affected by this. Lucille Ball, W.E.B. Dubois, Albert Einstein. That's just a few of them. So in 1950, the Senate passed a resolution asking its committee on expenditures to look into how many and this is the actual quote. Homosexuals or other sex perverts worked for the federal government.

Nick Capodice: Wow.

Hannah McCarthy: I should note that although McCarthy is the senator who kicked off the Lavender scare at that point, he kind of took a back seat. He was on the committees, but a whole new set of lawmakers stepped into the limelight to demand a, quote, pervert purge. And this was not new and neither was the idea of targeting LGBTQ+ individuals. In 1947, the US Park Police had what was called the, quote, sex perversion elimination campaign. Men were arrested if they seemed suspicious and their personal information was put in a. And again, this is a real quote pervert file.

Archive: This 19 year old service man left his girlfriend on the beach to go to a men's room in a park nearby where he knew that he could find a homosexual contact. The men's room was under a police surveillance. Anybody going to hear about this? My parents. Your parents don't know of this, but your community commander will probably find out about.

Nick Capodice: All right. Let me recap this timeline real quick. World War Two is over. Americans are scared of Russia. There's a suspicion of communists working in the government. Mccarthy says he has a list of communists in the government. The connection to gay government workers is made. And this leads to the Senate responding by creating a resolution to look into, quote, employment of homosexuals and other sex perverts in the government. And then these Lavender Scare hearings began. So what happened?

Prof. David Johnson: They call in witnesses. They call in police officers, vice officers, government security officials, the head of the CIA, which is then a newly formed organization. And ask all of them, are gay people a threat to national security or are they vulnerable to blackmail? And they all say absolutely, yes, yes, yes, yes. They're capable, are vulnerable to blackmail and therefore a threat to national security.

Nick Capodice: Really? Was there any pushback to that claim?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, the chief counsel of the investigation, his name was Francis Flanagan. He did ask for evidence.

Prof. David Johnson: Do you have any proof of this? Do you have. Can you give us an example? And nobody could. They couldn't give any examples. They would occasionally give an example of of a gay person who had been blackmailed in terms of money, asking for money. And then the gay person would go to the police and the police would capture the blackmailer and charge them because that's illegal. Blackmail is illegal. And they would use that as evidence that gay people were vulnerable to blackmail when in fact, it's really evidence that they're not vulnerable to buy. Right. Because they did not fall victim to the blackmail scheme.

Hannah McCarthy: To be clear, during these congressional investigations, evidence was not uncovered that gay federal employees were vulnerable to blackmail. And that did not stop with federal government employees.

Prof. David Johnson: They don't have an example of a single American citizen, gay citizen who has under threat of blackmail, has revealed state secrets. And despite the lack of evidence, the main committee, the WHO committee, publishes a report that says definitively that gay people are vulnerable to blackmail. They're a threat to national security. It now has the imprimatur of the of the US Congress on it, and it seems to be fact.

Hannah McCarthy: David Johnson pointed out that even though the congressional investigations were started by McCarthy and other Republicans, they ended up being a truly bipartisan effort.

Prof. David Johnson: No one no one is standing up and saying this is wrong, that gay people should be able to serve their government. No one is saying that.

Hannah McCarthy: The politics of the Lavender Ccare were not limited to Congress. This period played a big role in the presidential election of 1952.

Prof. David Johnson: And the Republican campaign slogan that year was Eisenhower and Nixon. As the two presidential and vice presidential running mates, their slogan is Let's clean house. Let's get rid of all of these bad people in Washington. Communists, homosexuals. Get them out of Washington. Let's clean house. And because they win hugely in 1952 against Adlai Stevenson, who is effectively gay.

Nick Capodice: Baited, David just said gay baited. Can you explain what gay baiting is?

Hannah McCarthy: It's basically a political tactic where there's an implication that a rival might be gay without providing any proof. There are codes that are used to kind of skirt around it. It's never said outright. Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic nominee for president for the second time.

Prof. David Johnson: He's considered somewhat of an intellectual egghead. He's a former State Department official and he was divorced. And the Republicans made a lot about his divorce and why was he divorced? There were sort of rumors about that. Maybe it was because he was he was gay. Apparently, the FBI even spread rumors that he had been arrested on a on a morals charge, on a on a sex charge.

Nick Capodice: The FBI was getting involved. Why would that even happen?

Hannah McCarthy: Well, the FBI was headed by J. Edgar Hoover.

Nick Capodice: Okay.

Hannah McCarthy: He was a conservative guy and he used his power to meddle in elections. Now, one outcome of this that you might not expect is that this homophobia being weaponized in politics led to something that we now see all the time.

