Taylor WilsonUSA TODAY
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The Georgia Court of Appeals has temporarily halted the2020 election racketeering caseinvolving former President Donald Trump and 14 others. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Michael Collins reports from Normandy on the80th anniversary of D-Day. An FDA panel finds that thenew COVID-19 vaccinefor fall should target the JN.1 lineage. USA TODAY Breaking News and Education Reporter Zach Schermele discusses howschool civil rights complaintsare piling up. A crewedBoeing Starlinerlaunched Wednesday from Florida.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Thursday June 6th 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today the latest timeline from Donald Trump's Georgia election case. Plus we remember D-Day and how school civil rights complaints are piling up.
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The Georgia Court of Appeals yesterday temporarily halted the 2020 election racketeering case involving former president Donald Trump and 14 others, until the appeal seeking the disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is resolved. The ruling which came without elaboration, issues a stay in the election subversion case until the Appellate court can weigh the evidence and make a decision. The court on Monday, scheduled the appeal for October 4th, strongly suggesting that the case will not be tried before the November election.
Trump and eight other defendants are seeking to overturn a ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who said in March that Willis can stay on the case, despite their allegations of misconduct and financial conflict of interest. He had said he would allow some trial preparations to continue while the case is appealed. In all, 19 people were charged with illegally trying the steal the election in the state in 2020, after Trump lost to President Joe Biden. Trump and 14 other remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty. Four others have pleaded guilty and are co-operating. Trump and the other defendants petitioned to have Willis and her office removed from the case because of what they said was her improper relationship with Nathan Wade, the private lawyer that Willis hired to serve as special prosecutor. Willis and Wade have acknowledged the relationship, but said they did nothing wrong and that their affair began after she hired him for the job in 2021.
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Today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when troops from the United States, Great Britain, Canada and other allies landed in Normandy, France, to liberate Europe from the control of Nazi Germany. I spoke with USA TODAY White House correspondent, Michael Collins, who is in Normandy for the anniversary. Michael, thanks for joining us from Normandy.
Michael Collins:
Greetings from France. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Michael, you recently flew with several US servicemen who were at Normandy, 80 years ago on D-Day. What was their experience coming back to the place that was so pivotal in turning the war in favor of allied forces?
Michael Collins:
Well, you know, it was a wonderful trip. Some of these men are returning to Normandy for the first time since the war and some of them have actually never even been to France because they flew bombing missions over France, but never actually set foot on French soil. There were 66 veterans on the flight and two Rosie the Riveters.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, and Michael we should just quickly mention Rosie the Riveter, referring to women who worked back home to help the war effort during World War II.
Michael Collins:
Obviously, they're all a lot older now. The youngest one was 95, the oldest was 107. And so the night before we left, there was a big dinner for them in Fort Worth, Texas. The reason that it was there was because American Airlines was the one that arranged this trip. Some of them actually got up and danced. They played forties music and they just had a wonderful time. But one of the things that kept coming up over and over again, was the age issue. These veterans, they're so old now, that for many of them this is probably the last time that they will ever make this kind of trip. These major D-Day commemorations only happen every five years and given the age of some of these veterans, it just seems really doubtful that many of them will be around to see the next one.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, and Michael, how were these vets received by the French?
Michael Collins:
Well they got a wonderful welcome in France. As they got off the plane at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, there were huge lines of people waiting to see them. They were waving French and American flags. They were holding up the photos of these veterans. They were yelling thank you. I was told several times that people would just step out of the crowd and just come up to these veterans as they were coming down the [00:04:04]. They just wanted to shake their hand. There was also a very brief welcome ceremony at the airport. The US ambassador to France was there. So was the former French ambassador. And I thought that his remarks were particularly poignant because what he told these veterans, he thanked them again for what they did 80 years ago and he also said that "In serving your own country, you actually saved ours." And so to me, that was just a really poignant moment of this trip.
Taylor Wilson:
How much of a role, Michael, does D-Day and America's role in the war, play in foreign policy today?
Michael Collins:
Well I'm not so sure that it's D-Day itself that actually influences our foreign policy. It's more or less what that whole military campaign stood for. Remember, the soldiers who landed on the shores of Normandy 80 years ago, they were there because they were trying to free France from the Nazis and they obviously did that. I think the thing that does affect US policy, or at least influences it, is really what happened after the war. You had these various organizations that were set up to try to make sure this kind of naked aggression doesn't happen again. [00:05:21] probably the most prominent organizations that were set up after the war was NATO.
And President Biden was born while this war was still raging and he's been a very strong supporter of NATO and you can see that in the way that he has responded to the war in Ukraine. He pulled together a coalition of allies to stand up to Russia. And that kind of coalition building to stand up to a dictator is exactly what you saw happen in World War II on D-Day when the US and its allies banded together and they stood up to the Germans and they won. And because of what they did that day, countries like France are still free. So I think, in a sense, that is really more of the impact of foreign policy than D-Day itself. It's just what D-Day stood for, the aftermath, what happened and those kinds of things.
