Trump announces 2024 presidential run, New York's pot law hits speed bumps: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Donald Trump announces his 2024 presidential campaign
What's next for the GOP? Plus, USA TODAY investigative reporter Kenny Jacoby explains how many colleges don't proportionately punish sexual violence.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.
Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. 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.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 16th of November 2022. Today, Trump is again running for president, plus an exclusive USA TODAY investigation into how colleges expel few sexual misconduct offenders and some stumbles out the gate for pot legalization in New York.
♦
We knew it was coming, and now it's here. Former president Donald Trump has announced his run for presidency in 2024.
Donald Trump:
We will make America safe again. We will make America glorious again, and we will make America great again.
Taylor Wilson:
Trump had originally planned the announcement in time to take credit for Republican election victories, but then the GOP failed to take the Senate and did worse than expected in the House. While Republicans are close to cinching a House majority win, most Trump-backed candidates lost. Meanwhile, within the GOP, there's a bit of a rift growing. Should the Republican leader be Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis? DeSantis-backed candidates in Florida added four House seats in the midterms, seats that should be enough to swing control their way.
Meanwhile, not even Trump's own former vice president, Mike Pence, is on board with his leadership bid. In an exclusive interview this week with USA TODAY, Pence said there will be better choices than Trump. Add to that list of naysayers, Rupert Murdoch, the iconic Fox News owner, two of his flagship print properties - the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post - both published recent pieces that shouted out a lack of confidence in his candidacy. In an editorial, the WSJ called him the party's biggest Loser. The Post had a grabby headline calling him "Trumpty Dumpty." Party divisions have yet to fully play out in deciding a GOP leader, but Trump's base will no doubt make their voices heard.
♦
Title IX, the landmark civil rights law meant to protect students from sexual harassment and gendered violence, turned 50 this summer. The legislation is meant to put the responsibility on colleges to build strong systems for investigating sexual misconduct allegations, protecting accusers and disciplining offenders. But is it working? An 18 month USA TODAY investigation into the program found a flawed system with inconsistent enforcement and widely varying results across dozens of the country's largest public universities. USA TODAY investigative reporter Kenny Jacoby led our exclusive reporting on the story and joins me now. Kenny, thanks for being here.
Kenny Jacoby:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So what did you find in this investigation and how'd you get these findings?
Kenny Jacoby:
Yeah, so our investigation looked at more than a hundred different public universities in the US and the outcomes of Title IX cases that they've handled from 2014 through 2020, which was this period of heightened enforcement of Title IX and just awareness of campus sexual misconduct. So some of the things we found were Title IX offices that we're very understaffed and struggled to reach victims and effectively address complaints, schools that steered cases toward outcomes that required minimal action and who imposed light sanctions against perpetrators that were found responsible.
For instance, one of the jobs of a Title IX coordinator, which is the person appointed on each college campus to oversee the school's response to all sexual misconduct reports and investigations, we saw that some schools left their Title IX offices staffed by just a single person, sometimes a part-time employee. It's a huge job for any one person to do, so we found these really understaffed Title IX offices mishandled complaints and just low levels of enforcement on those campuses. There were also instances of schools like the California State University, which had this policy for years that effectively allowed Title IX offices to close sexual misconduct reports without ever contacting the victim. We also found that in the rare event that cases made it all the way through a formal investigation, sometimes universities would undercut the findings of responsibility with these light sanctions like probation or training that didn't require them to miss any class time.
Taylor Wilson:
Some have criticized Title IX as being unfair. What did the data actually find?
Kenny Jacoby:
A lot of attorneys, a lot of men's rights groups, a lot of professors, and a lot of parents frankly, were worried that their son or their daughter would be suspended or expelled from school just on a basis of an accusation alone with little to support that, and they felt that that whole process was very unfair. Well, this data kind of throws some cold water on that narrative, because as we know, the rates of people experiencing sexual misconduct is very high, but the rates of people punished for sexual misconduct is very, very low, and it's really a disproportionate response to the problem.
Taylor Wilson:
Kenny, thanks so much.
Kenny Jacoby:
Thank you so much.
Taylor Wilson:
You can read Kenny's full story with a link in today's show description.
♦
Part of New York's Pot Legalization Act hit a snag recently with a court order questioning part of the law. It's the latest twist in the Empire State's long road to fully putting the measure in place. To add some perspective, producer James Brown spoke with USA TODAY reporter Tiffany Cusaac-Smith.
James Brown:
Tiffany Cusaac-Smith, welcome to 5 Things.
Tiffany Cusaac:
Thank you for having me.
James Brown:
Thanks for being here. If you were to describe the state of the legal marijuana market in New York State, in a word or phrase, what would it be?
Tiffany Cusaac:
One that is in flux.
James Brown:
Why do you say that?
Tiffany Cusaac:
New York has become the 15th state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The state did that in 2021 in March of that year, but legal sales remained some ways down the road. New York's marijuana legalization really put a lot of emphasis on marijuana justice and undoing the harms that the war on drugs had on particularly Black and Hispanic communities as well with a number of initiatives. But at the same time, those initiatives haven't all been implemented yet.