Prof. David Johnson: Eisenhower and Nixon campaigned almost all the time with their wives and sometimes even with their children. And the campaign literature emphasized that they were family men and had pictures of them with their beautiful wives and children, or in the cases of the Eisenhower's, they had to trot out their grandchildren. To make a contrast with Stevenson, who had no wife, and therefore there would be if he were elected, there would be no first lady.

Archive: Both Pat and I have considered it a privilege to talk, to travel over America, to talk many, many times a day, and to work for your election as president of the United States.

Hannah McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower wins big, and one of the first things he did in office in 1953 was Pass Executive Order 10450 titled Security Requirements for Government Employment.

Prof. David Johnson: Which sets up this new security system in the federal government and a whole list of reasons for excluding people from the civil service. And one of them is sexual perversion, which is perceived as as homosexuality. And that remains in effect from 1953 until 1975. So every civil servant under the Eisenhower security program is subject to an investigation. This new security system puts everyone under the gun of this this investigative apparatus.

Hannah McCarthy: And we will hear more about that investigative apparatus and the man who fought against it after the break.

Nick Capodice: But first, there is all sorts of stuff that we cannot include in our episodes because of time that ends up on the cutting room floor. And if you want to know what that stuff is, you should subscribe to our newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks. It's free, and you can sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org. There also, we have links to our weekly Civics 101 quiz and a Wordle. So check it out.

Hannah McCarthy: We're back and we're talking about the Lavender Scare. This was the persecution of LGBTQ+ federal employees by the US government during and in the wake of the McCarthy era.

Nick Capodice: All right, Hannah, you said that Eisenhower issued this executive order 10450, which directed the heads of federal agencies and the Civil Service Commission to look into federal employees to see if they were security risks. And this is what really kicked things into high gear.

Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, it did. Government agencies, especially the State Department, immediately ramped up their efforts. They made relationships with other intelligence agencies and worked with local law enforcement to cross-reference their files. They got help with background checks, and they were notified when NSA employees were arrested or charged with wrongdoing. Every government employee had to pass some sort of clearance. In the CIA, it was polygraph tests.

Prof. David Johnson: They would investigate a government employee. They would interview their family, roommates, friends, former professors, coworkers. And if they found any sort of suspicious activity, if they found that they knew other people that the government had identified as known homosexuals, they would be under suspicion if they had been reported to be at gay bars, which were being monitored by the government. You know, that would be a clue. Even if they were if their dress and self presentation were slightly non-conforming. Right. Women were slightly butch or men were slightly effeminate in their you know, in their walk or the kind of clothes they wore. That would set up red flags.

Hannah McCarthy: And when a red flag was raised, like if a fellow employee or manager thought they saw something that was, quote, suspicious, that would lead to a deeper investigation and eventually an interrogation of the suspect.

Prof. David Johnson: So you would be called in by civil service investigators to a room. You'd have to swear an oath. You weren't allowed to see an attorney or have an attorney present. And usually the first question was the Civil Service Commission has information that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make? And confronted with that most gay and lesbian civil servants, they would refuse to answer. But then they would ask more questions. Do you know Kate Smith? Do you know John Doe? Do you know these people who the government knew to be known? Homosexuals? Have you ever been to the Redskins lounge? Have you ever been to the Chicken Hut, which were known known gay bars in Washington at the time? And. Most people, when confronted with these kinds of interrogations, they would confess to something small just to kind of satisfy the interrogators. And that would usually be enough. Confessing to being at a gay bar, confessing to knowing other gay people.

Hannah McCarthy: And when someone confessed to something they were asked about, even if it was not true, they were fired, were forced to resign.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: And if you were fired from a job for homosexuality, it was virtually impossible to get another one. And this was true not only if you worked for the federal government, but it really it filtered down into all aspects of employment.

Hannah McCarthy: I think, to better describe the fallout from these investigations. It's a good idea to bring back the person we introduced you to at the very beginning of this episode, the person leading that silent protest, Frank Kameny.

Nick Capodice: This is the guy wearing the suit with the pocket square.

Hannah McCarthy: That's right. He was an astronomer who had studied at Harvard, a super brilliant guy.

Prof. David Johnson: Right at the beginning of the space race with the Soviet Union, when the United States needs astronomers. Government hires Frank Kameny. He's working for the Army Map service. He's helping the Army create accurate maps of the globe, particularly the Soviet Union, where we're aiming our ICBM nuclear missiles.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: But fairly early on, they did a background check, and it was discovered that he was once arrested, accused of illegal sexual activity in San Francisco, and he was fired.

Prof. David Johnson: Frank is a you know, he's a nerdy scientist. He doesn't understand why the government is interested in his sex life. You know, as a scientist, he thinks rationally and about facts. And he knows this has nothing to do with his ability to do his job. And so he kind of thinks it's a mistake. He doesn't know about this whole lavender scare that it started in 1950 and knows nothing about it. So he fights it.

