What do San Francisco, Chicago, and Albany, NY have in common? They’re sanctuary cities – among hundreds of other U.S. cities, states, and counties that have declared their support for immigrant populations, often by limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement – otherwise known as ICE.

Safe havens to some, crime-infested danger zones to others – sanctuary cities have become the topic of heated partisan debate. Particularly since President Donald Trump took office, promising to strip them of funding. (more…)

President Donald Trump’s promise of a border wall has divided many on both sides of the issue. This summer, the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy brought about the removal of thousands of migrant children from their parents to child detention centers across the United States. The move sent shockwaves throughout the country, but for many, it’s deja vu.

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Net Neutrality is a mess of divisive, confusing, and controversial opinion. And the clutter has only worsened over the last few months. After the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of the Obama-era rules in December of 2017, chat forums, comment sections, and news articles about the repeal sprang up in every corner of the exact place that Net Neutrality was attempting to regulate – the Internet. Now, the beginning of the repeal process will start on April 23rd.

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What is Cambridge Analytica? The recent word that 50 million Facebook users had their personal information collected during the 2016 presidential campaign by a data analytics firm has brought new and intense scrutiny on Facebook and social media.

Posting privately to your friends, liking and disliking posts and pages may seem harmless enough, but that seemingly benign information can be mined, studied, analyzed, and transformed into political campaign ammunition. Everything Explained’s Brian Shields spoke with Prof. James Hendler, the Director for Data Exploration and applications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy about the data giant.

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Electoral districts ebb and flow. The ever-changing population in different areas across the country creates the challenge of drawing the districts as close to accurately representative as possible. When drawing, the lines can get a little blurry, communities can become divided, and the way the edges of the districts are formed can determine the outcome of an election. At least, this is what legal teams across the country are trying to prove. The process of making the districts is called Gerrymandering. And today, we have an expert on the pod, to help us breakdown the fundamentals of the practice.

Ruth Greenwood, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, litigates a variety of redistricting cases. Along with co-counsel, she represents the plaintiffs in two high-profile partisan gerrymandering cases (Gill v. Whitford and LWVNC v. Rucho). On a federal level, not every state has to deal with this issue, some smaller states, like Vermont for example, only have one U.S. Rep. seat for the entire state. Which makes the issues more centered around medium to larger sized states, like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, California, and New York. So Ruth, to start off the conversation on an broad note, what is gerrymandering?

Credits:

Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert and Ashleigh Kinsey. Also we’d like to give a special thanks to Ruth Greenwood. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

If you live in New York state, you’ve seen the signs. Vote to elect. Vote to re-elect. Vote YES. Vote NO on the Constitutional Convention. But what is … the Constitutional Convention?

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DACA – or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – it’s a program set up during the Obama administration designed to protect the children of undocumented people who crossed the border into the United States. Today, Sarah Rogerson, Professor at Albany Law, helps us to break down the ins and outs of the program.

Video above and more information is listed on the New York City Mayor’s website. Additional information on DACA can be found online at the New York Immigration Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed this complaint in response to President Donald Trump’s action involving deferred action. And lastly: the federal government’s website with information on DACA renewals.

Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Ashleigh Kinsey, and Jim Levulis. Also we’d like to give a special thanks to Sarah Rogerson. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

Eco-tourism. It’s not about renting an electric-powered car or staying in a solar-powered Airbnb during your getaway. For an example of what I mean lets head to Ramblewild in Western Massachusetts. It’s treetop adventure course allows visitors to swing, ride and hang roughly 50 feet in the air, but its other points of interests may not seem like tourist attractions at first glance. This is the first episode in our new sustainable series on the pod. Our Jim Levulis swung through the aerial adventure park… but first he joins us in studio to talk about his experience.

Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Ashleigh Kinsey, and Jim Levulis. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

Since the outcome of the 2016 election, as with many high-profile elections before it, people upset with the outcome have alleged voter fraud. But unlike in the past, this time the allegations are coming from the winning party.

Vice President Mike Pence was appointed Chairman of President Donald Trump’s election commission. The goal of the group was officially to “study the registration and voting processes used in federal elections.” The group will ultimately look into allegations of voter fraud during the 2016 election where Trump claims that more than three million people voted illegally.

The Vice Chairman of the election commission, the Secretary of the State of Kansas Kris Kobach, has been characterized as the “King of Voter Suppression” by the American Civil Liberties Union.

It is worth noting that as of August 2017 there is no proof of widespread in-person voter fraud or non-citizen voting.

Now Victoria Bassetti has been on this podcast before. Go back a few episodes and you’ll notice that last year around this time we talked about the Electoral College and challenges facing America’s process of picking a president.

Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Matthew Plumber, Carl Blackwood, and Jim Levulis. And a special thanks to Victoria Bassetti. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

What is anime? The question itself even confuses fans of Japanese animation. Does the animation need to be from Japan to be anime? Or can it come from places like in the U.S. where shows such as the Boondocks, Avatar, and RWBY challenge the notion. This week on Everything Explained we dive into what makes this ever growing Japanese industry just so compelling and… complicated….