James Brown:
That seems like a lot to try to do in one piece of legislation, and it seems that it's run into some recent court troubles, too. Can you tell us about that?
Tiffany Cusaac:
A judge temporarily halted New York State from giving out its first retail licenses for cannabis in several regions after a lawsuit from a company that's based in Michigan challenging the criteria for being a part of the program for selection. And in New York, to be one of these kind of first of those licenses, you had to have a cannabis-related conviction in New York, and you had to have ties to the region.
James Brown:
Where do we go from here?
Tiffany Cusaac:
The Cannabis Control Board plans to review the first retail licenses for approval this year. With that, you'll be able to start seeing more legal marijuana becoming accessible to people who want to buy.
James Brown:
Tiffany, thanks for joining us.
Tiffany Cusaac:
No problem. Thanks for having me.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
The World Cup kicks off this Sunday in Qatar. Soccer's biggest tournament comes every four years, but ever since it was announced that the small Middle Eastern country would host, this tournament is under fire. USA TODAY sports columnist, Nancy Armour, has been following along with a number of controversies.
Nancy Armour:
Since Qatar was selected to host the 2022 World Cup 12 years ago, there's been one issue after another. Initially, it was concerns about bribery that Qatar basically bought the World Cup. That has, if not been proven, there's been a lot of evidence to support that. Once Qatar got the bid, then people really started digging in on the country itself. There were questions about the heat. So the tournament was moved from its traditional June-July window to November because there's no way you could do it in the heat. But what was done in the heat was building stadiums. And so there has been a lot of concerns raised about the treatment of migrant workers. People came in from Southeast Asia, Nepal, Tibet, Thailand to work on not only the stadiums, but the infrastructure programs or the infrastructure projects that Qatar needed to make this World Cup happen. And they were working in extreme heat. They were living in awful conditions. They were not allowed to go home. They were paid pennies. Just every kind of exploitive measure that there could be existed for these workers. And many died. It's not clear how many.
Taylor Wilson:
According to The Guardian, more than 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the tournament. There's also the question of how the country treats the LGBTQ community where homosexuality is illegal. An ambassador to this World's Cup, former Qatari player, Khalid Salman, has called being gay a damage in the mind. For their part, the United States National team will feature the colors of the Pride rainbow to be displayed at its training base in Qatar according to the Athletic. We've got more coverage ahead of the World Cup coming up this week on 5 Things and on USATODAY.com.
♦
With nine nominations yesterday, Beyonce tied her husband Jay Z as the most Grammy nominated acts ever. Both have 88. For more of the big Grammy nominees storylines this week, here's producer James Brown with USA TODAY'S music reporter, Melissa Ruggieri.
James Brown:
Melissa Ruggieri, welcome to 5 Things.
Melissa Ruggieri:
Hey, how are you?
James Brown:
I'm well. How are you?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Good. Thanks for having me. We're going to talk Grammys?
James Brown:
Oh yeah. So which category is the group of death where picking a winner is hard?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Yeah, that's going to be the Album of the Year category this year. It is insane. You've got Adele, Beyonce, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo, Brandi Carlile, Coldplay, Mary J. Blige, Bad Bunny, and the one that we know is not going to win, ABBA. They also fall under the, "Where did that come from?" category. But it's just such a huge category and so much really good work and so much popular work, and also by artists who are popular in the mainstream but then also critically revered. Yeah, I don't know. That might be one where we see the rare tie or something because I don't know how voters are actually going to whittle that one down.
James Brown:
Any surprises besides ABBA?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Well, ABBA got four nominations, so all of that was a bit of a surprise, especially because they were ignored in their heyday of the '70s and '80s when they had all those great disco songs that should have been awarded. And now I think the Academy is trying to make up for lost time or something. But one of the other weird things that popped out to me was the Best Pop Vocal Album category. They're five nominees, three of them are Christmas albums. So I'm kind of thinking now that Tony Bennett is essentially retired and people like Harry Connick Jr. haven't really done anything lately, I think there needs to be some cultivating of some new crooner types or diva types, because when you've got Christmas albums in the category, yeah, that's not really the way that's supposed to go.
James Brown:
Any snubs?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Lots of snubs. Lot of big, big names: Elton John, Kanye, Megan Theee Stallion, Carrie Underwood, nothing. Again though, this is a really tough year because just evidenced by that Album of the Year category, there's a lot out there and there was a lot to choose from.
James Brown:
Well, thanks for joining us, Melissa.
Melissa Ruggieri:
Absolutely. Anytime.
Taylor Wilson:
Winners will be announced on February 4th in a ceremony that'll feature a salute to 50 years of hip hop.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. We're here every morning wherever you get your audio. Thanks to our fantastic team for their work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump 2024 officially begins, few expelled under Title IX: 5 Things podcast