Nick Capodice: How did he fight it?

Hannah McCarthy: He fought it administratively within the appeals process for the civil service.

Prof. David Johnson: First, he writes all kinds of letters to civil service and writes to the president and writes to members of Congress.

Hannah McCarthy: For years, Frank tried every avenue available to appeal his termination. Each appeal was rejected. So Frank took it to the courts. He personally drafted up the legal paperwork, a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Prof. David Johnson: At this point, he's literally unemployable because in 1950s Cold War America, if you have a PhD in astronomy, the government is pretty much where you're going to work for or some government contractor where you need a security clearance. And he couldn't get such a job. He's almost starving to death as he struggles with the government.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: He was living on, as he said, frankfurters and boiled eggs, which were cheap. And that was his diet.

Nick Capodice: Sounds awful. Did he ever get his job back?

Hannah McCarthy: No, he never did. David actually described seeing Frank near the end of his life.

Prof. David Johnson: You know, he's kind of disheveled and his teeth are bad. He doesn't really look very good. And part of that is because he was impoverished for much of his life, because he literally couldn't find a job.

Nick Capodice: How many people lost their jobs during the Lavender scare?

Prof. David Johnson: Well, we'll never know definitively. We have some partial figures. The State Department alone, which is kind of where the controversy began and was most intense. And department officials admitted in the 1960s to firing 1400 suspected gay men and lesbians. And that's just the State Department. So extrapolating from that, there were probably between five and 10,000 people who lost their jobs because of the lavender scare. And that doesn't even include there are people who chose not to apply. People who chose not to apply for another job or a promotion because they would be investigated doesn't count applicants who were who were denied jobs because they already had figured out they were gay.

Hannah McCarthy: People ended up switching fields entirely, sometimes getting much lower paid positions because they could not get a job of the same level that they had when they were working for the federal government.

Nick Capodice: You said at the beginning, Hanna, that Frank Kameny helped to bring an end to the Lavender scare, right?

Hannah McCarthy: He did, because although all the mechanisms failed. Frank the appeals process, lawmakers, the Supreme Court, he became an activist.

Prof. David Johnson: And he decides and I'll get other people involved in this struggle. And so he founded the Mattachine Society of of Washington, D.C. They begin a whole new kind of level of activism in the gay community.

Archive: The magazine Society picketed the State Department and got this reaction from Dean Rusk. I understand that we're being picketed by a group of homosexuals. The policy of the department is that we do not employ homosexuals knowingly, and that if we discover homosexuals in our department, we discharge them. There's a department that is concerned with the security of the United States.

Hannah McCarthy: By 1969, they were winning cases in the federal courts.

Prof. David Johnson: The federal courts are saying to the civil service, you can't prove a connection between Frank Kameny or anyone else is off duty conduct as a gay person and their ability to perform their job. You have to stop this.

Hannah McCarthy: Finally, by 1975, the Civil Service Commission, this was an agency that made sure federal employees were hired based on merit instead of nepotism, changed its policy to reflect the federal court's decision. And back to Frank's activism, by the way, he was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr's model of nonviolent civil action.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: And they actually members of the Mattachine Society in Washington attended Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963, and they actually said among themselves to each other, Why can't we do this for the gay community? Why can't we have a march on Washington?

Prof. David Johnson: So when magazine of Washington. Folks decide to pick it in 1965. It's a very controversial decision. It's never been done before. They don't know what's going to happen. They're afraid they're going to be attacked. Certainly a lot of them are afraid they'll they'll lose their jobs, whether in the government or elsewhere.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: And this was the first time in history that homosexuals, perhaps LGBTQ people, as we would call them, now, dared to appear in public, holding signs protesting the government's treatment of homosexuals. In 1965, Frank Kameny organized a protest in front of the White House. He organized a protest in front of the State Department. The protest in front of the Pentagon. A protest in Philadelphia, in front of the Liberty Bell.

Hannah McCarthy: That Philadelphia protest became an annual event.

Nick Capodice: But is this is this where pride parades come from?

Hannah McCarthy: It is a precursor to pride parades, but it looked very different. There were no rainbow flags, no floats, no incredibly dressed people. But there was a dress code of sorts.

Prof. David Johnson: They sort of camouflage themselves in a way, and a lot of them are they wear sunglasses, which isn't just a way of hiding a little bit. And they're sort to to dress up. So the men are wearing suits and ties and the women are in dresses and heels. And that was probably Frank Kameny. His idea like, we need to you know, we're claiming we want to be employed by the federal government. We need to look employable. And it's also a sort of politics of respectability. We don't want to be seen as these crazy radicals.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: Not only did they have to dress respectably, but they couldn't behave in what the straight world would consider an outrageous manner. And so there was no holding hands. For instance, they had to march single file. There was no chanting. They just had to carry signs that pointed out how unjust it was for the government to discriminate against homosexuals.

