Election Shenanigans

Barb McQuade (0:05)

Welcome to this week's episode of Sisters Side Bar with Jill Wine-Banks and me, Barb McQuade. To keep up with the show, click here to subscribe and don't forget to like and hit the bell to get notified.

If you have a question for us, please email us at SistersInLaw at politicon.com or tag us on social media using hashtag SistersInLaw. But don't just type your questions. Your voices are so important, which is why we want to hear them too.

So for Sisters Sidebar, we've set up a way for us and our listeners to hear them. Just email us a voice memo using one of your notes apps, and we might play your question on the show. Let's get started.

Carolyn (0:44)

Hi sisters. This is Carolyn in Woodland Hills, California.

I love your show and all of you. Thank you so much. My question is, why aren't detainees being protected under the Eighth Amendment, designed to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment? Thank you very much.

Barb McQuade (1:01)

Yeah. Thanks, Carolyn. That's a great question.

It seems so obvious the Eighth Amendment, of course, protects us against cruel and unusual punishment. But here's the thing, the Supreme Court has actually interpreted the Eighth Amendment to apply only to situations of punishment. That means sentencing after conviction for a crime. But when it comes to detainees, the thought is they're not actually being punished. They are being handled in an administrative proceeding. They are only held so they can't run away, and then they are deported from the country, perhaps to one of these third countries. It doesn't apply to pretrial detention or immigration detention or even deportation. Great question, but according to the Supreme Court doesn't apply to this situation.

Jill, here's a question for you. It comes from Charlene. She asks, If Democrats take back the Senate and the House, is there anything that can be done to rein in the actions of people like Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and others in the executive branch?

Jill Wine-Banks (2:07)

Thank you, Charlene. I would rephrase your question as when the Democrats take back the House and the Senate, because all of the people listening today and all of their friends are going to go out and vote. So it will happen. And yes, there are several things that can happen. First of all, the power of the purse is something that Congress has. And they can stop the funding for some of the misadventures and wrongdoing of these people. They can cut off the funding for commissions that are being set up to investigate things or for flights of people who are being cruelly deported. I think that's one of the major things that can be done. Can there be public investigations? Yes, there can, because the power of the subpoena will be in the hands of the Democrats. And they can now investigate and bring to light some of the things that are going on that are wrong and what the real facts are. So I think there are a lot of advantages to the Democrats taking control and being able to hold accountable the people who have done these things. The people you've named are all people I would certainly be investigating.

And Barb, for you, here's a question from Kylie in Washington, DC.

I keep hearing the Trump administration talking about foreign interference in our elections. This is such a perfect question for you.

Is this a thing? Has it ever been? Or is this just a power grab going into the midterms?

Barb McQuade (3:40)

Yeah, this is a great question, Kylie, because it's a yes and no answer. So the term foreign interference in elections can mean a lot of things.

Where we've seen it before is using social media campaigns to influence public opinion. This is what Robert Mueller found the Internet Research Agency out of Russia was doing in the 2016 election. We've seen it since then. We have seen it with foreign governments. China likes to interfere with the elections in Taiwan, Iran and North Korea and Russia have pumped social media messages into the ecosystem for almost a decade now. So there is interference in that regard. But what I think President Trump tries to suggest is that hacking goes on. We have not really seen any example of that. You may recall that Chris Krebs was fired as the Chief Information Security Officer after the 2016 election because he said it was the most secure election in the history of the United States. I think he meant from a cyberhacking perspective. So there has not been any known episode of cyberhacking in US elections. In fact, one of the great firewalls we have against that is the fact that our elections are so decentralized where they're conducted in every state and actually down to the county and municipal level. So the ability to hack into one system is minimized by spreading it out in that way. And so I think when President Trump talks about foreign interference in our elections, he may be misleading people into believing that there is actual hacking going on when, in fact, what we see are these public opinion efforts to sway voters and to stoke division in society. All right, Jill, here's one for you. This comes from Bonnie and John.