Taylor Wilson:
Michael Collins is a White House correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you Michael.
Michael Collins:
Well thanks again for having me. Take care.
Taylor Wilson:
President Joe Biden heads to Normandy today where he's expected to double down on his support of NATO and again insist the US and its allies are strongest when they stand together, like they did 80 years ago.
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A panel of health experts met this week to decide which vaccine the US should use against COVID-19 this fall. The Federal Advisory Group decided yesterday that the new vaccine should focus on the JN.1 lineage that has dominated virus strains. Current vaccines built to fight XBB.1.5 don't provide as much protection against JN.1 and several sub-variants driving cases for months, according to officials and vaccine makers during the meeting. The 16 member panel which gathered four previous times since 2022, unanimously voted for a shot that would target the JN.1 lineage. The FDA is expected to use the committees' recommendations to develop vaccines. The recommendations follow a similar recent assessment from the World Health Organization.
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School civil rights complaints are piling up and the office tasked with dealing with them has long struggled when it comes to money and staffing. I spoke with USA TODAY Breaking News and Education reporter, Zach Schermele to learn more. Zach thanks for hopping on.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks for having me Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
So Zach lets just start with this. I think some folks might not be familiar. What is the Office for Civil Rights and how many school civil rights complaints is it receiving? How are things trending?
Zach Schermele:
When a student or staff member at a K-12 school or college in the US experiences discrimination that they think may be illegal, Taylor, they or someone who represents them, can file a complaint with the Federal Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, some people call this OCR. So the office enforces half a dozen, about, federal anti-discrimination laws. That includes Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Title IV of the Education Amendments of 1972, that's that sex-based discrimination law that has become something of a hotbed issue here in recent years. Then investigators at the Education Department determine whether the claims have merit. They open an investigation and then they work with the school to resolve the issue or that school can risk losing some federal funding, all federal funding in fact, or some other consequences including referring the case to the Justice Department. The office saw complaints rise to the highest level in its history last year according to the agency's report. In fiscal year 2023, the office received 19,201 complaints. That's a 2% increase from the previous year's high which was also a record.
Taylor Wilson:
So Zach, does the office have the staff or the resources to keep up with these complaints?
Zach Schermele:
That's a big issue. Since 2009, the number of complaints received by the office has tripled while the average number of full time staff decreased by roughly 70 employees. And that tension between the office's mounting workload and retention stretches back really for decades. In the eighties, the office employed nearly 1000 full-time staff and received just under 3000 complaints. In the last fiscal year, the office had about half that. Complaints meanwhile, have ballooned by more than six times the amount they saw in the eighties.
Taylor Wilson:
So how did we get here? What led up to this point?
Zach Schermele:
So like I say, complaints have trended upward for some time now, but some worry that the fall-out on school campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war is what has really stressed the office to a breaking point recently. The office fielded 145 complaints based on shared ancestry discrimination, so that includes anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024. And to give you some context, that number was more than the last three fiscal years combined, just in the one quarter. The Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, has acknowledged himself publicly, that the war has led to an increase in complaints that the department is really struggling to keep up with.
Taylor Wilson:
So what's next? Is this a problem for Congress to solve?
Zach Schermele:
Yeah. The Biden administration has requested a roughly $22 million increase in funding for the office for fiscal year 2025. That boost would support an extra 86 full-time staffers and most of them would work directly on investigating discrimination complaints. Lawmakers in Washington right now are negotiating the next annual funding package for the department, and it's unclear whether the recent outrage over a rise in campus anti-Semitism could change the stance of some Republicans. Some of these Republicans, you have to remember Taylor, don't think that the Education Department should exist at all. Both the Anti-Defamation League though, and the Council on American Islamic relations, do support a boost in funding for the Office for Civil Rights.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Zach Schermele covers breaking news and education for USA TODAY. Thank you Zach.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks.
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Taylor Wilson:
The crewed Boeing Starliner has finally launched from Florida. The inaugural crewed flight for the Starliner is a major demonstration for Boeing which hopes to join Elon Musk's SpaceX as one of two companies making routine trips to orbit on NASA's behalf. The mission is the first crewed orbital test flight for Boeing after two previous demonstrations with no astronauts on board. This time, two veteran NASA astronauts, Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams are finally bound for the International Space Station.
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Sperm whales communicate with clicking, but do we know what they are saying? Tune in to The Excerpt later today, beginning at 4:00PM Eastern Time, when my co-host Dana Taylor sits down with David Gruber, founder and president of Project Ceti, a non-profit working to translate whale-speak. You can find the episode right here on this feed.
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And Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio and if you're on a smart speaker, as always, just ask for The Excerpt.
I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