Hannah McCarthy: Frank was a product of his time, and conformity was seen as a way to make gains by being non-threatening. And David Johnson argued that in some ways this is still true today.

Prof. David Johnson: Well, I think in some ways the lavender scare helps explain why it is someone like Pete Buttigieg that emerges as the first openly gay presidential candidate was taken seriously.

Archive: You know, I served under General Dunford, way under General Dunford in Afghanistan.

Prof. David Johnson: Because the lavender scare created so much suspicion about gay people as subversives, as as as suspected communists, as somehow a threat to national security and and to American morality. So it takes a candidate like Pete Buttigieg, who is a veteran of the US military. He's religious. He's married to another man. He now has kids to demonstrate to to skeptical Americans. Right. That gay people are not are not immoral and they're not a threat and they're not these crazy radicals or communists. Right.

Archive: Rush Limbaugh, to whom the president recently awarded the nation's top civilian honor, described you as a 37 year old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, who loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage. Now, there has been bipartisan criticism of him for those remarks. I wanted to give you a chance to respond if you would like to.

Archive: Well, I love my husband. I'm faithful to my husband. On stage, we usually just go for a hug. But I love him very much. And I'm not going to take lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Hannah McCarthy: Pete Buttigieg, who was appointed by President Biden as secretary of Transportation, which, by the way, made him the first openly gay cabinet member in U.S. history, has been able to express his love for his husband, Chasten, without being disqualified for public service. And that is a direct result of the LGBTQ+ movement that Frank helped to build.

Nick Capodice: So what happened to that? Executive Order? Order 10450.

Hannah McCarthy: Barack Obama officially repealed Executive Order 10450. On his last day in office. Frank Kameny was standing beside him.

Archive: Doesn't make much sense. But today in America, millions of our fellow citizens wake up and go to work with the awareness that they could lose their job not because of anything they do or fail to do, but because of who they are. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. And that's wrong. We're here to do what we can to make it right.

Hannah McCarthy: We still do not have federal protections for LGBTQ+ people across the board.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: There are certainly LGBTQ rights ordinances in various municipalities. There are states that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual identification or gender identification. There isn't yet federal protection for LGBTQ people. There is a bill, and there from time to time, the bill keeps popping up in Congress and has never managed to pass. But it it would assure protections for LGBTQ people on a federal level, but it doesn't yet exist.

Hannah McCarthy: The Lavender scare was a dark time in American history, but it also helped to pave the way for the gay liberation movement.

Dr. Lillian Faderman: I think the lavender scare is important for young people to know about because I really believe in the adage that if you don't know about history, you're destined to repeat it. And I think we were beginning to see how easily that can happen with don't say, gay bills in in Florida and and Arizona and the censorship of books that deal with LGBTQ subjects. We could come upon bad times again. And it's important to to know how bad times were in the past and to to prepare in case they happen again and to to take from history an inspiration to know that the good times that young LGBTQ people and our allies enjoyed today didn't always exist. They they came about because there was a long fight for our rights. And if times become bad again, I think people have to take inspiration from the history of the past.

Hannah McCarthy: This week's episode was produced by Jackie Fulton and Rebecca Lavoie and hosted by me, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Music In this episode by Bright Arm Orchestra. Circles Nouvelles Zillow's Echo. Wendy Marchini Crosses Gridded Blue Sessions, Chris Zabriskie, Mary Riddell, Arthur Benson and KUSP. Don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. And if you're looking for the archive, you can find the entire thing and a bunch of other resources at our website civics101podcast.org. Civic's. 101 is a production of NPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

How the Government Makes a Holiday

There may be only 12 federal holidays, but we come up with hundreds of reasons to celebrate.

How does something go from an annual tradition to a mandated day off? Who decides to make a holiday official? Today we're taking a look at everything from Christmas to National Walk Around Things Day, from our twelve official federal holidays to some day made up by a sock company. Our guides to the holiday season are Jeff Bensch, author of History of American Holidays, and JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire.

Transcript:

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:30] Nick, you know, when you're a journalist, that tends to mean spending every morning clicking through about a dozen or so press releases just to clean out your

Nick Capodice: [00:01:37] Inbox, yeah, there's a guy who was an extra in Pirates of the Caribbean who I get an email about, like once a month, who's got got an opinion to share about something.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:45] I feel like you should interview him.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:46] I Should.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:47] You just consider it and at least a few times a month, it's something like we hope you're planning to cover a National Diatomaceous Earth Day or National Clean Out Your Virtual Desktop Day.

