Latest / The Breakfast Club / Supreme Court Revives Trump's Voter Citizenship Check, Detroit Funeral Home Executive Found Dead, and Texas Ordered to Cool Its Prisons

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Supreme Court Revives Trump's Voter Citizenship Check, Detroit Funeral Home Executive Found Dead, and Texas Ordered to Cool Its Prisons · The Breakfast Club

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: A Supreme Court ruling could put some voters' registration at
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: risk just weeks before the midterms.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: I think there are big questions both about the privacy
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: and the accuracy of this database.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And a Detroit funeral home is accused of cremating the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: wrong woman.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: I turned around and I looked at him. I said,
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: this is not my mama, sir. And he said, I'm
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: so sorry. He said, your mom must have been cremated
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: when she first got here.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Now one of its executives has been found dead. And
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a judge says the extreme heat inside Texas prisons is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: unconstitutional and the state has to fix it. It's Tuesday,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: September 29th. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, I'm Amy Brown.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: This is Front Page. And here are the day's biggest stories.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Stay with me. The Supreme Court has cleared the way
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: for the Trump administration to use a federal database to
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: check whether people registered to vote are U.S. citizens. And
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: the timing matters. This is happening just weeks before midterm elections.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The system is called SAVE. It's been around for 40 years,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: but it was never built to check voter rolls. It
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: was originally used to check immigration status of non-citizens applying
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: for government benefits. But last year, the Department of Homeland
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Security expanded it. SAVE can now search Social Security numbers,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: which means states can upload their voter rolls and run
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: millions of names through the system to check for citizenship.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: The administration says more than 65 million voters in 26
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: states have already been checked, and more than 2,800 were
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: flagged as potential non-citizens. But here's the problem. Some Americans
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: have been flagged, too. I think the.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Effect on the midterms, depending on the state, would hopefully
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: be minimal, but you don't know. Because you don't know
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: in certain states where the election could be closed, whether
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: they're going to target certain individuals to see if they
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: should be removed from the rolls.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And some states may choose not to use it, but
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: legal experts warn in states where races are closed, officials
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: could use a system to challenge or remove individual voters
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: from the rolls. In June, a federal judge blocked the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: expanded system ruling the federal government had violated Americans' privacy
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: rights in a way that could threaten their right to vote.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: But now the Supreme Court has lifted that block, at
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: least for now. The majority said the lower court's ruling
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was interfering with the federal government's ability to help states
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: run the midterm elections. And the court's three liberal justices disagreed.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Kodanji Brown-Jackson warned that eligible voters, including newly naturalized citizens,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: could be removed from the rolls or forced to prove
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: they are citizens before they can vote. And that's the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: biggest concern here. Federal law generally stops states from doing
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: large-scale voter purges within 90 days of a federal election.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The administration argues that protection should not apply when states
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: are trying to remove non-citizens. So how much this changes
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the midterms is still unclear. But if you are a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: naturalized citizen or have any reason to think your registration
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: could have been changed, check your voter registration before Election Day.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: And there's a major update in that disturbing funeral home
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: story out of Detroit. Joseph Hutchison Jr., the vice president
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: of operations at Hutchison's funeral home, has been found dead.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: He was 65. According to sources who spoke with the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Michigan Daily News, Hutchinson was found Thursday night at a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Detroit apartment complex after a friend went to check on him.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Police do not suspect foul play. His death comes as
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the funeral home is under investigation over what happened to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: 61-year-old Kimberly Moore. Her family says they showed up for
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: her viewing, walked up to the casket, and realized the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: woman inside was not their mother.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: And when he unzipped the bag, I, you know, looked
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: at the toe. And I was like, it's not a
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: mole on her toe. And I turned around and I
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: looked at him. I said, this is not my mama, sir.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And he said, I'm so sorry. He said, your mom
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: must have been cremated when she first got here because
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: it was two ladies that was here that came in
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: when your mom came in. And we must have cremated her.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I said, but how do you make a mistake like that?
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: They said that the toe tag, they think the toe
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: tag got wet and it fell off. And that's how
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: her body got mixed up with somebody else's body.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Moore's family says the woman in the casket was wearing
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: her mother's dress and wig. The family says it still
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: has not received the ashes. The funeral home says belonged
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to Moore. They went ahead with service without her remains.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And there is another family looking for answers, too, because
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: someone else's loved one was apparently placed in Moore's casket.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: The funeral home says it is heartbroken and deeply sorry
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and has launched an internal review. Detroit police are also investigating.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And finally, Texas has been fighting for years over just
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: how hot it can legally get inside a state prison.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Now a federal judge has given the state a deadline
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to fix it. By the end of 2029, Texas must
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: install air conditioning throughout its prison system. The judge in
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the case ruled that forcing incarcerated people to live in
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: extreme heat violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And some of the testimony in this case shows just
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: how bad conditions can get. Former prisoners described people getting
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: sick and passing out from the heat. And some people
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: said they would splash themselves with water from the toilet
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: just to cool down. Texas has about 143,000 people in
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: its prison system. And when the case went to trial,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: nearly two-thirds of the state's 104 prisons were not fully air-conditioned.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Texas says installing air conditioning throughout the system could cost
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: roughly $ 1. 5 billion. But there's also a human cost. The
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: prison system has acknowledged 23 heat-related deaths between 1998 and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: 2012 and another three in 2023. Researchers believe the actual
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: number of deaths connected to extreme heat could be much higher.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And here's what makes this interesting. Texas already has temperature
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: rules for county jails. Those facilities are supposed to stay
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: between 65 and 85 degrees. State prisons have never had
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the same requirement. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: it plans to appeal the ruling and says it already
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: has protections in place for extreme heat. But unless that
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: order is overturned, Texas now has a deadline. Every state
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: prison must have air conditioning by the end of 2029.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: That's your front page. I'm Mimi Brown. This podcast was
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network.