Nick Capodice: [00:01:59] Last week, I got one that was like, Hey, we know, you know, it's National Peppermint Bark Day.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:04] Everybody knows.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:05] Here's what you should be doing to cover it, and if we have these experts to talk about it, if you're interested.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:09] And I'm always like, who came down from on high and decided that it was National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:16] I'm going to blame big bubble wrap for that one. Bunch of bubble wrap moguls sitting on their bubble wrap, thrones popping their product.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:25] I have looked into it. Some of these micro holidays, a term that I stole from Atlantic writer Megan Garber, are manufactured by industries to sell things. You're right. Now some are, to my mind, legitimate reminders that draw awareness to illness or social problems or important events. I'm cool with that, and some are just nonsense that has made its way onto the internet like National Walk Around Things Day.

Nick Capodice: [00:02:54] Is that real?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:55] Yeah. Well, I mean, what do you mean? Is it real? None of this is real, and I can only assume the point of National Walk Around Things Day is to celebrate the act of walking around things.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:05] I had no idea you were so passionate about this.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:08] I think it's the arbitrariness. It's not grounded in anything. Or maybe the excuse for selling stuff also really bothers me. Or maybe Nick, maybe five years of National French Dip Day press releases finally broke me.

Nick Capodice: [00:03:22] You're going to forgive me, Hannah. But aren't all holidays made up? I mean, somebody at some point says, this is the special day. Everybody take your kid to the doctor in a red wheelbarrow and eat some plums because it's William Carlos Williams Day.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:38] You wait, you'll get a press release for that tomorrow. But I take your point. Yes, all holidays have to start somewhere. But some holidays really go somewhere. There are holidays that are far more significant, far more real, if you will. So today, to cleanse the palate, Nick, we are going to talk about the holidays that rise all the way up to the powers that be, who proclaim them to be real, who make them official. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:10] I'm Nick Capodice,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:12] And today we are covering the 12 count them only 12 federal holidays on the United States calendar.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:20] There's only 12.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:21] Only 12.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:22] And this is the how and the why of becoming official.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:36] Right, and just to start, I want to clarify, calling something a national holiday does not make it a federal holiday.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:42] Correct. In actual fact, the United States does not have national holidays the way that some other countries do.

Nick Capodice: [00:04:50] Well, what do you mean?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:51] Well, you can't have a national holiday in the United States because Congress does not have the constitutional authority to force the 50 states to observe a holiday.

Jeff Bensch: [00:05:00] It only applies to federal employees.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:02] This is Jeff Bensch, the author of History of American Holidays

Jeff Bensch: [00:05:06] And in the early days and only applied to federal employees in Washington, D.C., shortly thereafter applied to all federal employees. And then the banks usually take the day off.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:17] But this is something I've always wondered Is a bank holiday the same thing as a federal holiday? Like, do banks somehow fall within the federal employee world because they're regulated by the Federal Reserve?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:28] That is a great question. No banks do not have to close on a federal holiday, but they usually do because they tend to follow the U.S. Federal Reserve calendar. Basically, it's hard to do business when the thing that regulates You takes the day off.

Nick Capodice: [00:05:44] It seems like we all tend to follow that calendar, though. Like every year, we get a list of paid holidays from New Hampshire Public Radio. And I'm pretty sure it adds up to about 12.

Jeff Bensch: [00:05:53] Generally, once the federal government declares a holiday, then the states will tend to ratify it afterwards.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:59] A state holiday is a day made official by state legislatures, and even on these days, with some exceptions from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, private employers are not required to give a paid day off. Sometimes, even a state employer doesn't have to pay a state employee during that day off.

Nick Capodice: [00:06:18] I feel like this is another tried and true example of how does the civics one on one topic work? And the answer is federalism.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:24] Yeah. Per usual, every state can do it differently.

Archival: [00:06:27] It's a state holiday today, meaning most government offices will be closed. It's all in remembrance of the Bennington battle...

Archival: [00:06:34] The state offices in both Alabama and Mississippi are

Archival: [00:06:36] Closed today for Confederate Memorial Day and for our state. It is one of three. Nevada Day is the best because everybody comes together. Everybody enjoys themselves.

Archival: [00:06:46] We all have a holiday in Rhode Island and only

Archival: [00:06:48] In Rhode Island. It's Victory Day, a state holiday that marks the end of World War Two...

Jeff Bensch: [00:06:55] Well, a couple of holidays, you know, states would resist it after the federal throughout history, you know, like Memorial Day, for one, because it started after the Civil War and the southern states were not not into it. It took them a while.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:10] Actually, this makes me think of New Hampshire in particular. I grew up when this argument was happening. Weren't we the last state in the Union to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a holiday?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:21] New Hampshire is kind of tied with South Carolina. They made it a holiday in 1999 and under a good deal of protest in the Legislature. I should add South Carolina state law gave public employers the option of observing either MLK Day or one of three Confederate holidays now that ended in the year 2000, when MLK Day became a compulsory holiday. But just for the record, Confederate holidays are still, albeit quite controversially celebrated in several states in the U.S., including South Carolina.

Nick Capodice: [00:07:55] Well, that's another prime example of federalism at work, I suppose. State legislatures can enshrine whatever date they want. I'm thinking, for example, those states that opt not to celebrate Columbus Day and celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead, right?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:10] Yeah. And that's something that the federal government has also considered doing replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, which gets to this practice that Jeff mentioned earlier, right, of the federal government copying what a state does. So Labor Day is actually a great example of this.

Jeff Bensch: [00:08:26] Different labor unions wanted a holiday to celebrate labor and the eight hour workday and then the 40 hour workweek, and after various strikes and riots before then, different groups had created their own Labor Day.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:41] Oregon was the first state to make Labor Day a legal holiday, and that was an 1887. There were 28 states celebrating Labor Day as a state holiday before Congress finally made it a federal holiday in 1894. And in a case like this, it is not like the federal government was a champion of laborers or unions.

Jeff Bensch: [00:09:01] It was a Pullman strike of 1894 that instigated Labor Day, and there the federal troops came in and that railroad strike was big and it spanned many other labor unions. But the federal troops came in and force the workers back to work and arrested a bunch and all that kind of stuff. But then later on that year, the president Cleveland agreed to make a federal holiday, hoping to win back some of the votes he lost by sending in the federal troops.

Nick Capodice: [00:09:38] So how does a federal holiday end up being signed by a president? I mean, if it carries the force of law, does it work like a bill? Does it go through the legislative process and get signed by the president at the end?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:49] Well, for one thing, presidents sign observations of holidays all the time. But that doesn't make a federal holiday.

Jeff Bensch: [00:09:56] You might get

Jeff Bensch: [00:09:56] A presidential proclamation or executive order that designates it as a holiday. And usually that might only be for one time or for a short period. It's really not an official holiday until it goes through Congress. It's just like any other law.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:20] The most common argument against a federal holiday at the legislative level, by the way, is money. It costs millions of federal dollars to shut down offices, but still pay employees for the day.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:30] And this is another thing where it's like any other bill. It's it's an issue of funding, right? So if all these holidays had to be established by law, that means that when the United States was established as a country, Thanksgiving, for example, was not a federal holiday.

Jeff Bensch: [00:10:46] There's the act of 1870. There was for holidays, New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Nick Capodice: [00:10:55] Hold on 1870. So it's basically one hundred years before we had any federal holidays at all.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:01] Yeah, the 1870 Act was passed quote to correspond with similar laws of states around the district and in every state of the Union. Loads of states already had Thanksgiving state holidays, albeit on different days. President Lincoln made it the fourth Thursday in November, years before Congress made it a paid holiday for federal employees.

Nick Capodice: [00:11:23] And real quick, I have to ask. I'm fairly sure Christmas is the only federal holiday that is explicitly a religious holiday, right? How is that legal? How can a law force the government to celebrate a religious holiday?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:37] Yeah, I looked into this. There was no significant separation of church and state debate on that 1870 bill when it was in committee, but there has been some debate since it was passed. And one of the best answers I've got is that Christmas passes the lemon test,

Nick Capodice: [00:11:54] The lemon test. You now have my attention.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:56] Lemon V. Kurtzman 1971. The Supreme Court establishes a three pronged test for determining whether a statute is in violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution. The statute must have a secular legislative purpose. Its principal or primary effect must be one that neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and it must not foster, quote, excessive government entanglement with religion because there are three other holidays that are secular in that act, and because the passage of Christmas is a federal holiday, in no way compels anybody to practice religion. It merely says the office is closed. Christmas passes.

Archival from Lemon v Kurtzman: [00:12:37] It contains no religious classification or gerrymander. It is non preferential. It employs essentially religious means to achieve essentially secular ends without any primary effect of advancing religion, inhibiting religion. And I must refer you there to our brief on entanglement because we have had an inadequate opportunity to discuss the whole question of entanglement.

Jeff Bensch: [00:13:02] And then 1968t, we had the Uniform Holiday Act, which sometimes the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. So Washington's Birthday Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day were all put on on Mondays.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:15] And anybody who reads a fabulous newsletter will know that people were so mad that Veterans Day had been moved from November 11th that it was eventually switched back.

Nick Capodice: [00:13:25] All right, I've got eight so far, four in the 1870s, four in the 1960s. What are the other four?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:31] The next holiday to show up is a great example of what being a federal holiday actually means, because this holiday is only celebrated by employees in Washington, DC and only every four years. Any guesses?

Nick Capodice: [00:13:47] Yeah, but I didn't know this Inauguration Day is a federal holiday.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:52] Yep, as of 1957. Then comes Columbus Day in '68. MLK Jr. Day in '83. And finally, the very recent Juneteenth, which was made a federal holiday in 2021. And like many others, that is a holiday that has been celebrated since before the federal government had established a single one. Now that it's finally recognized at the federal level, though, what does that mean for this long hallowed holiday? I want to take a look at our most recently established federal holiday to ask what the pros and cons are of making something a federal holiday. I'll have the answer to that question after the break.

[00:14:34] There is so much I wanted to put in this episode that simply didn't fit. Like, for example, did you know that if you celebrated Christmas in Massachusetts in 1659, you would be fined five shillings?

Nick Capodice: [00:14:47] Oh yeah, those Puritans, they hated Christmas.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:50] They called it Foolstide because there was so much eating and drinking and mocking of authority. And people would go around begging and would sometimes just burst into the homes of the wealthy as well. And speaking of holidays, the Puritans were not a fan, just generally. They only took a few days off. They took off for the Sabbath. Election Day, Harvard commencement day. And then there were the occasional fast and Thanksgiving days. Fast days were also called humiliation days.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:21] Humiliation days.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:21] Well, who wouldn't want to be a Puritan Hannah?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:24] This is good stuff, right? So what do I do with it? Why I put it in our delightful and fun newsletter. Of course, that's where all of the stuff goes. That does not make it into the episode. Like the Isle of Lost Trivia.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:37] The Isle of Misfit trivia. It's called Extra Credit. You get it in your inbox every other Tuesday, and it is the best way to get the B sides of Civics 101. It's also where we put important updates and announcements, and I swear it is very much not annoying,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:51] Absolutely worthy of space in your inbox.

Nick Capodice: [00:15:53] You can sign up by clicking Subscribe to the newsletter at civics101podcast.org.

[00:16:00] When we're not lounging around in our slippers on a cushy paid holiday, we at the Civic 101 team are working our collective backsides off to make this show that we love. So if you love it too, and you're in the position to do so, please consider showing us some support. What with the law and all our public radio station pays us holiday or no, and you can help ensure that they're always going to do so by clicking the donate button at Civics101podcast.org. Ok, back to the stuff that really matters.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:36] All right, we're back. And now that we've covered what a federal holiday is and how it happens, I want to get into the nuance of the thing what happens to a holiday when you make it federal and to do that? We're looking at our most recent one.

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:16:52] So throughout history, Juneteenth has been known by many names Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day and today, a national holiday. So Juneteenth is a holiday that's been traditionally celebrated by African-Americans honoring and celebrating what was considered the end of enslavement. On June 19th, 1865.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:33] This is JerriAnne Boggis, longtime friend of the show and the executive director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. Now, remember that date June 19th, 1865 a date celebrating the end of enslavement? That is two years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:17:58] And it often surprises people that we still had enslaved people in the Americas even after the Emancipation Proclamation. But it took the army actually marching into Galveston on June 19, 1865, and war then, you know, an additional war to officially enforce the Emancipation Act to free the enslaved people there.

Nick Capodice: [00:18:26] Right. It wasn't as if Lincoln writes this proclamation, and suddenly all enslavers freed their enslaved people.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:32] And it isn't even that all enslaved people were made free in 1865.

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:18:36] The exact date when we could say that all enslaved people were free is not really known because there were pockets of resistance across the country. There's pockets of fighting still enslaved people running away, self emancipating themselves all throughout the southern regions. We just don't know. But that June 19th was celebrated because we had hard evidence and hard facts of that order that came into Galveston from the federal government to enforce and to forcefully enforce the Emancipation Act.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:18] When I reached out to JerriAnne to talk about Juneteenth, I knew that the Black Heritage Trail had held educational celebrations of the holiday for years, and I knew that she was present when New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed a law recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday. Though importantly, Nick, not as a paid day off for state employees. Remember, I told you that a state doesn't necessarily pay their employees on these holidays. Yeah, but I wanted to hear what it actually meant to her, to JerriAnne to have Juneteenth recognized at the federal level.

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:19:49] So I think everything comes with a double edged sword. There's always two sides to any coin. I'm really glad that it's been publicly recognized and federally recognized as a holiday because it changes the narrative of American history to say, you know, that all enslaved people were freed with the Emancipation Proclamation. This federal acceptance of this June 19 creates that debunks that myth, right? It serves as a place for that dialog for us to honestly look at what our history is, not a sugar coating of our history, but the reality of what it was and how that affects us today. The other side of the coin as typical typical American fashion that that's problematic and worrisome is that we'll turn it into a consumer event. You know, we'll have Juneteenth sales, you know, like Christmas sales. It'll just be another another marketing opportunity rather than an understanding of of what the holiday is.

Nick Capodice: [00:21:11] Yeah. And this makes me mad. This is a personal grudge of mine, and it makes me think of Labor Day in particular. Labor Day is ostensibly a day to commemorate American workers and their long struggle for protections and wages. But for most people, it is now just an end of summer holiday and a great time to get a deal on a car.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:30] And JerriAnne pointed out that even the celebration of Juneteenth has the potential to lose the thread to miss the whole point of remembering the emancipation of America's enslaved.

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:21:41] There's a celebratory feel to it because we are celebrating, but African-Americans are not out of the woods in our country. Racism is still strong, still intact, still affects every segment of our systems. So I think that knowledge needs to be also acknowledged that it's not the mint julep celebration, right? It is a realization of looking at. What's really going on in the country? So this is one of those things where you don't want to critique good folks who are trying to do good things but end up doing bad things, you know, because of a misunderstanding. I think we have to really think about how we celebrate it and what it means. I think event with just white votes doing African-American things doesn't feel genuine.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:40] So, for example, when a community jumps at the opportunity to celebrate Juneteenth this holiday, the federal government has finally said is worthy of recognition. The question is how are they really celebrating it and with whom?

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:22:54] I think some some communities hurriedly pulled together something to celebrate Juneteenth, right? And it was like, Oh my God. And you know, I think I have to put everything in its context to, you know, our last two years with the pandemic, you know, with the George Floyd murder case, our communities were really aware of the lack of diversity, their lack of action. So I think there was this push to understand or do something quickly to say, Oh, no, our community is not racist. Oh no, that wouldn't happening in our town. Or No, we need to figure this out. And in that frenzy created these events without thought.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:42] I want to reiterate JerriAnne is not disappointed that Juneteenth has been made a federal holiday. I asked her if it was a net positive, and she said yes. Of course, the point is really, is Juneteenth going to be just another day off in some states? Ok, for example, Nick, do you actually stop to give thanks on Thanksgiving?

Nick Capodice: [00:24:04] I try, but I sometimes fail.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:06] Do you mourn the deaths of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers on Memorial Day? Do you think Americans 50 years from now are going to reflect on our history of enslavement and how it has haunted our society and laws every Juneteenth?

JerriAnne Boggis: [00:24:28] I think time will tell just what America will make of this federal holiday. I think that may scare some people to say that Juneteenth may be more celebrated than July 4th. You know, because July 4th is problematic when we think of, you know, a whole percent huge percentage of people being enslaved while we're celebrating July 4th, whereas June 19th, we're looking at a bigger picture, a more inclusive picture and what's out put it in quotes. Freedom is, you know, I'm just really glad that it's there. And I, you know, have big hopes for the celebration and really allowing people to create a different narrative of what America is.

Nick Capodice: [00:25:20] It's interesting to think of federal holidays as an opportunity, even if a federal holiday in practice does not apply to the entire nation. Giving an idea or an event federal recognition at the federal level, it's symbolic. It says that the U.S. government agrees that something is worthy of observance. Juneteenth was not made a federal holiday because the government thought everybody needed another day off or that like sock companies needed the excuse to make Juneteenth socks,

Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:52] Which you can buy at Wal-Mart. By the way, they do already exist, which is exactly the slippery slope JerriAnne was talking about. Because you're right, Nick, when the federal government creates a federal holiday, that is a political statement, and it gives states and communities the chance to make statements of their own in the way they choose to celebrate both Juneteenth and every holiday.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:23] One last thing, Hannah.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:25] Go for it.

[00:26:26] I looked it up during the break and guess what today is

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:30] As we're taping this episode, it is December 4th.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:33] Yes, yes. But guess what that means?

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:34] I don't want to.

Nick Capodice: [00:26:38] It's National Sock Day. Like for real.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:41] I have to go.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:48] And in a case like this, it is not like the federal government was championing it. How do you say that word? Championing, right?

Nick Capodice: [00:26:56] Yeah, it was championing.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:58] It was not like the federal government was championing labors. So really hard championing, championing.

Nick Capodice: [00:27:06] Yeah. Just like a champion of.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:08] Ok.

Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:11] This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Yung Kartz, petrochines, Mello C, Marten Schellekens, Ketsa, Breakmaster Cylinder and Audiobinger. You can find this in all other episodes at our website civics101podcast.org. And if you're looking for more, albeit significantly quieter civics lessons, you can check out the book that Nick and I wrote. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works, and it was illustrated by the very wonderful New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.